What Your Website and My Morning Coffee Have In Common
From DIY to Fully Custom
I grew up in Georgia, the land of sweet tea and Coke.
Before we move forward, you need to know a little something. All soda is called Coke here; we don’t say soda.
We only use the name of the specific type of soda, like Pepsi or Mountain Dew, when that is the drink you choose, but when referring to soda as a whole, we call it Coke. And actually, just don’t choose Pepsi. People WILL judge you.
This is the home of Coca-Cola after all.
Now that we have that out of the way, people from the South drink Coke products for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between. My family, in particular, is a Diet Coke family. I’ve been allowed to drink Diet Coke since I can remember.
Want a Diet Coke with breakfast? Have at it.
I hate to admit this, but during my freshman year of college, I drank at least 8 Diet Cokes a day. Until one day, I decided I needed to cut back on the DC consumption because, as it turns out, aspartame isn’t great for you…
But I’m not crazy that crazy. I wasn’t about to cut out caffeine cold turkey, so instead, I ventured into the world of coffee. Before that, I had a frappuccino from Starbucks a time or two, but I hadn’t had a proper cup of coffee.
Like beer is an acquired taste for many, coffee was an acquired taste for me, but over the years, I’ve grown to love my coffee.
If you’re new around here, you may not know this yet, but I’m a morning person. I get up at 5 a.m. to work out and spend time in the quiet hours reading, journaling, praying, and visualizing. Sometime during my quiet time, my husband wakes up and makes his way downstairs to pour me a cup of coffee.
It’s one of my favorite things he does for me because…
☕I don't have to make it
☕He puts so much care and intention into it because he wants me to love it
☕My reaction to his perfect cup of coffee brings him joy too
Can I make my own coffee? Yes, but that takes away the benefits for both of us, right?
Just like there are many ways to get a perfect cup of coffee, there are many amazing options for DIYing your website. When you are first starting out in business it’s a great way to save money but still start with a strong online presence.
The problem arises when business owners don’t upgrade from DIY to a professional website. After a few years of business, they face many challenges and fall short of their growth goals.
In this blog post, we will examine the pros and cons of a DIY website and determine whether you’re ready to upgrade your online presence with a professional website.
Pros and Cons of DIY Websites
Pros
As a website designer for female service providers, I work with many creatives. I love working with creatives because they have an eye for design and care about the aesthetics of their online presence. And like creatives, other female service providers choose to DIY their website because it gives them the creative control they desire, all while saving them money to get their business off the ground.
Building your own website also provides flexibility and a great learning opportunity. You can build the website at your own pace and update it as you grow the business. It also gives you the opportunity to learn a new skill, empowering you with knowledge and experience.
To recap, 4 pros of the DIY website are:
✔️ Creative Control
✔️ Cost-effective
✔️ Flexibility
✔️ Learning experience
Cons:
DIY website platforms and templates have many benefits for small business owners, but they also have their downfalls, such as the DIYer’s lack of ability to customize the website. Without the knowledge and education behind website design, it can often be difficult to customize a website to fit your brand, so many business owners start with a template.
Hear me out. Templates are amazing, but after a few years in business, their generic look can begin to limit your scalability. In order to stand out among your competitors, having a website that is at least semi-custom is incredibly valuable.
As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you feel like there’s never enough time, but building and updating your website so it grows with your business is key. Adding website design to your plate can often feel overwhelming, or you may find that it keeps getting put on the back burner because the time you do have feels better spent on other tasks.
All of these things can lead to your current pricing not aligning with the design of your website.
As your business grows, you begin to charge more for your services (as you should, you’re worth it, friend!), which means you need to be able to attract those higher-paying clients. Relying on word of mouth alone is no way to scale. You need a home on the internet where people can find you, learn more about your business, and be SOLD on working with YOU and not your competitor with a custom-built website.
To recap, 4 cons of the DIY website are:
✖️ Limited customizations
✖️ Time commitment
✖️ Scalability limitations
✖️ Your prices don’t align with your website design
When DIY Isn't Enough.
The bigger your business goals, the more you need to invest in your business to get the results you want.
As previously mentioned, customers will not buy your services if your website does not match your prices. When a buyer invests in a high-ticket service, they expect a higher level process from start to finish, including their visit and experience on your website.
Having a strong brand identity increases brand recognition, establishes trust and credibility, and differentiates you from your competitors, ultimately attracting your target audience. Increasing the importance of your website reflecting your brand identity.
If your DIY website isn’t attracting your target audience, it’s time to hire a website designer to help you elevate your online presence.
The Benefits of Hiring a Website Designer
Website designers are experts in their craft. They have the skill and expertise to design and build the website you long for and that your audience will resonate with. Web designers also help you overcome the limitations of DIY websites.
Hiring a designer allows you to offload that task to someone else, freeing up that valuable time you need to spend working in your business.
Web designers can also spot areas where your website could be improved, including ways to attract your ideal audience and optimize it for mobile and search engines, leading to increased traffic and, ultimately, conversions.
Hiring a professional web designer does not mean losing control of your website. You will still have creative direction and input on its design. Finding a website designer who creates websites with a similar look and feel to yours will lead to a successful collaboration.
My client, who runs a virtual English language program, bought a domain two years before we met. She had started a Squarespace website but never launched it. At that time she was simply running her business by word of mouth and email.
She never got around to launching due to a lack of time and experience building a website. Every time she worked on it, she would spend most of the time teaching herself how to do something, only to not love how it turned out and call it quits for the day. After she hired me we worked together to use what she had already started working on to build and launch the website she dreamed of in about a month.
Should You Hire a Website Designer?
Maybe this got you thinking about hiring a website designer. I have a few questions you can ask yourself to help you decide.
➡️ Do you avoid giving potential clients the link to your website?
➡️ Are you looking to attract high-ticket clients, but the leads coming from your website never qualify due to pricing?
➡️ Do you want to free up time and mental energy?
➡️ Are you lacking the skills to customize your DIY website the way you want to?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is time to invest in a professional website designer.
Transitioning from DIY to designer isn’t as hard as you might think. Start by doing research on designers, and get on a few discovery calls to see if you’d be a good fit to work with that person.
Once you decide which designer is right for you and your business, you can get on their calendar and begin preparing to hand over your assets to ensure a smooth project.
While the designer is working on your website, your website can either have an under-construction page up or be built on another temporary domain and then transferred to your domain following the site build. A designer will help you decide what works best for your business so there are fewer disruptions during the redesign process.
Following the launch of the website, you’ll see that it is so much better than you imagined and worth making the transition from DIY to professional, just like that cup of coffee, my husband makes tastes way better than my own.
It’s time to assess your website and consider changing from DIY to a fully custom website to reach those goals you’ve set for the year. To learn more about my service offerings and how I can help you take your business to the next level, click the button below!
