Amateur website designers are a dime a dozen. They will happily build your website at non-professional rates—and deliver non-professional results. They make some money, and you have an inexpensive website. Everyone’s happy, right?
Not so fast. Look closely, and you will discover that your low-cost website is very pricey. While it may have saved you cash out of your pocket, it comes instead at the cost of your brand, potential customers, leads, and sales.
Amateur designers bet you’re not tech savvy enough to look under the hood or inspect the engine of your website. They assume your lack of technical expertise and the low cost will leave you satisfied with just a nice-looking site. However, buying an amateur-built website is akin to buying a car that has a fresh coat of paint but is missing its engine and other essential parts. In other words, your website may look good, but it will lack the necessary internal parts needed to perform well and drive business.
What are these necessary internal parts? Amateur website designers seldom understand or use valid and accurate code. Search engines do not read human language; they read code. Essentially, valid code is the mother tongue of the Internet, and it is essential to the overall functionality of your website. It is important that search engines are able to read and understand your website’s language for indexing, ranking, and other purposes. Also, using the right language ensures a site will translate well across various web browsers and through different platforms, including iPads and iPhones. Consequently, a website can have a great design and amazing content but not get the recognition it deserves.
Along with making sure everything runs smoothly under the hood, a professional website designer—especially one with marketing experience—will deliver a higher quality website on all levels, including overall design layout, graphics, interface, navigation tools, content, load times, and conversion opportunities. Other key internal components that professional website designers understand and use include keyword placement, title tags, meta tags, heading tags, alt attributes on images, title attributes on links, and XML sitemaps.
Choosing between an amateur and a professional website is like choosing between a Honda Civic without an engine and a Jaguar XKR-S with a shiny straight-six. Which do you want to represent your business and serve your short- and long-term interests?