At the beginning of the .com boom, it was more of a gimmick to have a website than an outright requirement for a business. In the modern-day, this previous mentality couldn’t be further from the truth, and it will continue to fade into obscurity as technology, and the ability to create professional websites become more widely available and the benefits of having a professionally designed website become more apparent to even the most resistant of businesses.
The comparison given to websites these days is that they are the “shop window” for your business. You should be treating your website the same way you would a physical storefront. It needs to be attractive, easy to access and easy to find. It should adequately show everything that your business has to offer. The best way to make sure that your website meets these criteria is to get your website professionally designed.
In this article, we’ll be going over the benefits of having a professionally designed website and making an in-depth analysis about why it’s better to do this, rather than developing a website on a service like Wix or Squarespace. We’ll also be explaining how you can save both your time and money by only using a good web developer from the start of your project, rather than leaving it for later.
SEO
One of the first things that you should be thinking about when designing your website is the state of your Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. You might be wondering what SEO is and its impact on your business. By definition, SEO is the process of improving your website to increase visitors’ level to make sure your website appears on the highest possible pages on Google. This means that more people will see your website, which also, in turn, means that more people are likely to buy your products.
If you’re serious about SEO and making sure that as many people can see your website as possible, then you want to build your website on a platform that has functional SEO tools. As far as Wix’s platforms have come with regards to their SEO tools in the last few years, they still woefully lag behind the market leader, which is WordPress. WordPress offers a lot more customizability and functionality with their SEO tools as a tool and a system, meaning you’ll be more easily found on Google.
A professional web designer will be able to optimize your website for SEO the better, making sure that it hits almost if not all of the 100 different factors that Google uses when ranking the reputation and quality of a website. The team at Driven Media Solutions can also generate specific SEO reports for your website, which will highlight what you can do better to improve your SEO and the things that you’re currently doing well with regards to your website.
Build Backlinks
It may be a surprise to you that blogging is also an excellent way for you to improve the SEO of your website. Blogging helps businesses generate over 97% more backlinks than firms that don’t blog. If you don’t know what a backlink is, it’s essentially another website that links back to yours. The more backlinks you have, the more reputable your website will be on Google as the system would notice that a lot of other websites are linking to yours.
Despite the great utility and benefits of businesses when they use blogging to build their backlinks, not all backlinks are created equal. For example, if your business gets featured in an article by the BBC and a backlink is made to your website, this backlink will be “worth more” to Google than a backlink from a local newspaper would be. This is because Google would see the BBC as a more reputable linking website than it would for the local newspaper.
The problem with some of the DIY website building platforms is that their SEO configurations and affiliated tools are so unfit for purpose that it doesn’t matter how many blog posts you release and how many people link to your website through these blog posts. In the end, your SEO presence will largely remain unchanged, and you’ll be wasting your time on writing excellent content that will never get read by anyone, all because of the platform that you’re using. This is another reason why it’s essential to have your website professionally designed.
Bounce Rate
It’s relatively well-known that you have a minimal amount of time to impress a visitor to your website before you run the risk of them clicking off your site and finding something else to read or watch. The rate of people who only look on a single page of your website before leaving is what’s referred to as the bounce rate and getting this rate as low as possible is critical to ensuring your website’s success in generating leads and sales.
One of the first ways a professionally designed website will improve your bounce rate is that your website will be specifically designed to load quickly. Slow-loading websites are one of the easiest ways to ensure that people leave, sometimes even before the page has finished loading. If your website loads nearly instantly, people are more likely to want to stay on the website and see what you or your company has to offer to them.
Another way that a professional web designer can reduce your bounce rate is a simple fact that a professional will make your website much more visually appealing. People are more likely to stay on your website for longer if it looks clean, fresh, and all of the relevant information is ordered in a way that’s easy to digest. If your website design is all over the place, looks tragically flawed, and information is not collected as it should be, people will leave very quickly.
Better Conversions
It may seem ridiculously obvious to some of you reading this. Still, having a website that has been professionally designed for you, like the ones we offer at Driven Media Solutions, your business will begin to experience higher conversion rates for sales on people that come through to your website. Of course, this is a massive positive, as a higher conversion rate means more money for your business as more people are purchasing your products and services. This means that you’ll be able to invest back into your business for essential projects.
There are several ways in which a professional web designer would increase the conversion rates on your website. For example, it may just be that you do not have a functional Call To Action (CTA) on your website, which means that users don’t know where to go if they want to book a consultation or purchase one product using the website. Alternatively, it could be that your website is running slowly, and as previously mentioned, this can cause people to click away before they even see your offering.
Stand Out From The Competition
In the modern-day, your competition is probably already updating their websites to impress their customers, if they haven’t already. If you have a poorly designed website, you not only run the risk of your visitors not using your services, you could also potentially be putting money into your competitors’ pockets by making them search elsewhere for what you’re offering. Therefore, if you want to keep up with the competition, you’re going to need to make sure your only presence is astounding.
If you’re working in an industry that is slightly behind the times in terms of web design, you will be able to stand out like a supernova compared to the competition. By managing to get your website closer to the top of Google and making sure that people want to stay when they get there, you’re giving yourself the best opportunity to convert these prospects and make sure your business will continue to grow.
It Makes Additional Building Work Easier
When building a website for you, a competent and persuasive web designer will always ensure that your website can be built upon in the future and easily integrated with any future plugins or other technologies that you wish to have. Alternatively, if you use a low web designer or a DIY service, you may find it much more challenging to integrate with any future plugins or other technologies that you wish to have.
Alternatively, if you use a low web designer or a DIY service, you may find it much more difficult to create stable websites that can be built upon in the future. This is why it is essential to hire a competent web designer from the outset so that you can ensure that your initial design can be easily updated and built upon. Not doing so means that you could be wasting a lot of time and money trying to build your website in the future.
You Will Save Money
Similarly to the previous point, having a skilled web designer build your website for you from the start can help you save a great deal of money in the long-term, even if their rates are higher in terms of upfront costs. For example, if you purchase a cheap website and then find out that it doesn’t work the way you want it to or hate the design, it will then cost you more money to find an influential web designer who will fix the website.
With web design, it is effectively a case of “buy cheap, buy twice”, except you also have to factor in that you may be losing money from lost sales and opportunities due to a website designed by a cheaper individual or company. Looking at the initial cost with a website is an understandable viewpoint, but it can also be an incredibly short-sighted way of doing things if that’s all you’re considering.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be seen that having your website designed by a professional web designer has an array of profound benefits for your business, which greatly outweigh the benefits of using a cheaper alternative or a DIY web builder such as Wix or Squarespace. As discussed, you will save yourself a lot of money and time by hiring someone competent to build your website at an additional cost instead of having something that isn’t great to begin with and then building it up from there after the fact.
More Sales Opportunities
With a professionally designed website, you will also be better able to build up your website SEO, which can lead you to get more visitors to your website, which then resolves with you getting more leads and sales for your business. Your profit margin will get a notable boost if you follow through with the above advice and look at getting a good website.
Responsiveness
As mentioned, getting seen online isn’t enough to convince people to stay on your website and buy your products or services. It is equally important to ensure that your company website is responsive and attractive, with a clear CTA for the customer to follow. This ensures that people don’t click away from your website as soon as they get onto it, leading to your competitor winning the customer’s business.
Getting People To Stay On Your Site
Instead, if you get a professionally designed website, you’ll be able to ensure that your visitors stay on your site. You don’t even want them to see what your competition has to offer them. This ultimately means that your business will become more profitable. You will have more money to invest in your business’s different avenues that may need further development or growth.
Thank you for reading, and if you need help with the development of your website, you can contact the team at Driven Media Solutions for any assistance you may require.