Having a website nowadays is pretty easy and affordable. For a few bucks per month, one can have cheap hosting and some of them even give you pre-made templates to get going on your website development journey. A few hours of your time and you are up and running. Well… Let’s discuss why it makes sense to get a professional to build your website rather than using a do-it-yourself approach.
Here is the reality…
The difference between having a free website and a professional website is effectiveness. Let me explain…
Compare your free (and probably super nice by the way) website to a (physical) store that you would build. You can have the nicest store of the world, if it is located in the boonies (because the land was cheaper) and you keep the shelves empty, than no matter how much you paid for it, it is still too expensive. Very few people would indeed show up and the ones that will won’t (for most) find what they are looking for because the shelves are empty…
Same goes for your website… Developing a rich content website with the right search optimization strategy in mind will bring you customers who, in turn, will generate traffic and bring you more potential customers.
In this article, I am covering a few key elements that will hopefully convince you that getting professional assistance in taking your place on the web is beneficial.
Design
Is the design important? It sure is. It needs to be inviting and inspiring and reflects your brand. And if you spend a few hours on the internet looking for templates (free or not), you will find one. But here is the catch. You need to make sure your newly acquired template is well built (not too heavy) and download fast. You need to ensure that it is responsive (adapt to any devices). You need to ensure it has been built with the right framework, which will allow for easy maintenance. You need to ensure that it is extendable (some free framework will allow you minimal functionality at a low cost but when comes time to expand the functionality, they will charge you a premium price). Some won’t even let you add new functionalities. So you have to restart from scratch.
Content: It’s all about building trust.
Now that we understand a bit more the importance of the design of your website, let’s dive a bit into the content. Because not having (very good) content, it is like having a store with empty shelves. No matter how good you are at bringing people to your store, if they don’t find what they came for, they won’t buy.
Building content is an art. Build it with your client in mind. You will make your client AND Google happy. Because this is what Google wants: Websites that provide added-value to people.
Develop rich, detailed (without being repetitive) and organized content in such a way that your potential clients find what they came for. This is the first step in building a long and lasting relationship: Build trust. With good content creation, chances are that your visitors will bookmark your site for future reference or, even better, will share it.
Developing rich content will no doubt generate traffic. And this is what you want. Most people never buy the first time they go to a website. They will need several visits up to the point they feel that you can be fully trusted.
Providing rich content will definitely help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google will be indexing the content of your website and will be in a position to serve your pages in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
On-page optimization
Which is a nice segue to another aspect that might be overlooked with the DIY approach: on-page optimization. In its algorithm, Google has more than 200 elements being looked at when ranking a page. If you don’t have that knowledge, you may be missing out on a very important aspect of the web development and by the same token missing out on a great opportunity to rank well.
Keywords research is the foundation. Identifying the right keywords for your business will get you started on the right foot. What are keywords? Keywords are the words or groups of words that people type into the google search bar to find a solution to a problem.
Once keywords have been identified, you need to keep them in mind while building your website. Reflect the keywords in page content, section title tags, image name, image alt and title tags, just to name a few.
Putting the effort in developing your content will largely pay off when you get your marketing strategy in motion, where keywords will also play an important role.
Marketing foundation
Your website is at the heart of your marketing foundation. What else is part of it? All social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), a blog, email campaign, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more… All of these marketing channels form your marketing ecosystem. And your website is at the heart of it. Promoting your business through one or more of these channels has only one goal: Attracting prospects.
Spending lots of time and money bringing customer in will be a total lost if your website cannot convert them.
Let’s get into action
At the end of the day, can you do the work yourself? I am sure you have the ability to learn how to do it. But is it worth your time to learn and do all that need to be done? The world wide web keeps changing (techniques, approaches, technologies, frameworks, etc.) at the speed of light. Just staying on top of what’s going on in the WWW field is a very time consuming endeavor. Let alone the learning curve necessary to adapt and to be able to do the things that need to get done. If you want to do it yourself, prepare to invest long hours. Keep in mind that time spent doing a good website is not time spent on other aspect of the business.
The best advise I can give you: Do what you are good at, focus on your business and let us do the web work for you. Let a professional team (Le Studio WebDesign) do the web design and content development for you. We have the knowledge and the expertise.