3 Reasons to DIY Your Website

Here’s a question many business owners struggle with: Do you have to hire a pro to build your website, or is it OK to DIY? 

If you’d asked me this question a few years ago, I would have sent you straight to a qualified professional. Don’t pass Go. In fact, as a young marketing-professional-slash-web-developer, clients who wanted to DIY their own sites was my major source of heartburn. 

“It will be expensive,” I would have told you as I pointed you to the nearest web developer, “but it will also be worth the investment.”

But now? Not so much. Today, I wholeheartedly believe that small-business owners and entrepreneurs can — and should — build their own websites. At least at first. Let me tell you why…

1. You can do it. There are tools out there that make it easy to build a simple website pretty quickly. This hasn’t always been the case, but it is today’s reality. Tools like Wix, Squarespace, or — my personal favorite — WordPress allow you to build a professional website without a degree in computer science. These tools essentially use templates that you can customize according to your needs. If you need complicated custom features, you’ll need to enlist a programmer’s help… but most businesses don’t need custom features.
2. You don’t have to be a graphic designer. People will judge your business by the way your site looks — but there are also tools and services to help you create professional graphics for your site. The template you choose will take care of many of the graphics needed to build a website. You’ll probably need a few custom graphics for things like feature images or the design of your homepage, though. For that, you can use a service like 99designs to find a designer who will work with you at a reasonable rate to create a couple of custom graphics. If you trust your own design intuition, and your needs are simple, you might even try a tool like Canva. 
3. You should focus your resources elsewhere. You could spend a couple thousand dollars on a simple site built by a pro. If you have the money, great! But, I’m guessing you probably have a list of a dozen other things you could spend that money on. You’ll get a better ROI by investing that money in other things. In other words, the kind of website you can build yourself is similar to what you would get if you pay a low-end professional to build one for you. So, until you’re ready to invest a lot of money in a professionally built, custom site, you’re better off going the DIY route.

What do you think? Would a DIY website work for you?