There comes a time when every company, business leader, or entrepreneur needs help with their website. Usually, that happens when they’re starting a new company, launching a new product or service in an existing company, they realize their current website just isn’t bringing in the leads or sales they wanted, or maybe most common, their website doesn’t reflect the quality of work they do anymore. You wonder should you hire a web designer or do it yourself.
So what should you do?
The problem is . . . it’s SO EASY to waste a ton of time trying to do it yourself. It’s also SO EASY to waste a ton of money with an agency . . . especially if your website doesn’t work any better than it did before you hired that agency.
Within the last year, I’ve had two clients who made both of these mistakes. One wanted to rebuild their old company’s new website by himself, but it didn’t take long before he started and got way over his head and realized he was wasting endless amounts of time getting nowhere.
I also had a client who came to me because he spent $5,000 on a brand new website that, when it was done, didn’t correctly represent their product.
Let me pay your dumb tax. I’ve spent my 10,000 hours in the school of website hard knocks, and I want to help you avoid the website money pit—so you don’t make the same mistakes so many of our clients do before they come to us for help.
Let’s break down should you hire a web designer or do it yourself – and in the process, I hope to help you find a framework to decide for yourself. I’ll also share a third option you may not have considered before but might be just the thing you need.
DIY Business Websites
The option most business leaders consider first when deciding should you hire a web designer or do it yourself, is DIY. Let’s call this the done-by-you option.
Could they or could someone on their team do it BY themselves?
So they check out Squarespace because they’ve seen ads that say “A Website Makes It Real.”
Or, if they’re tech-savvy, use a drag-and-drop builder like Elementor on WordPress.
I’m not going to dissect each platform, as both can be good. But I want to look at the idea of done-by-you, why you’d do that, and why you shouldn’t.
A few reasons to do it yourself include
- You get to control the entire process
- You save money not hiring an agency
- You know how your website works, inside and out
These three reasons are precisely why so many people are DIYing their websites. It’s cheaper than hiring an agency, and they don’t trust someone else to do it as well as they could. All good. However, this presents a few trade-offs.
If you DIY your website…
- You have to do it yourself
- You spend time instead of money
- You may feel lost and confused, not knowing if you’re doing it right
You may have heard it said to make money, you have to spend money. That’s precisely why people hire landscapers and house cleaners because it’s better to hire someone to do that than do it themselves. The same thing in business is why people hire an executive assistant. It’s not very useful for an executive to make travel plans instead of closing a deal.
In business and life, everything is about opportunity cost. It’s about time and money you’re either earning, spending, or wasting.
That’s why considering DIY website building; you must look at the opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is what you will lose by choosing this decision. If it takes you 100 hours or an agency $5,000, what’s more expensive? If your time is valued at 100 per hour, you’re technically paying twice what you’d pay an agency by doing it yourself.
By DIYing, you get to control the entire process, and you’ll know your website inside and out, but you’re still not an expert in website design. You have to expect that the website will be quirky, may be confusing to customers, and may feel “homemade.” Is that something you can afford? Another way of thinking about it is, can you afford to do it wrong? Is ROI so fluid that you can risk it not working as it should?
If you’re just starting and you don’t have much to lose, you’ve got all the time in the world, or you’re confident in your ability to make a website, then DIY might be your option.
If you’re unsure, here are some reasons to (and not to) hire an agency and what that would look like.
Hire a Professional Web Design Agency
Some business leaders are wise and jump to hire someone for their website. Let’s call this done-for-you.
They understand specialization and opportunity cost and can easily do the math to know they can’t afford to do it wrong or can’t do it themselves.
Maybe this is you. If so, this works out well because…
- An agency will manage the process soup to nuts
- You’ll save time by not doing it yourself
- You’ll feel confident they know how to do it right
You’ll pay an agency $10-25k for a small to medium-sized website. A more extensive, more complex website will cost you $25-50k if you already have products, services, and heavy traffic. But, it’s honestly not too difficult to justify either of those costs if you’re a growing business.
The best part is, you don’t have to do it yourself. It’ll be done well and will likely be beautiful, and will reflect the quality of your products or services.
However, when you hire a web design agency…
- You lose control of the process
- The cost can feel intimidating
- There’s a chance it may not work in the end
Do you remember the story I told at the beginning of this video about my client who paid an agency $5k for a crappy website? Yeah, he was just starting, and $5k was a lot, especially for a small website for a startup with no traffic. And the fact that after it was all done, he hated the experience with the agency, felt like he wasted precious seed money, and didn’t reflect well on his products, was a sign that he should’ve done it himself.
The truth is that he could’ve made a website himself. I believe most business leaders would do it themselves if they could. But like this client, they don’t know how and don’t have a step-by-step plan for getting there. They’re not confident that they can do it right and want more control over the process than an agency can give them.
The Bottom Line: Should You Hire a Web Designer or Do It Yourself?
You know your website could be making more money for your business. But when customers don’t understand how your product or service helps them, they tune you out and take their dollars elsewhere.
Watch our free video training on How to Build a Really Attractive, High-Converting Website That Makes You Proud.
I’ll guide you through a simple process that will help turn your website into a sales machine because you remove the obstacles that are stopping people from buying from you and implement automated and sustainable sales systems that could DOUBLE or TRIPLE your revenue.
