Without a website designer, your website might be like the employee in a long queue of faded grey cubicles, the kind of employee who keeps staring at that poster of the cat hanging from the clothesline for six hours of their eight hour day. You’ll be giving a customer the guided tour, stopping off and introducing the employee, the one you’re so proud to have picked up, (“Harvard trained, we’re lucky to have him!), and he looks over, gives a half-nod, then returns to watching videos online of how to do that pen-flipping trick.
You wouldn’t keep this employee on for long. No one would. He’d be completely ineffective: he wouldn’t give the customers the right impression, he’d have a terrible attitude, and he wouldn’t come in looking good. This would be the entirely wrong impression you’d want for the company, and, sooner or later, you’d fire him from the company to begin from scratch, wondering why you were so excited in the first place, promising yourself to never get that excited again. And that’s exactly what a website designer is for.
Not firing your employees, no, a website designer can take your website—the lazy one, the one that doesn’t look good, the one that doesn’t scream You—and dress it up a little, give it a little panache. You want a website that customers will remember, that will offer them an experience that will have them saying, “why aren’t there more websites like this?” That’s the kind of website that attracts business, and the kind of website that helps a customer feel like you know what you’re doing.
And looks are only the first half of the battle. A website has to flow properly, it has to be inviting, giving the proper directions. Depending on your business, maybe you want your website to give a feeling of comfort so your customer doesn’t feel any hesitation about spending money through your site. Maybe you’re a performer, and you want your fans to be able to get a sense of your style as soon as they hit the home page. Or maybe you’re a blogger who feeds off reader feedback, and you want the response to be the biggest and most important section of the site to invite readers to write. With the right website designer, not only is this all possible, it’s standard practice.
If you’ve come into the Internet doing your research, you’ll know that a good website costs good money to make. You’ll also know that a good website can make good money, and be the hub for your client base. You can’t make it much simpler for your clients and fans than by having a website a click away, and you can’t make it much simpler on yourself than by having an experienced and trained website designer create it for you. Fire your old website and bring on the new girl: the one that’s inviting, that knows her job, that will keep customers coming back for their favorite Internet experience.