The Top 5 Reasons To DIY Your Website

May 22

As a new business owner, you may have dreams of hiring a killer design team to create your website, but not the budget to make it happen. When you’re in the beginning stages of your business, making smart and strategic decisions on a budget is vital to starting off on the right foot.

Call us crazy -- or maybe just strategic -- but we’re actually one of the few design agencies that would discourage you from hiring us to design a completely custom website for you if you are just starting out.

We would actually recommend NOT investing thousands and thousands of dollars into your very first website design especially if you haven’t even started running or working in your business. While it’s totally a great goal to have someone professional design your website, hiring a big budget web design and development team is not always the most practical in the early days of your business.

When you’re just starting your brand or business for the very first time …

You don’t really know enough about your ideal client or customer since you haven’t technically had any clients or customers yet.
Maybe you haven’t totally figured out your products, services or offerings so there are still a lot of moving parts to nail down.
You haven’t figured out what works or what doesn’t in terms of getting someone to book or buy from you.
You might not have the budget to be able to invest money into a custom design because you haven’t started selling products or booking clients for your services.

We have come across many business owners who wanted to dive in and invest a lot of money into a custom website way too quickly in their business, and we’ve worked to talk them out of it! Because they haven’t even worked IN their business yet, they realize they need to make a major shift to their brand, product, service or offerings.

The bummer is that they didn’t know enough about their business before the site design to really justify spending all of that money. Now that they know more about their business 6 months or a year after the launch, they are stuck because they have already invested SO MUCH MONEY.

We want to help you avoid running into this problem and advise you to be smart on how you launch your business for the first time. DIYing your website is the number one thing we recommend to new business owners because it’s a great investment, but gives you so much freedom, flexibility and ownership so you can continue to grow and change as you learn more about your business.

Here’s 5 Reasons Why You Should DIY Your First Website

1. DIYing Your Website Will Save You Money

Running a business costs a lot of money -- especially up front! It makes sense to try and save as much as you can, wherever you can. Hiring a designer can cost thousands of dollars, and when you’re starting out, you likely just don’t have the money.

DIY-ing your website is much cheaper and can totally fit into the budget of a new business. The best part is you’re getting your brand out there faster than you would if you wait to save up for a designer.

2. DIYing You Website Will Help You Launch Faster

Your website is your most critical marketing tool, so the faster that it’s up and live, the faster you can gain momentum in your business. This is not something you want to procrastinate on, so making the move NOW is best.

With so many easy-to-use platforms, such as our personal fave, Squarespace, designing a website is easier than EVER. You could literally launch your website in a week, or if you’re really going for it, one weekend! We totally understand that as small business owners, you’ve got your hands FULL juggling every aspect of your biz. You don’t want to have to worry about a website on top of everything else that needs attention.

3. DIYing Your Website Will Help You Look Professional And Leaves Room To Grow

Having a space on the web dedicated to your business helps you look professional and credible online. With the power of Instagram and Facebook, anyone can say that they are a coach or selling something. However, actually having a website helps you stand out from the hobbyists because you are taking your own business seriously.

However, when you are just starting out, you don’t necessarily want to lock yourself into anything so you still give yourself room to grow, niche down, or even shift completely. You’re still figuring out your voice, your ideal audience, what makes you unique, what your style is, and so much more! The truth is, you’re going to change your mind a few times. Your style will evolve, your niche will narrow, you ideal client may change.

You probably don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a website, only to get the itch to completely switch things up a year in. One of the best parts of DIY-ing your site is that you leave room to grow and evolve. Trust us, a few years into your business you’ll have even more confidence, and you’ll know exactly what you want.

4. DIYing Your Website Can Actually Look Like a Custom Website

In the last decade, there have been major advances and changes so that people really can build their own website without it looking like a template. Five to ten years ago, we couldn’t have said that. When you used a website template, it looks OBVIOUS and maybe even a little tacky. However, now with easy-to-use Website Builders and companies selling their own customizable Website Templates, people don’t even notice that it’s a template, and you can create a killer site that looks totally custom.

Okay, shameless plug here! Our team has created some killer Website Templates, giving you the look of the designer website without a designer price tag. Our Squarespace Website Templates are not only creative, but they’re designed to be strategic and versatile too. The layouts of our Templates are geared toward specific industries, so you’ll know exactly what info to place where for max effectiveness.

5. DIYing Your Website Will Help You Learn The Platform Ins And Outs

We’ve had HUNDREDS of clients come to us that had hired an agency to design their website, only to get a website on a platform they can’t figure out, or that they have to go back and pay the website designer to even make a tiny change.

Maybe the platform is really techy and you literally can’t figure it out without the help of a designer. Or maybe your designer has really worked in a lot of custom graphics, coding and extra plugins that only he or she know how to edit. This means that you lose your ability to make quick changes for your business, and that means that every change costs more time and more money because you have to pay for someone else to do it for you.

When you DIY your site, you get to have total control. You’ve built the site from the bottom up, so you know every single part of your design, setup and back-end settings. This means no waiting on a designer, emailing back and forth a hundred times until the design is just right, or having to contact someone to make changes on the backend.

The Wrap Up

Have we convinced you yet?! Seriously, don’t let the words DIY intimidate you. Designing your own website is FUN, and nothing is better than the proud feeling you get after accomplishing it. Plus, with our easy-to-use Squarespace Website Templates, we’ll teach you how to build the design from the ground up and how to use Squarespace if you’re a total newbie!

It’s an easy process to build a Squarespace design with our tutorials, BUT, we get it. Time is money! If you don’t have the time to learn how to build the Template yourself with our step-by-step videos, we have support to help! Hire our team to hop into your Squarespace account and build the design for you so you can skip this step and go right to customizing.