Introduction
So you may be thinking "Why would I hire a web designer when I could just build one myself using a web builder such as SquareSpace or Wix?", and the answer is that it really depends on what you're looking for from your website. If you just need a fairly cheap and basic website then perhaps a web builder is for you. However if you'd like a more bespoke site built with the guidance of someone who's been in the industry for years, then maybe hiring a web designer is the right choice for you.
Opportunity cost
When deciding whether to use a site builder or hire a web designer you need to take into account the cost of the employee's time spent putting a site together as well as the value of any business gained from the site.
Let's say you have a company that brings in a couple thousand pounds on average per transaction. Now consider scenario A where you've asked one of your employees to create a site for your business using a site builder, and Scenario B where you've hired a designer for £1500 to create you a unique and professional site.
In Scenario A you have to factor in the cost of the employee's time, so they may have spent 20 hours building the site instead of working on their usual tasks. You also have to keep in mind that the employee hasn't got years of experience with building website, and so won't necessarily know how to design a site in order to maximise conversions and therefore it may not generate as many sales as Scenario B would.
In Scenario B, if your unique professional site wins over just one client that may not have chosen your company had your company not had a professional site, then you've already paid for the cost of hiring the web designer.
Might not be able to get the desired result
We at Codelux will create a mockup design of your whole website before moving onto development, so you can ask us to add, remove or tweak bits of your site to your hearts content before moving onto the development stage where it'd be more costly to make changes.
When we create these mockups we know that we will be able to create all the elements that we've included, however if you were to to try and create this site in a site builder you'd have trouble trying to get it to look exactly right, and would spend hours and hours tweaking settings trying to get it all to work.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Lots of site builders don't have particularly good SEO, they often spit out a bunch of unstructured code which doesn't help your search engine rankings. Site builders often insert lots of extra scripts, styles and other data which isn't required but does slow your page speed down considerably which is one of the big factors in how Google ranks your site in its results.
Web designers have the ability to structure the code in a more logical manner which makes more sense to search engines, as well as your users. They also have the ability to only include scripts and styles on only the pages where they are needed so your users are only downloading the data needed to display your site.
Conclusion
So, if you're a hobbyist or blogger then a website builder is probably the best option for you, but if you want a unique and professional website that is tailored to your business and will help increase conversions, then you should probably hire a designer.
