Nowadays it is practically impossible to live without a website that helps you promote your business. An important decision in this regard is whether to create the website on your own or hire an expert who knows what they are doing and delivers the work to measure.
While there are economic options on the market to create a website, they do not always mean showing all the potential you would like to give your customers, due to lack of functionalities that prevent developing a project of guarantees. In many cases, hiring a professional web developer to edit a theme in WordPress or create a page from scratch may be the best decision.
Why should your website have a professional web development?
If you are not very clear about what is the best way to launch your website, we give you seven keys about why it is better to contact a professional who works for you.
- Professionals can customize templates à la carte.
- The ROI you will have will compensate the cost.
- You can choose the best developer.
- You can continue managing the content you publish on your website.
- It will be feasible for the developer to correctly activate the ecommerce functions.
- You can make your website responsive.
- Web designs change constantly.
The initial investment to carry out the development of your website can give you many benefits in the long term. Let’s see below how.
1. Professionals can customize templates à la carte
We do not want to say that you do not know how to customize a theme, but a professional has a lot of experience when designing and preparing templates, in addition to having cards up their sleeve and tricks that you may not know (yet). If you do it on your own, you will surely download a template (in some cases you will have them free when you hire a hosting plan), you will make some changes and that’s it. Unfortunately, this will leave you with a website very similar to others on the Internet that use the same theme. A professional web developer can help you customize your theme or create a new one à la carte, according to the specifications you indicate.
Using the services of an expert also implies improving the SEO of your website. A large majority of customers perform prior searches on a particular product or service before deciding to buy, or analyze the comments made by those users who have already experienced the positive or negative part of a product. If users do not find you on the first page of search engines, the opportunities to be known are very limited. By improving SEO positioning, you can progress in the SERPs. If you do not know how to do it, it is best to put yourself in the hands of an SEO expert who can get results in a few months.
2. The ROI you will have will compensate the cost
Hiring a web developer from the beginning is worth it for several reasons. First, it can generate an attractive website that helps you get more leads and attract potential customers. Second, by collaborating with a professional you avoid having to start your web project from scratch a posteriori.
Not only can it be more expensive to have to reprogram your website, but depending on the case you can have it down for a while, resulting in loss of business and a bad user experience, something that would speak very badly of your brand.
Finally, it is likely that you do not know how to develop by yourself, which may imply not really knowing the expectations that you can generate with your website. By working with an expert from the first moment, this can deal with those expectations giving you more clues of how to create your project to cover the greatest amount of needs possible.
However, you should consider that the total cost of working with an expert is impossible to determine with precision because it depends on several variables such as the size of your website, the level of difficulty, the temporary limitations that are raised, or that you find many professionals who are starting and want to eventually become great web developers. In many cases, it is worth spending the money on a custom project, your customers will thank you.
3. You can choose the best developer available
How to know who is the best specialist for your business? The best way to know is to contact several professionals, get an idea of the services they offer, what budgets they give you for their work. When you have everything, try to answer questions:
- Are all their services homegrown or do they subcontract them?
- Do they work in my city or do they work remotely?
- Has anyone else worked with these experts?
- Have they worked with other companies in the sector?
- Can they offer you the services of third parties such as photographers or content writers, since they are not specialists in those matters?
- Do they use a CMS to create web pages?
- Do they make updates or is it something they leave in the hand of the final client?
If possible, look for comments that talk about all the professionals you have contacted. Above all, think that your website speaks for your company and first impressions say it all. Do not settle.
Note: If you work with WordPress, get the services of a worker who knows tricks such as the use of shortcodes in WordPress, who knows how to handle perfectly the structures of WordPress templates or the creation of custom menus.
4. You can continue managing the content you publish on your website
A CMS like WordPress allows anyone with access to edit the information of a website without needing to have prior knowledge in HTML or code. CMS facilitate the fact of adding and adjusting any element of a web page in real time.
Depending on what you are looking for for your business, there are free CMS such as WordPress and Drupal that offer flexibility and support for programmers. However, if you have the budget and need a CMS that is unique, you can have your programmer create one from the beginning or you can pay for a premium CMS. In general, using a platform with a lot of documentation will make things easier in the future if you do not want to have to pick up the phone and call a developer every time a problem arises.
5. It will be feasible for the developer to correctly activate the eCommerce functions
If your business idea is to set up a store to sell online, you will need your website to have activated some functionality or ecommerce plugin. Above all, see if it includes these features:
- Payment gateways
- Purchase process and order tracking
- Detailed product pages
- Several shipping methods
- Clarify the process of returns and second orders
- Inventory management
These and other functions are key for web designers and must be part of any online store that wants to be successful in the future. You can take a look at WooCommerce and all its available extensions to see if it is worth trying.
6. You can make your website responsive
That there is incompatibility with a browser can make you stop generating income. The different existing web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Safari or Google Chrome, use different rules to show all the active pages on the network. A professional knows that what can be shown perfectly in a browser, may not be seen in the same way in another. Having a responsive design is currently fundamental. When you leave your website in the hands of an expert, you can expect them to build a website that appears without errors in all browsers.
In addition, most users browse the web using mobile phones and tablets. This means that if your website is not created dynamically, the user experience will not be consistent between devices.
7. Web designs change constantly
Technological advances appear at great speed and changes on the Internet occur almost daily. Keeping up to date with the new codes, software and marketing ideas that arise takes time. Do your customers waste time filling out forms? Is a map necessary to find you? With a photo gallery will you improve the presence of your products? Do you want a video that helps you promote yourself? Managing your business takes so much time that you probably do not want to pay attention to how everything works.
Although some products to create your website include similar options, making custom designs require a specialist and the more friendly your website is, the easier it will be for customers to enter and navigate through it.
Many of these features will not fit completely in a predefined template and you will end up spending a lot of time doing tasks that a designer could finish in a few hours.
Whether launching a new website or changing an already active one, it is worth investing the money in professional services. This ensures that all the small details of a web design appear, monitor the changes and new trends, be at the forefront of new technologies and have an updated knowledge base, boosting the creation of eye-catching sites.
Having advantage over others
When relying on the professional development of your website, it is important to decide in advance which parts should be customized and which should not. To do this, make a list of the things you would like to see reflected. Knowing what is expected of your design makes the work easier both on your part and on the part of the web developer in charge.
To finish, it is important to remember that, to achieve a serious and lasting web project, you must register a domain name that corresponds to your idea and hire a hosting plan appropriate to your needs. If necessary, if you work with an expert who also offers web hosting services, they can give you a global price for all their services, achieving you a substantial saving in the bill that you must pay periodically.
The functions you want to introduce on your website will determine the type of hosting you should hire. Luckily, having a web specialist by your side you can start your online journey on the right foot.
