A professional website is not and will never be created by someone who is not in the profession — otherwise, how could it be professional?
What is the definition of a professional website? A website that is properly built: it is functional, visible on the internet, and its design and user experience are good. Do you think you are capable of creating a site like this without any skills in any area of web? Are you in the field of design, UI / UX designer, motion designer…? Of SEO? Are you a web developer? If you do not recognise yourself in any of these roles, I do not think you can create a professional website with or without a site builder. Think of it this way: do you really believe that your potential clients will not realise the moment they see your site that it was made by you or by a non-expert? Creating a free website (or a cheap one) is of course possible and quick, but you risk destroying your brand identity from the start and spending money without generating any.
Want to try it yourself? Check out our article on creating your website.
The challenges involved in a website
On average, websites do not work because the people behind them have never truly grasped the challenges of creating a website that actually performs. We have already seen the different ingredients a professional site must contain — but let’s look at the numbers.
A website must be visible
When you perform a search on Google, ten sites are displayed. If you look a little more closely at what Google tells you about the number of pages displayed, there are millions of them. Only 1.25% of web pages get more than 100 visits per month. Do you want to be among the 98.75%?
Asking a professional to create a website means they will build it correctly. That is to say, unlike a beginner, during the development of the site they will ensure that the site is understood and optimised for Google. Your site will therefore have the chance to be visible among the top 10 search results among the millions of other sites. And that… is something you learn.
A professional website must inspire trust
According to Blue Corona, 48% of people cited the design of a website as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business. Design, animations and user experience are things you will need to have a website that works. Know that this cannot be improvised with or without software. It requires years of experience.
A site that does not inspire trust will have a conversion rate below 1%. If your pages generate fewer than 100 visits per month like 99% of sites, I will let you do the maths: zero interest.
You can always use a template for your site’s design.
A website must be fast
A professional can guarantee that your site will be well built. When you are a beginner or not very experienced, you do not focus on building a fast site — you are just trying to achieve the look you want and make it functional. Unfortunately that is not enough; everything you do must be well done and perfectly optimised for your site’s speed. If we take the example of an e-commerce site, 79% of visitors never return to slow e-commerce sites! Moreover, maximising performance is important, because reducing load time by just 0.1 seconds alone could lead to an 8% increase in conversion rates, according to Google.
Building your site with a CMS without understanding what is really happening behind the scenes can be catastrophic for your site’s speed.
Save and make money (and time)
There is no denying that calling on a professional from the outset to create the design of your site and structure it correctly from an SEO perspective is very cost-effective.
If you have already created hundreds of articles / pages on a poor architecture, you will have to start all over again.
If you think a professional is expensive, you would be surprised to find how much more money you could lose by going it alone. Not only will you lose money but your site will never work unless you spend several years on it.
Here are some reasons why and how you will lose your money:
- Digital marketing / advertising when the site will not convert.
- Hosting, domain name and other costs when the site generates no revenue.
- Happy to have a site, you shared it with everyone when the site looked like a DIY job. It is too late — the majority of people will no longer trust you.
It is also not about hiring a freelancer or a web agency in the middle of the project and giving them a specific task when everything is wrong. Otherwise you will create a monster.
On top of all that, you will lose time when everything that revolves around a website will already take up enough of your time. And your time is money. If you spend 1 year doing something that a professional would have done in a few days, it cannot be profitable. It is better to take a job and pay a professional than to spend 2 years building your site full-time only to get a mediocre result.
Launching your business
A professional to create your showcase site will inevitably get your business off the ground — at least, that is what I observe every time I create a website, whether in terms of SEO or design. The problem is that it is difficult to find the right person. Often it is said that a website did not have the expected effect when it should have been even stronger than you hoped. This is why, once again, it is important to find the right professional who will get your business off the ground.
Here is a list, although not exhaustive, to help you find a good agency or a good freelancer:
- Their website is their showcase — if you have doubts about their skills by looking at their site, know that they did their best on their own, so imagine the result on yours. If their site does not look modern to you, run away.
- Was your freelancer or agency found on search engines? If not, it is very likely that they do not know much about SEO. You can ask them for a keyword to type into Google for which they rank — if they give you the keyword from their site’s name, they are not good at SEO.
A professional for website creation
At createur2site, whatever your budget, our principle is to do our utmost to create websites that will perform better than your competitors. First and foremost we define your values, what you are really selling behind your products or services — this involves creating personas and other marketing elements. Once we know who you are and why you are better than others, we adapt them to an SEO strategy. Then we define the ideal user experience for your audience, which can even lead to surveys depending on your budget. Finally, we build your site around all these elements, both in terms of content and design, to create a quality website that is not built just any old way. Obviously, we will create wow-factor navigation experiences to maximise conversions. That is why it is important to call on a professional for website creation.
Summary of professional website creation
Creating a website in itself is very simple, whether on Wix or even WordPress — a single day can suffice. Granted, creating a website from one perspective is easy and quick, but what nobody tells you is that your site will subsequently not work.