Don’t Let WordPress Trick You into Thinking It’s Easy

Are You Still Doing Your Own Website?

I recently celebrated my two-year anniversary of blogging. One issue that keeps surprising me is why so many established business owners think they need to be going the DIY route?

Most businesses are strapped for cash at the beginning and hiring out is not possible. WordPress fortunately makes establishing an online presence possible. Learning WordPress may take awhile, but if you have an ounce of tech knowledge, you can probably get a theme setup and populate it with some content with an off-the-shelf template.

However, once your business is more established and you have some moolah in the bank, it is time to revisit the DIY approach. And I would state this would be more than just your website (I include myself in the finger wagging). The more successful you become, the more expensive it is to lose time on tasks that are not your skill set; after all, how many of us can quickly do our own bookkeeping?

This is where WordPress and other accessible content management systems can be misleading. The ability to post and edit content on a website does not mean you are a professional designer and coder.

Advantages to Letting the Pros Design Your Website

• Website design and publishing is a fast-moving industry. It isn’t possible to keep up on all the trends (or trends you should give a pass). Web designers will steer you towards appropriate solutions.
• You are never done learning to code, staying up to date on latest standard techniques, and configuring for constantly-evolving devices websites are accessed from. However, your web designer probably knows HTML5 is the latest version for today’s technology.
• Web design is similar to graphic design for the web, except it isn’t static and you can’t think like print. Many web designers are former graphic designers that learned advanced HTML, CSS, and more. Their job is to make sure your design is not just decoration but communication!
• An effective web designer will take the time to learn your audience and translate that information into a design that is part of your marketing. A template does not know who your audience is or what is appropriate.
• Web design is an expertise. As fun as it is to do it yourself, an established business is better off hiring a professional to make sure its website is its most effective presence on the web.