When to DIY your site, buy a template or hire a web designer
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Everybody’s gotta start somewhere, I get it!
I started with a DIY site too, on Weebly –and it was awful. 😂 At the time I mostly had male clients, so my site looked very masculine. I didn’t know what my web design style was so I felt like I was flailing, 1,000%.
What I soon figured out is that there’s gotta be a ‘science’ to laying out a page, which answers questions like:
Where do I put buttons & how many?
What makes people click?
How much will people read?
How big should my images be?
How many links should I have in the top section?
What do I put in the bottom section?
After those are answered, then there's a litany of other questions like:
How often should I blog?
Is blogging even necessary?
How do I rank on Google’s 1st page?
How do I get traffic?
What should my sales/product page text say?
What makes people want to buy?
How do I take appointments?
How do I set up a shop?
How many work-with-me buttons is too many?
Luckily for me, I wanted to learn all of that because I enjoyed the subject matter. I’d been professionally designing in the print industry as an in-house designer since 2006 and was sick to death of that work, so all-things web design came as a refreshing new subject of study for me.
Since 2015, I’ve learned the answers to most of the questions I had back then and a lot of answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask, –which begs the question:
When to DIY, buy a template, or hire a pro
The answer isn’t so much to do with your budget, as you might think!
Here’s the deal...
When you DIY a site, you’re doing a LOT of troubleshooting. You’re doing and redoing parts of your website via trial & error, learning as you “do,” which includes the wait time between when you “finish” and when you have to “redo” something because you realize it’s not working the way you thought it would.
This wastes a LOT of time, –if you don’t have time to waste.
I’ll use myself as an example: I spent every weekend for maybe over a year working on my website since I was DIY-ing on Weebly in 2015. I published version 1.0, then completely redid it shortly after realizing what I’d designed looked like it belonged to someone else. While I was proud(er) of version 2.0, it still didn’t sit right with me.
Then I found stumbled onto Squarespace and decided to switch from Weebly, and so version 3.0 was born! I picked an “official” business name, created a logo and a color palette & that stuck for a few months …until I got sick of it and wanted a change again. Cue version 4.0 when I changed my logo style (but not the name itself), ––then 4.1, then 4.2, then 4.3, then maybe even 4.4 as I continued to change brand colors, not feeling settled in anything.
It wasn’t until I stopped being so corporate & professional, and started being more of myself that I began to nail who my audience was, what you wanted from me and how you wanted it. Did you mind a little cursing? Why did I have to make it all “so serious?”
You can skip through the headaches & heartaches by learning these 2 main points:
Just because you have good design instincts, doesn’t make you a good web designer because web design isn’t just aesthetics. It’s not just a pretty place on the internet, because if that’s all it is, you’re leaving money on the table!
Websites are primarily about usability and strategy –while looking attractive to your audience. You have to know your target audience in order to build something they will use, go to (search rankings), and want to interact with, which means you have to get clear on who you’re talking to & what you want your website to DO for your business.
If you don’t have both pieces of that puzzle, nothing else matters. It’d be like throwing spaghetti at the wall & seeing what sticks. (i.e.: most of it, and now you have a giant AF mess!)
It won’t matter how tech-savvy or design-savvy you might be, if you have good design instincts or a college education in art or design. It doesn’t even matter if you know how to code or any of that backend stuff, ––if you don’t also know how to make it strategically user-friendly.
With that in mind, let’s take the quiz below & see where you fit on the scale from DIY to buying a template to hiring a designer!
DIY, buy a template, or hire a designer? Let’s find out!
01 When did you start your business?
Less than 6 months ago? 👉🏻 DIY
6–18 months ago? 👉🏻 Buy a template
1-2+ years ago? 👉🏻 Hire a designer
02 Does your site need to be heavily customized?
Don’t mind if it looks like a template? 👉🏻 DIY
Need a little customization. 👉🏻 Buy a template
Hells yeah! I need custom fonts & icons, embedded schedulers, hide/show FAQs, pricing tables –the works! 👉🏻 Hire a designer
03 How much time can you spend on your website design?
0–15 hours 👉🏻 Hire a designer
15–30 hours 👉🏻 Buy a template
30–60+ hours 👉🏻 DIY
04 How tech-savvy are you?
⭐⭐⭐ 👉🏻 DIY
⭐⭐ 👉🏻 Buy a template
⭐ 👉🏻 Hire a designer
05 Do you mind a technical challenge?
(skip if you selected only ⭐ in the previous question)
Are you kidding me? I love a tech challenge! It’s like a puzzle. 👉🏻 DIY
I don’t love the frustration that comes with these, but I can usually figure it out. 👉🏻 Buy a template
No. –Just, no. Sign up for anything else but THAT. 👉🏻 Hire a designer
06 Do you know who your audience is & what the goals of your website are?
Ummmm, what now? My audience is everyone, right? 👉🏻 Hire a designer
Yeah, I guess I have an idea, but it’s not nailed down yet. 👉🏻 Buy a template
Hells to the yeah! Those are both nailed down. 👉🏻 DIY
07 What is your budget for your new website?
$0 – $250 👉🏻 DIY
$250 – $1,000 👉🏻 Buy a template
$1,000 – $3,000+ 👉🏻 Hire a designer
How did you score?
DIY = 0 – 7 points
(1 point for each answer)Buy a template = 7 – 21 points
(3 points for each answer)Hire a designer = 21 – 35 points
(5 points for each answer)
