A website for your company is a major undertaking. Your website will serve as the online shop for your company and aid in expanding your clientele. Internet access is available to more than 66% of people worldwide and 93.4% of those in North America and Europe. New opportunities may arise from the launch of a new website, but much will depend on its design.
Your website’s layout can reveal how trustworthy your company is. It may also affect whether visitors to your website stick around or immediately leave. If a website’s user experience is subpar, 83% of customers will choose to conduct business with a rival.
Therefore, you might think, “Should I hire a web designer?” The type of business you run and the size of your budget can both have an impact on the answer to this question. But almost every business can profit from a well-designed website. In this post, we’ll examine some justifications for hiring a web designer as well as some factors to take into account.
What makes a web designer worth hiring?
When you want to redesign your present website or build a brand-new one, there are a number of reasons why hiring a web designer can be your best choice. Look into the advantages of hiring a professional to design your website before you decide on a different course of action.
1. Save both money and time
You’ll save a lot of time by working with a web designer, which is a huge advantage. Professional web designers spend their days learning how to use cutting-edge graphic design tools while staying up to speed with the most recent design trends and best practices. They’ll have also designed dozens, if not hundreds, of websites similar to yours. Even if learning design and all the tools will take considerably longer, you can attempt to achieve the same aims, but the outcomes won’t be similar.
The competent web designer will be effective and recommend features for your website that you might not have considered but will require in the future, saving you time.
2. Personalised style
A content management system (CMS) is frequently used by businesses to expedite the creation of their websites. Non-technical individuals can easily edit website content thanks to a CMS. Instead of engaging a web designer, the company may decide to use one of the templates that the CMS offers and customise it with their branding and demands.
The issue with this is that many other companies will be following suit, making your design resemble theirs even after changes have been made. Whether or not you utilise a CMS, a website designer will provide you a custom layout that suits your company.
3. Support for clients
When you engage a web designer, you have a resource you can use to quickly and easily change the design. When you or a member of your team modify a template, they are taken away from their regular tasks to complete the adjustments.
4. Look professional
A web designer will produce a dynamic, useful, and appealing design for your website. Design norms and trends are ever-evolving. Technology advancements that offer new features to enhance user experience typically lead to these adjustments. By employing a web designer, you can make sure that your design won’t appear antiquated or like a cookie-cutter website that differs only somewhat from other online sites.
5. Flexible design
Your website’s visitors might access it through a variety of devices, therefore your single website design needs to appear well on all of them. This requires a lot of effort, device knowledge, and responsive design expertise to accomplish.
It doesn’t necessarily follow that your website will appear nice on an Android or iPhone just because it looks good in a typical web browser like Chrome. A web designer will ensure that your website recognises the visitor’s device and uses the appropriate styles so that it always looks good.
6. Website speed
Your website’s speed affects not only the experience of your visitors but also how highly Google will rank it. It has been demonstrated that speeding up the time it takes for your page to load can enhance conversion rates, and Google also takes this into account when deciding how far up in the search results to place your website. A web designer will speed up the loading of your website to prevent people from leaving to visit a rival site that loads more quickly.
7. Potentially more traffic
Search engine optimisation, also known as SEO, is a technique used by website designers to improve the structure and content of a website in order to achieve the greatest possible ranking in search engines. Site speed is one of the ranking elements that a website designer may assist you with. However, they can also improve your site’s content and structural layout so that it appears better on search engines like Google and attracts more visitors as a consequence.
8. Dependability
Simply put, your website will be more trustworthy if you engage a web designer. If you attempt to design the page yourself or use a template, you might never be certain whether the design will hold up once it begins receiving actual traffic or if there is a flaw waiting to be discovered by a customer. A web designer will be familiar with every detail of making a design that won’t crash and is bug-free.
Things to take into account when hiring a web designer
The decision to engage a web designer is merely the first step in the process. The next step is to choose the best. Here are some suggestions to assist you locate a web designer who can meet your objectives and with whom you can effectively communicate.
Know the objectives for your website
If you know what they are, the proper web designer can give you a design that meets all of your requirements and objectives. Although they aren’t professionals in marketing or advertising, web designers are masters at integrating your message and brand into visual and interactive aspects.
Before speaking with a designer, you must understand the goal of your website. Will it be a content marketing site created to offer information, or will it sell goods and services? What is the culture of your business, and how do you want it to be portrayed online? Do you aim to reach an older or younger audience?
There are many more questions you may ask yourself, but the point is that you are not prepared to hunt for a designer unless you know what you want the website to do.
Prepare your copy
Having your copy prepared is another aspect of understanding the objectives of your website. You must compose the site’s copy yourself or engage a copywriter if you aren’t having a full-service advertising firm build it.
Your objective should be to deliver the website’s copy during your initial design meeting. Since they can build the site around the copy, it will help the designer get started more quickly and provide them greater guidance.
Look through some designer portfolios
Examine a few portfolios before reaching out to the first designer to avoid wasting your time. Start by getting recommendations from your network. If that list is too small, consider looking for web designers who also work in your sector. Many web designers have a specialisation in creating websites for particular types of organisations, so they will already be aware of what your clients or customers are looking for.
Visit the portfolios of your shortlisted potential web designers to evaluate what appeals to you and fits your company. Although every web designer worth employing will have a sizable portfolio, not all of them will match your taste. Once you’ve narrowed your choices down, you may schedule meetings with each to decide who will create your new website.
Ask questions
There are a few questions you should ask web designers during an interview to find out just how much of the web development process they cover. Web design is only one component of a successful website, after all.
1. Who is going to create the website? A website’s aesthetic components and user experience are designed by web designers, but a web developer is required to make the designs a reality. Web developers and designers often collaborate. Some don’t, therefore you’ll also need to hire one.
2. How will upkeep be managed? Website maintenance costs are ongoing. They require constant upkeep. Will your team take care of this, does the designer offer maintenance, or can they make a recommendation?
3. Do any of the visuals require licences? You might need licences for certain typefaces or graphics in your website design. Asking your site designer is important because it is your job to follow the law.
4. What happens if changes are required? Obtaining your design does not entitle you to the web designer’s services indefinitely. Find out how much it will cost you to modify the design in the future.
5. Are the design files modifiable when you receive them? If the original site designer is not available and you want to make adjustments to the design, you will need them.
Read up on web design.
Your website’s design plays a significant role in how your business is perceived by customers and how they interact with it. A professional design that reflects your brand, looks nice on various devices, and can help you save time and money can be obtained by hiring a web designer.