🎙️ VMPro Podcast Episode #005: Hire A Web Designer Or Learn To Do It Yourself?

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone, Fabrizio Van Marciano here and welcome to another episode of the VMPro Podcast for new and aspiring web designers, entrepreneurs and small businesses. This episode is for YOU, if you are a small business or entrepreneur looking to build an online presence, and thinking about creating a professional website!

Now, the question I want to try to answer, well not necessarily answer, but to help YOU figure the answer to is:

Should you hire a web designer or learn to do it yourself?

Now I’m talking to you if you are just starting out, perhaps you’re on a budget, and you don’t have 5K to spend on professional web design, etc.

Because we now live at a time where the technology, and web design is so much more accessible to people. I’m not saying that anyone can become a professional designer without understanding how to do it properly, I’m saying it’s accessible to everyone. The tools that are available today, make it possible and also make the process a lot easier.

At the same time as providing a service, I also believe in educating people about the resources available to them, as well as teaching them how to build their own websites.

That is why I created Van Marciano Pro.

The majority of the time, you don’t need to hire an expensive web designer or hand money over to an agency just to create a simple website. With the tools that are available today. I’ll talk more about that in a moment, you can do it yourself.

Again, I’m speaking to you if you are aspiring to become a web designer, or you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur or small business.

If you’re looking to create something more complex, on the other hand, then yes, of course, you can’t possibly do that yourself especially if you have absolutely no clue where to start.

Which ever the case maybe for you, we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of both options, and hopefully by the end of this little episode, you’ll have a better understanding of the choice you can or should make. Again, depending on the complexity of the website you’re looking to create, depending on time, resources, etc. Let’s dive into it.

So, I’ve been working with WordPress since 2009 and offering web design since around 2013/14. I’ve seen a lot of changes and I like to think that I have good experience and knowledge.

Over the years, I’ve built my own client base. It’s taken time, and thankfully, many of those clients are still with me and rely on me to rebuild and maintain their websites when needed.

I think loyalty is underrated in web design and as I said, I’m so thankful because it keeps me doing what I love. Asides, of course, working on this platform and being a WordPress educator here at Van Marciano Pro. I just love what I do.

But, at the same time, if someone has the time, interest, and willingness. I believe they can learn to build and manage their own website, I’d rather teach them how.

Learning web design!

If you have the time to devote to learning about WordPress, UX design, and best practice, it can be a lot of fun and rewarding. But you need to have a genuine interest in wanting to learn, there is no point going into it with the mindset that ‘Oh I will learn so that I can save time and money’. You need to be passionate about it too. That’s is my honest opinion.

And learning isn’t that difficult anymore. There’s so much great content available online these days. There are plenty of training platforms and courses you can take, at least to kick start your learning.

So, as an entrepreneur or small business, should you learn to build your website yourself or hire a designer?

Well, before you think about answering that question for yourself: Let’s talk about the pros and cons of both options:

1. Hiring a designer or agency

Let’s say you decide to go down this route of passing all the work to some ‘happy-go-lucky’ nomad, free-spirited web designer living off the grid somewhere in the mountains of Gran Canaria. Or, a small agency in your locality.

The pros are plentiful for outsourcing your website project, including –

1. Professional look & feel: Designers and agencies have a lot of experience and knowledge and can create a polished and very unique site that can match your brand identity.
2. Time-saving: This means you are free to focus on your core business goals, tasks, etc. That could be a BIG PLUS for a lot of people.
3. Customization: If you haven’t a clue where to start, this is where using a designer or agency works. It can be time-consuming and difficult trying to figure how to add advanced customization to your website. A designer will be able to implement advanced features (e.g., contact forms, booking systems, ecommerce, dynamic, and conditional content, animations, etc.).
4. SEO & UX expertise: Web professionals often build with search engine optimization and user experience in mind.
5. Support & maintenance: Lastly, many web designers and agencies offer ongoing support and updates for websites.

OK, so those are just some of the pros of using a designer or agency. Let’s look at some cons!

1. Cost: This is a big one. Costs can range from a few hundred to several thousand pounds, dollars, Euros, whatever. So you have to ask yourself, what is your budget? Can you really afford 2 to 5K on a professional website?
2. Dependence: Do you really want to depend on a designer all of the time. Designers and agencies are always busy. You can’t just have updates and fixes instantly applied to your website, as these things take time. And then, what if the agency is closed or the designer is on vacation?
3. You learn nothing! OK, maybe that’s a little harsh, but often, agencies are reluctant to educate their clients about what they do and why they do it. Why is accessibility important in modern web design? Why is page speed and responsive design important? Why are content-sliders on the front page of your website a conversion killer? By building your own website, you learn all of these things and so much more.

OK, so I don’t want to overload you with to much on the topic of hiring a designer and freelancer. Let’s look at the pros and cons of learning to build your own website next.

2. Learning to build your own website

So you’ve decided to invest time and energy into learning how to build your own website. There are four main pros I want to focus on before going down the cons road.

1. Cost – There is no doubt about it, learning to build your own website is the most cost effective option. WordPress is free to begin with. Yes, you have the cost of a domain name, web hosting, buying a page builder software like Bricks, Oxygen, or Breakdance. Some premium plugins perhaps. But it’s going to be a lot cheaper than outsourcing a designer or agency. Let’s leave it at that.
2. Control – As we looked at in the cons of hiring a designer, you are dependent on their response time. Building your own website gives you control, so you can update content, plugins, apply fixes instantly and at any time you wish.
3. Skill development – This is another big one. As you learn to build your website, of course, it won’t be flawless, you’ll make a lot of mistakes, etc. But you are improving your skill all of the time. You are learning something new, and what you learn you can apply to any website project in the future.
4. Potentially faster launch – Last but not least, building a website yourself means you can potentially launch it and get it out there much faster. But what if you launch a half-job website you might be wondering? It doesn’t matter, as long as you launch a website that is functional, and has all of the basic building blocks a website needs, i.e. forms, responsive design, accessibility, and all the rest of it, it doesn’t have to be perfect, you can improve it as time goes by. That’s one of the things I learned in the HubSpot Academy Growth-Driven Design course many moons ago.

OK, as I said, I don’t want to dive too deep into this. Now, let’s look at some of the cons of learning to build your own website!

1. Time-consuming – There is no point learning anything if you don’t have the time to devote to it. Learning web design takes time, and you may not always have the time if you are trying to run a business as well. Learning web design doesn’t just mean learning how to use page builders, It means learning how to write HTML, PHP, CSS, JS, etc to using WordPress.
2. Steep learning – Learning web design offers a steep learning curve. It can be very challenging at times, especially when learning how to create forms, setting up ecomerce features, creating dynamic content, responsive design, etc. But with time, anyone can become good at it. One thing I want to mention is, you don’t need to remember everything you learn. As long as you continue to apply what you learn, you can always go back and refresh your memory later.
3. Generic design – When you’re starting out, often what you end up creating is pretty mediocre and generic. Generic websites look template-like and boring, and often lacks anything unique. Which is why taking time to learn about UX design, design symmetry, dynamic content, etc. is important.
4. Limitations – Some complex features might be difficult or impossible to implement well when you are learning.
5. Mistakes – When I first started learning web development and design, I was making mistakes left, right, and center. That’s the risk you run when learning to build your own website. It can be small mistakes and one mistake that breaks your site. But, we learn from the mistakes we make.
6. Maintenance responsibility – Last but not least, there’s the responsibility of maintaining your website. This cane be time consuming and stressful too. If something breaks, you have to figure out why. You’re in charge of backups, updates, troubleshooting, bug fixes and everything in between.

So there you have it. Some things to definitely consider when deciding whether to hire a designer or learning to design and build your own website.

I hope you found this little episode useful, and of course, if you’re a member of Van Marciano Pro, you’ll have access to a host of tutorials and courses to help you build the website of your dreams, the right way.

That’s all from me for this episode, see you in the next one.