Your website is often the first impression people have of your business. Do you treat it that way?
When people come to TBH Creative for a website redesign, they often come to us with a website that wasn’t designed by a professional website designer and they now realize the limitations of that decision. Whether that decision was driven by budget or convenience doesn’t matter. The fact is, that company short-changed their website and are feeling the pains of it now: the website isn’t generating enough leads; sales people don’t use it as part of their process; it doesn’t clearly present company benefits; it’s a poor representative of their brand.
These businesses have realized the hard way that it’s worth it to hire a professional website designer. Someone who makes a living focused on website design, functionality and digital marketing. Someone who can make a website that doesn’t just look cool but that accomplishes concrete business goals.
When people come to TBH Creative for a website redesign, they often come to us with a website that wasn’t designed by a professional website designer and they now realize the limitations of that decision. Whether that decision was driven by budget or convenience doesn’t matter. The fact is, that company short-changed their website and are feeling the pains of it now: the website isn’t generating enough leads; sales people don’t use it as part of their process; it doesn’t clearly present company benefits; it’s a poor representative of their brand.
These businesses have realized the hard way that it’s worth it to hire a professional website designer. Someone who makes a living focused on website design, functionality and digital marketing. Someone who can make a website that doesn’t just look cool but that accomplishes concrete business goals.
What do you get when you work with a professional website designer?
A website that is truly customized to your brand and needs
Free or low-cost website templates aren’t bad in and of themselves. In fact, they can be a great place to start for many small organizations as long as you are conscious of their limitations. There’s only so much customization you can do with an out-of-the-box website template – and even that is beyond the technological reach of many people. If you want to add complex functionality such as geo-coded content or customized graphics or tailored functionality, you’ll hit the wall pretty quickly with a website template.You’ll also be restricted to presenting your brand within the template’s structure. In other words, you’ll end up with a site that looks a lot like a lot of other sites. If you want custom, higher-quality graphics with the ability to incorporate complex functionality, you need a professional website designer.
A professional website designer will
- pay attention to the details such as breadcrumbs, active state indicators, hover states, and calls to action
- create brand-related graphics and color templates
- design for a targeted user-experience including integrated key messaging
- provide valued strategy and guidance into the design, content and development of your website
Ongoing maintenance support for the updates that are too complex to do on your own
Today’s Content Management Systems are very user-friendly and give you the control you need to keep your website up-to-date. A strong CMS lets you change images, update content and even add or remove pages to your menu structure. There’s no reason for a website to get stale in today’s website environment. You’ll get a CMS with any website template provider, in fact it’s what you’ll use to build your entire site but what happens when your boss wants to add a video loop to the home page? Or the VP of Sales asks you to create custom landing pages to go along with an ad campaign? If you built your website on your own, these requests are likely out of reach. Not with a professional website design partner.
A professional website agency will
- optimize your photos to make sure they best fit in your website design and are compressed properly for quick loading
- incorporate video, photography, custom icons and other graphic elements
- create custom landing pages that leverage and support other marketing campaigns
- design email templates that are consistent with your website design
Long-term strategy focused on your business goals
A website that truly benefits your organization is one that can continually evolve with your marketing plans. It is not a website that falls short and lacks the capability to grow with your company – a common complaint from businesses that use a website template service. Any website design should account for today’s needs while also looking to the future. That’s hard to do if you don’t live and breathe website design. It’s yet another reason why partnering with a professional website designer helps you far beyond the initial website design project.
A professional website designer will
- help you develop a strategy for your website that carries you into the future
- provide valuable consulting and advice on how to leverage the latest technologies
- evaluate your website’s performance metrics to confirm the website is working towards your goals, suggest improvements, and help you capitalize on success
- proactively bring you ideas as the industry evolves and offer recommendations for upgrades, additions and where to go next with your digital marketing
- work with you on ideas to promote new products or offers within the site structure
You might also like:
- Why spending time on the details can make or break your website
- The Big Idea: A Designer’s Perspective on The Creative Process
- How often should you redesign your website?
