There are many things you stand to gain by having a professional website design company. Here are few that stand out:
1. A Good First Impression
It is said that you do NOT have a second chance to make a good first impression. People address you the way you are dressed. Good intentions are NOT enough. Good impressions matter. Your site’s design gives a first impression of your business.
2. A Look And Feel That Welcomes
Every niche has a look and feel that is appropriate. A good web designer is an artist that does a job of translating your message into a design. Your visitors just feel comfortable and “at home” on your site.
What would make people comfortable in a bar won’t make them comfortable in a church. In fact, they’ll be turned off. The same applies to your website’s design. Don’t assume that what worked for your friend’s business is ok for your site. Every business has its point of differentiation. That must be reflected in the design.
3. Better Search Engine Rankings
If your visitors click back hurriedly to SERPs (Search engine results pages) when they get to your site then you are hurting your rankings. While there are many factors that can make them run away as fast as possible, a poor design is one.
Also, a poor design can reduce visitor engagement and increase your bounce rate. A good designer will ensure that the design enhances your message and makes it easier for visitors to find what they want. This makes for a better user experience and that helps your rankings.
4. More Visibility
There are galleries that feature well designed sites. Your site might be featured on those at one point or another if it is well designed. This will give you visibility you couldn’t have got otherwise. Furthermore, it gets you an editorial link back to your site (Something that will improve your ranking with search engines).
5. Superior Conversions
I was shocked when a top internet marketer (Keith Baxter) said that “design has surpassed copy” as the single most important conversion element. This is NOT an educated guess, but based on tests (according to him). While he stressed that good copy was still essential (we all know that), he pointed out that a good design was now more important. But don’t take anyone’s word for it: Look around you? Check the best sites. Do their designs look like the work of people who are still on Dreamweaver’s free trial? If you want to get better conversions with the copy you have on your site, get a professional website design.
A good designer will call attention to important parts of your message. He or she would ensure that your visitors’ eyes are directed from one point to another until they click the “buy” button.
6. Focus On Other Parts Of Your Business
You need a lot of different skills to get even an average website design. But you are NOT a designer, are you? You have a business to run and do NOT plan to start a course in design. Let the pros design your site while you focus on your business.
Let’s assume you are a business owner whose executive time is worth $250 per hour. If you spend a whole week trying to get basic skills that will help you knock out a decent website and actually build your site, you have actually lost:
8 X 5 X $250 = $10,000 (Assuming you work just eight hours every day).
Painfully, you’ll still end up with an average design at best. But consider what a professional designer can do for you with that amount? And the best part is your business continues running because you are smart enough to lets professionals do what they do best.
7. A Branded Look That Stays For Years And Sticks
Do you think McDonald’s logo was designed by an amateur? Can you identify with that logo everywhere you see it? How long have they stuck with it? That’s the point. You need a design that brands your business or is in sync with your business theme — One that you can stick with. You need it done so well it won’t need to be touched for years.
The longer you stick with your design theme, the more it brands you. So everywhere people see it, they associate you with it. Think Google. Think Amazon. Think Facebook. Everything about their design reinforces their brand. Even when they update their website designs, they maintain the feel we’ve all associated each of them with. Those are NOT mere coincidences. They are the careful creations of skilled designers. That’s something only a professional designer can do for you.
8. Savings On The Long Run
How much do you lose to visitors who are turned off by your poor design? How much will that amount to over the years? How many hours do you spend every now and then trying to tweak it to look more like those sites you love? Couldn’t you have done something better with that time? What is the cost to you over the years? Make out some time to think and you’ll see that getting a pro to do the job will actually save you a lot more on the long run.
9. Cross-Browser Compatibility
Have you ever designed a site that looked right in Chrome, but had the logo misaligned in Internet Explorer? You can guess and tweak till the cows come home or you can just let people who know how to code things properly handle this stuff for you.
A good web designer knows what makes each browser treat codes the way it does. But more importantly, they know what needs to be done to make them compatible with every browser out there.
