The story goes a little something like this:
A mastermind group was meeting and they were going around the table talking about the projects they were working on and the progress they were making.
One of the members was talking about his project and how he was trudging along making progress and started to talk about how things were going as he was building out the website that was a central piece to his project.
He talked about how he was learning how to code as he went – a noble effort indeed.
He was talking about how he was getting inspired by other websites and how he was working hard to pull the different parts from the different sites and recreate similar pieces for his site.
He talked about how he was behind, but learning a lot, but felt proud that he was doing these things by himself even though it was causing delays.
You see, he’d been very successful in other areas of his business and life – he was a highly paid professional in his career (which was not web design & development).
Since it was his turn on the hot seat at this mastermind meeting he was eager and ready to get some feedback from the group.
So he was feeling a little proud of what he’d done do so far as he asked the group for feedback.
One of the other members asked, “How much do you charge for your hourly rate?”
As a highly paid professional it was more than a couple hundred dollars an hour. He talked a little about how his hourly billings were strong and that part of his business was going well.
Then he was asked, “how many hours have you spent working on designing and developing this website?”
He felt a little less confident, admitting that he’d sunk more than a hundred hours into the project – at least. But he reasoned that since he was learning all this stuff it was worth it.
The next question was like a punch to the stomach:
“How much would you be willing to pay an average-to-poor website designer to build your website?”
He felt a little puzzled by the question.
Then it all came together.
Finally, the other member pointed out, “you’ve spent over a hundred hours working on this web project, at a couple hundred dollars an hour for a mediocre website. You’re paying a beginner more than a couple hundred dollars an hour to build an average-at-best website, that’s taking way too much time to complete. Because that’s exactly what you’re doing by doing all this stuff yourself.”
Ouch.
He was floored, to say the least.
You see, there’s a time and a place to for the do-it-yourself website. I’ve even created resources to help you do that.
But there is also a time to hire a professional to get the job done right.
What is a Web Designer? What is a Web Developer? Do I need both?
Before we continue here, let me clarify something.
Technically, a web designer is the one who creates the overall look and feel of the website.
The web developer is the one who takes the design created by the web designer and builts it into the living, breathing website.
I’ve used the term “web designer” in the broad sense that the person – or persons – who you hire to build your website has the ability to not only design the website but also to create the code that powers it.
It’s kind of like this: Architects and engineers are usually the ones who design the plans for a house, a building, or some other kind of big construction project.
But it’s the general contractor who’s the one who is responsible for doing the actual building, making sure everything fits together perfectly and works according to the design.
So, the web designer is the artistic person who knows web strategy, and how to design the right elements to drive the results you want to deliver.
The web developer the programmer is the one who translates those designs into living, breathing code.
Does that make sense?
Now, that we’ve covered that, let’s talk about why good code on your website is important.
Rick Mulready, who recently rebuilt his site from the bottom up, had a big issue he needed to address. His old site was seriously slow and badly in need of an overhaul so he hired an agency to rebuild his site.
In addition to improving the overall performance of his website, working with an agency to rebuild his site helped him refocus his brand and ultimately deliver greater value to his community by providing an overall better experience.
The speed by which your site loads is crucial to so many things, of which the most important is the experience your visitors have when they land on your site.
And one of the biggest causes of a site loading slow is poor coding practices.
Most times, website owners don’t have the coding skills to be able to execute the features and designs that they want so they end up relying on plugins and page builder tools that result in a lot of what’s called “code bloat”.
Code bloat is what it sounds like: fat, overstuffed, unnecessary code.
Code bloat can slow your site down and make for a really poor experience for your visitors to your website.
In addition to having a slow website, bad code can introduce security risks, and make it difficult for a developer to work on your code in the future.
When you need to get the most out of your website hiring a web pro is your best bet to make sure that your website’s performance is top-notch, the code is good, and that you’re set up for success.
Next Steps
So, does that make sense?
Don’t waste a bunch of productive time – time that you can spend building your business – by doing things yourself.
Hire a pro, or hire a service to get your new website started so you can focus on doing what you do best and continue to grow your business.
If you are doing it yourself, it’s always a good idea to have a guide, or a checklist to make sure you’re not missing any of the vital steps. That’s why I created the Ultimate WordPress Start-Up Guide.
I built this guide so that you would have all the things you need to start a new website project with WordPress right at your fingertips.
This guide will allow lead you down a path that covers it all in an easy-to-understand way so that your new website is a success from day one.
Make sure you don’t miss any of the crucial steps in getting your new website project online by following the steps in this guide.