Design Your Own Web Site!
OK, that’s a little misleading. Because I’m about to convince you not to design your own web site.
You’re an expert at your business. Or at least you know a bit about what you’re doing, enough to make a living at it. Or, maybe you’re just learning. But the point is, your focus, the thing you should be concentrating on is YOUR business, your product, your service. Your web site is a marketing tool for that business, but it is not your business.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to say that it’s none of your business! But so many business owners think they will save money if they do their own web site work. “It’s so much easier just to make those changes myself,” they say.
Well, yes, in a way. But here’s the thing. When you hire someone whose entire business is the internet, the way it works, the way different aspects interact with each other, you are multiplying your investment many-fold.
First of all, you have someone to bounce your ideas off of. Thinking, creating in a vacuum, doesn’t increase the power of your thoughts. But thinking in tandem with others creates a creative atmosphere where the ideas exponentially increase as they bounce back and forth.
Secondly, your attention shouldn’t be on the internet and how it works. Your attention should be on your business. Your internet consultant’s job is to know how things work and interact, and when you let her know your plans, she can suggest different methods of implementing those plans, things you never thought of, things you probably didn’t even know about.
If you figure out what your time is worth as an owner of your business, you will see that it is a foolish investment to take the hours you could be putting into your business and doing your own web work, or even making your own web decisions.
If you are a non-profit, get a web person on your board. They will suggest ideas that you will never think of. If you are a business, hire yourself an internet consultant right now.
A designer creates an attractive web site, possibly — and hopefully — a useful and efficient web site. That person may or may not know about usability, search engine optimization, what makes a site fast loading, internet marketing, picking a good domain name – all the things that an internet consultant should have in their bag of tricks.
Hire yourself a good internet consultant today. It may be one of the best investments you could make.