Why to Avoid Hiring a Professional Web Designer for Your Business Website

When looking to get a business onto the web, the typical path involves paying a web designer hundreds or even thousands of dollars to put up a functioning website. While there is nothing wrong with doing this, it can end up being a waste of money. There are critical sets of data that should be known before ever investing in a web designer as well as some tests to do on the site.

The first very important piece of data that must be known is the website traffic. Is there realistically a way to drive traffic to the website? Think of the site like a store. If no one ever comes into the store, what is the point of making the inside of the store more useful or more functional for the customer? Until there is data known about the actual traffic the site can produce one should not invest in design. There are far too many beautiful sites for businesses that get only a small trickle of traffic meaning the investment in design never pays back.

The second factor that needs to be known is visitor value. On average how much revenue will the site produce per day and what is the average number of visitors? This traffic need to be calculated per visitor to know what the average profit that can be produced for each visit. Until there is an actual number, investing in design should not be done since there is no way to determine if it will be profitable.

What can be done for a site before getting professional web design?

There are quite a few content management systems available. Some are paid services while others are free scripts like Wordpress or Joomla. Many of these come with a wide variety of free templates. There are also paid templates that are cheap to give the site some design without spending too much money.

Consider these templates to be a place holder until traffic and visitor value is known. In the mean time, tests should be done. What type of information is the visitor looking for? Would coupons work for your business model? Is there a legitimate way to actually do business with the traffic that the site produces?

One test that is important to know is that at times "ugly" sites sometimes can be more profitable than professionally designed sites. The reason that ugly at times works is because the site does not distract or confuse the visitor. If there is one action that can be taken on the page, like filling out a form for more information to produce a lead, at times a simple, ugly site has better results than flashy graphics or other distracting parts on the page.

If the site is only there to hold a web presence without a need to actually do business, investing in some design to have an aesthetically pleasing page does make some sense. If the purpose of the site is to make money, go through the steps above. Find out how much traffic can be produced on the site, learn what the visitor value is, then do some tests to find out if a simple site will convert better and do more business than one that is designed with a more pleasing look.