Why Small Businesses Need Great Web Design?
Our guide to how your small business can benefit from hiring a small web design company to design your website.
There is often this misconception that if you are a start-up business, a solopreneur or even an established small business, your chances of being able to afford a professional Web Designer are slim to none.
We’ve chosen to devote this blog to expel this myth, and show how you as a small business owner can benefit in more ways than one from hiring a professional to design and manage your website.
Firstly, what is a professional Web Designer?
A professional Web Designer combines their creative graphic design skills with their technical skills to bring your concept, and the vision you have for your business to life online.
They can create a website that will stand out from your competitors, and tailoring its design and functionality to help to convert and generate sales for your business.
For example, here at Black Nova Designs, we cater for all requirements, from small one page designs to all-singing all-dancing e-commerce sites that need to be capable of high volume traffic on a day-to-day basis.
If you are a small business or start-up it may seem daunting to approach a large design agency. A smaller, more intimate company offer professional web design but also remember the struggles of a start-up business. They have the knowledge and experience to understand your real-life business needs and be able to tailor the design and cost in order to achieve your goals.
So let’s look at the benefits in a bit more detail:
Cost
Yes, there are plenty of options out there to build your website yourself with only a small fee to pay. However, choosing to put all your efforts into selling your product or finding clients who need your services is likely to prove much more profitable, than learning to become a Web Designer and trying to navigate your way around a website builder.
The cost of hiring a professional website designer can be relatively low for a basic site that includes ongoing maintenance and updates, highlighting that not ALL designers will cost you thousands of pounds, as this simply isn’t the case.
Ultimately you want your website to pay for itself and go on to earn you more in sales. This is where having the input of a Web Designer who understands how to optimise the design of your site becomes invaluable. This is not something most web builder templates are set up to do efficiently.
Weighing up the cost of losing business by not making those conversions could cost you more in the longer term. So it’s well worth doing your research and asking for quotes to discover what you as a business can afford to invest in order to achieve the website you really want.
Time
As a small business owner, there are never enough hours in the day to achieve all the things on the to-do list. If you were to add to that the task of creating, maintaining and updating your website as your business grows (should you choose to build it yourself), could be the one thing that takes you away from doing what you specialise in and love doing the most.
Therefore handing this task over to a professional, who can design and build a website and continue to look after it thereafter, could save you countless hours of work, time when you could be generating income.
Design
Having an original and unique design will certainly help when it comes to creating your brand personality. Hiring a professional gives you much more freedom when it comes to design, such as fonts, colour, and layout.
Unlike a website builder where the templates are produced for the mass market, choosing to hire the skills of a Web Designer, your website will be custom designed not only to fit your needs, but also those of the search engines, and of course, your customers, to create that perfect visitor experience.
Quality
Just because you are a small business, doesn’t mean you have to settle for poor quality, poor design or functionality. Your business is important to you, and your pride and passion for what you do should be reflected in your online presence.
When you choose to do-it-yourself and use a website builder, the reality of your design can often prove a little frustrating, and not match up to your initial vision.
Choosing to use a Web Designer will not only take away that frustration but showcase your professionalism as a business owner.
We recommend you look at their portfolio of work; chances are if you are not bowled over by what you see you are probably not going to love what they design for you.
Take time to research them, and read their reviews. You may also want to ask for referrals and personal recommendations. Knowing someone who has had first-hand experience of using a Web Designer speaks volumes.
Functionality
Ultimately you want your website to rank well, be visible and generate business and sales.
To do this you want to make sure your site is optimised for visitor conversion (converting those who browse your site into paying customers,) SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and user experience (ease of use for the customer).
Using a professional Web Designer, they have the skills to optimise your site for both SEO, visitor conversion and user experience. From structuring the content on your site to feature those all-important keywords, to creating a design that naturally encourages a customer to take certain actions. Meaning more enquiries, and potentially more sales.
Sadly, website builder platforms do not score highly when it comes to SEO, they simply don’t have the tools. Likewise, for visitor conversion and user experience, the templates are quite rigid, and are created to appeal to the broader market.
Support
When you hire a Web Designer, it is safe to say you have a guaranteed wealth of knowledge as well as dedicated support at your fingertips. With their built-up knowledge and experience, a Web Designer can cater the support to each specific project. Whether it’s via email or picking up the phone, there is someone on the other end who has both the skill and the passion to ensure your worries are answered efficiently and promptly.
In summary;
We believe your website should be an investment and a positive reflection of your business. Regardless of the size of your business, it deserves a website that has been designed with not only you but your customers in mind. It’s far better to have a long-term plan and create something that is not only fit for purpose right now but can accommodate for future growth in your business.
Whether you are a start-up business or solopreneur there are small business Web Designers out there that can offer you a quality and timely service ensuring that your business can compete on the big stage.
We know that cash-flow can sometimes be a big stumbling block for small businesses, however, when you take into account the hours required to “do-it-yourself” and cost that against a service or product in your business; choosing to hire a professional could prove to be more cost-effective.
So if you are a small business and concerned about losing potential customers then choosing to hire a professional Web Designer could be just the ticket!
If after reading this blog you are ready to unlock your business potential, we would like to welcome the opportunity to discuss the details of your website ideas and design with you.