Should you design your website yourself or hire an expert?
Websites are the basic needs of every other business nowadays. There was an increase in websites after the pandemic in 2020. In the early days of the internet, it didn’t matter how your website looked. It was quite an achievement, even if it contained simple HTML and minimal CSS used for styling websites. But in today’s date and age, there are many beautiful-looking websites on the internet, and you need to make another unique one. There are several factors involved in creating a good website in 2022 that you need to consider.
Back then, not everyone could create a website without coding knowledge. But now, we have online applications that let you create websites by drag-and-drop actions. Depending on how fast you design it, you can create and host your website in an hour or even less. In this blog post, we will discuss whether you should make a website using online tools or you need to hire an expert developer for your website.
3 Major Tips
1. Website Design
There is an apparent difference between a non-developer who made a website using drag-and-drop tools and a website created by a web developer. In a word, it’s creativity. When designing a website, a newbie doesn’t make it look professional, and that’s a requirement since you are making a website for business. If it doesn’t look professional, it can reduce your customers since they find it difficult to trust someone whose website doesn’t look professional. Ask yourself. Would you buy website hosting from a new company whose website has a poor design? No. you won’t trust them with your money. That’s why it’s essential to have a good website design. However, if someone amongst you thinks he can create a very appealing website, he can do it. So, it will be a draw between an online website-making tool and a professional developer.
Winner: Draw
2. Website Security
Your work isn’t over yet when you have successfully created your business website. There is a long road ahead that you need to walk on and do the rest of the tasks. You need to install SSL on your website and ensure that you made your website code safe enough for hackers. That’s where it’s not very easy for most people to do this task themselves. Here you need to hire an expert to check your website code and ensure everything is safe.
Winner: Web Developer
3. Plugins installation and settings
A business website needs the following mandatory things:
a. Payment option
b. Sitemap
c. Forms installation
If you create a website using an online website maker, it’s not easy for you to install plugins. Also, if you succeed in installing it, you need to be sure if it’s safe enough for users to input their sensitive information there, like debit cards numbers. Here you would need an expert developer who has experience making eCommerce stores to help you set the payment option on your website. Similarly, adding sitemaps is essential, and it’s a technical thing. You would need a developer to do this task. Forms are a necessary part of every website, especially contact forms. You can put a contact form on your page quickly, but you need to do some back-end operations to receive the information a user puts into your form, especially when making a newsletter form.
However, we are not discouraging you from performing these tasks yourselves. Nowadays, it’s very easy since you can watch dozens of authentic YouTube channels that show you how to perform these operations. You can follow along with them to do the required thing. So, the result is a draw since some people can perform these takes themselves despite the technicality of these operations. Although, we recommend hiring an expert to audit your website if it’s safe.
Winner: Draw
4. Price
Neither of them is free. Online website makers like Wix let you design your website for free, but you need to pay them for hosting since they don’t allow their files to host on other platforms. So, you have to pay them according to their rates. If you use WordPress, you don’t get many design options like Wix and other site creators. However, you can host a WordPress website on any hosting platform. Moreover, a website developer charges you more than the hosting fee of online website-making tools. So, you can get a website at less price if you choose to make it yourself.
Again, the result is a draw. It’s because you lose one thing when getting the other. If you choose the online website-making tool, your website would lack creativity and good UI/UX. If you hire an expert developer, you can get excellent website design, but it will cost more money.
Winner: Draw
In the end, we will let web developers win because a business website requires good UI/UX along with good security. However, if you don’t have enough budget, you can design your website yourself. You can improve it later on when your budget increases. Moreover, hiring an expert to check your website’s safety is mandatory.
Final Words
We have discussed and compared several factors that can help us determine if hiring an expert or designing a website ourselves is better. It doesn’t mean that hiring an expert would set everything perfectly according to your needs compared to online tools. You might not like a developer’s work. Therefore, it’s essential to check for various web developers and see their portfolios before working with them. You can hire web developers on freelance platforms. If you want a company to design a website for you, you can reach out to any good and affordable website design services.