Today I’m going to look at the advantages of using a professional web design agency for your companies website.
This post is quite long but I hope it will help you understand the differences between hiring a professional and going it alone. Both methods are completely viable in certain situations and it’s important to factor in individual skill sets.
Table of contents
- First impressions count (A unique look that helps you stand out)
- Improving your search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Your website will be reliable and error free.
- Your competitors are already doing it
- Faster load times (Google page speed & core vitals)
- Well written content improves engagement
- In conclusion
First impressions count
Using a professional web design agency will give any prospective customer a good first impression of your business. A more attractive design will build trust with your audience showing you in the best possible light.
The look and feel of your website should inspire confidence. It is a fact that a poor layout will put off the majority of visitors. Consequently, the number of enquiries or sales from a website would be reduced.
Recent research shows that most web users decide whether to read the content of your website in just a few seconds. It has never been more important to grab the attention of your audience as quickly as possible.
While this statistic is concerning a professional will know how to keep your audience engaged. A web design agency will also know how to put the right person in front of the correct content. Using the right balance of stylish design, high quality content, and an easy to use navigation system.
Here are a few statistics I hope will convince you hiring a professional is a good investment:
- 70% of web users would not buy from a badly designed website.
- Over 50% of mobile internet users move on if a website doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less.
- 65% will not return to a poorly designed or slow loading website.
DIY web builder vs professional web design agency for a good first impression.
Now we have established using a professional web designer has many advantages we have to look at some of the fantastic website builders available. Many come with beautiful templates that would indeed provide you with a good first impression.
The ability to choose ready-built templates can be incredibly tempting. These services are usually cheap with a low monthly fee. You can log in, change the images where necessary and add your own text. It all sounds very easy, and for many it is. However, you will still need to source your own images and write your own text.
The downside is another 100’000 companies are probably using the exact same template. Do you really want to look exactly the same as your competitors? A profesional on the other hand is going to know how to make you stand out.
Now let us look at the text on your pages. It is important and should not be rushed. Poorly written copy will turn off potential clients quickly and rarely ranks on search engines. Writing good quality content can be extremely time-consuming and you need to decide if firstly you have the time. Most importantly consider if you will be losing revenue while doing so.
This leads us into SEO and digital marketing. The best-looking and most informative websites are useless if your customers can’t find them.
Improving your marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO)
An experienced web designer will know how to optimise your website. This process will improve your ranking position on search engines such as Google. Consequently resulting in more engagement, leads, or sales.
Spamming keywords in the copy of a website is a lost cause these days. Google is looking at hundreds of signals along with the users’ search intent to make sure their customers find exactly what they are looking for. Moreover, well-written, informative content should be an important factor in your strategy.
Learn more about our digital marketing or SEO services.
Driving good quality traffic to your website is our speciality.
User experience helps your SEO
While user experience may well be a term overused by web designers, ensuring your audience can find the information, product, or service they require is vital. Your users will be using a wide variety of devices and it is an absolute must that your website works on their chosen device.
Desktop computers, laptops. tablets and smartphones are all common nowadays and smartphone usage is at an all-time high.
In an ideal world you should be considering what your audience wants to see. If adding a video to a page would be helpful for your users then you should do it.
Social media is more than just a useful sales platform.
For companies that are active on social media, it is good practice to integrate your website into your social channels. This can be as simple as including icons that link to your social accounts. Another popular method is to display a feed of your recent posts within the pages of your website.
Google looks at social signals when calculating your search position. This does not mean you cannot rank well on Google without using social media but if you already have active accounts it is good practice to integrate them in some way.
This may not be too difficult for many but in my experience, many customers are terrified when it comes to using even the most simple code snippets.
Google my business is another often overlooked feature a professional web design agency would be able to help you configure. Ensuring that you appear in the correct location on Google Maps and ensuring the contact information exactly matches that on your website helps with local SEO.
A reliable and error free website.
Problems with poorly written content, bad navigation and broken links are frustrating for your users and reflect badly for your company. It is quite easy to imagine a potential customer wondering if you can be trusted when you can’t even get your website right.
The loss of business and worse still reputation can be staggering, yet these situations should never occur in the first place. Using an experienced web design company eliminates all of these problems.
Your competitors are already doing it.
It would be silly of me to state that all business owners are hiring website designers to develop every project. It is also a no-brainer that building the website yourself will be significantly cheaper than hiring an agency. With that said, is it really cheaper when you factor in the lost revenue a badly designed site could cost you. Add on the money you could have been earning while learning to build your own website and hiring a designer is starting to look like a good investment.
Building a good quality website which is properly planned out, consisting of good quality images and well written copy takes time. Allot of time!
If your competition is hiring experienced web professionals and you don’t have a good amount of experience, you will unlikely catch them. You’re literally running up the hill chasing your competition while they concentrate on running their company, happy in the knowledge their website is working for them.
I’m not saying you can’t make a fantastic-looking website yourself nowadays. But generating new business from competitive keyword searches is not an easy task.
In the U.K most new business comes from the top half of page 1 on Google.
Faster load times (Google page speed & core vitals)
Everyone in the web design community is always harping on about load speed times. The reason for this is a simple one. The faster your website loads the better your website will perform.
As of June 2021, Google is integrating its Google Insights data into its search algorithm for the first time. The tool has existed for many years but the scores previously had no impact on your search ranking. What’s more, the tool has been updated to measure more than just the speed of your website.
One of the benefits of using a professional web design agency is that they will be well aware of any upcoming changes within the industry and be able to guide you in the right direction.
Professional web design agencies produce good content.
Great content is everything. Google loves it and your readers will thank you. You can have the best-looking website in the world but if your text is not well written or sufficiently interesting then your bounce rate will suffer.
Walls of text are difficult to read so short sentences and paragraphs are a good idea. Breaking your content up using headings and subheadings is super helpful and enables readers to scan directly to the information they need quickly.
For longer articles a table of contents linking to relevant sections is also a good idea.
Use active voice instead of passive whenever possible.
A professional web design agency will remember your call to action
A huge number of websites still don’t implement the use of a call to action and where appropriate it is good practice to do so. Making it easier for your audience to contact you, request quotes or sign up for a newsletter/service is a good idea.
You users don’t want to have to spend a long time looking for information. Everything should be accessible.
In conclusion: Is one service better than the other?
Professional web design agencies vs DIY sitebuilders.
Professional web design companies produce quality websites intended for businesses that value their online presence. The initial cost may be higher than a DIY site-builder presence but these costs should be considered an investment as opposed to an expense.
They can save you time and make you more money in the long run.
On the other hand, many companies have no desire to be high up on Google. Their websites are used as a point of reference for existing customers or need to rank for a specific niche which is easier to achieve. In these situations, site builders are a perfect/cost-effective solution.
