One of the mistakes that a new business owner often makes when employing someone to design their first website is they believe that the only person they need to hire is a ‘web designer’. It is true that you will need a designer but they are just part of the team of people you will need. The fact that you need a team of people rather than just one is why the smartest solution is to employ a digital agency like SEO Perth that specialises in services such as SEO and AdWords management.
The issue with only having a designer is that whilst they may be great at picking colours for your site, selecting images, and making it all look fantastic, you must remember they are designers, and not programmers, coders, or copywriters. These other skills will in most cases also be needed to create a great website for your business, and it is unlikely your designer will have them all to the degree that is required.
Be wary of anyone who says they are a designer, a programmer and a copywriter all rolled into one. These ‘jack of all trades’ may be better than most of us at these jobs, but they are unlikely to be expert at them. Ask yourself if you want an average or a first-class website and consider that it’s the same principle as whether you’d want a trained carpenter, electrician and plumber to each help fit your new kitchen or one handyman who does a little bit of each but is no expert.
By using a digital agency, they will be able to provide or source skilled and expert individuals who can carry out all the necessary work to design and build your new website and do it to the highest standard possible.
The first of these is likely to be the programmer, who will be responsible for the functionality of your site plus all the background source code and plugins that you might want. Even if your site is only going to consist of a landing page, you’ll still want a programmer to ensure the coding on the page collects names and emails correctly and they are properly added to your autoresponder service.
Your designer is the person responsible for how your website looks, so all your images, graphics, fonts, and colours are what they will advise on, and implement. It is normally best practice that your programmer has got the basic framework of your site set up, before the designer starts working on getting it to look the way you want it.
The third person that a digital agency can supply you with is a copywriter. Copywriters don’t just write sales letters, they also write content and other text that appears on your website. You want all the text on your website to have a purpose and therefore a copywriter will be able to write each piece so that it has the desired outcome, even if that is merely to keep the visitor on your site.
