What’s under the hood?
I had the pleasure of growing up with a father who was a handy man. I spent countless hours sitting on the ground or standing next to my dad as he did oil changes or made repairs to the family car. I would hold the light over the engine as he would dig in and try to loosen a bolt here or there, or I would slide him the oil pan as he was about to let out the old oil, etc.
I remember he used to always say something like, “can you imagine how much money I saved doing it myself?”
Naturally, you would think, with a history like that, I would grow up to service my own vehicles as well, but, sadly, that’s not the case. About as far as I got was changing a headlight now and then, and I felt pretty good about that.
The day came, however, when innovation and technology had changed the cars I was driving so much that I was no longer able to even change my own headlight! At that point, like with every other service for my car, it made more sense to take it to the professionals. Sure, it would cost me a bit more money than I would spend if I were to do it myself, but the headache, time and possible injuries I would incur as a result of doing it myself far out-weighed the minor investment I would be making.
I still change my own wiper blades, though. I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere, right?
The Correlation
Avoid costly mistakes and lost opportunities by hiring a professional to do it for you. |
The same goes for web design. Sure, you could do it yourself and “save” yourself a bunch of money up front. But would you really be saving money? I mean, would you act as your own doctor just to save yourself some money?
What’s the solution? Avoid costly mistakes and lost opportunities by hiring a professional to do it for you. Time is money. I’ve come to the conclusion that “everything you’ve never done before will always take you exponentially longer to do than you think”. When you take matters into your own hands, there’s a learning curve, and the well is always deeper than it looks. When it’s all said and done you will have a product that you are just not pleased with. Instead, the wise thing to do is trust a professional.
Steps You Can Take
If you do have some extra time on your hands and you want to do a bit of the leg work yourself, here’s what you should consider doing.
- Do Some Research It helps to know what your competition is doing, and, more specifically, what’s working for them. Obviously, this is in relation to their website. You will also want to define who your target audience will be and what appeals to them.
- Think it Through Come up with a plan on how you’re going to finance your website. Set a budget for yourself. Allow yourself the resources that you will need, but then also communicate that with your designer and be ready to stick within your budget.
- Prepare Your Content Content is the most important aspect of your website. You should begin outlining and gathering all the information, images, videos, etc. you’re going to want to put on your website. Once you’ve gathered your text you may want to invest in the services of a professional editor or copywriter to review it. If you have images or videos, you want to make sure that you own the rights to them or at least have written permission to use them on your site.
Doing these few steps will put you much farther ahead in the game than someone who doesn’t have a clue about these things.
Good Luck!