So you’re looking to launch a website for your business? One of the first steps most people take is to hire a web designer to create a unique and professional looking site. While this is certainly a smart move if you want to be taken seriously by your customers, many business owners fall in to the trap of thinking the designer will also be able to market the website. Some companies may even actively promote this as a service, but if you take them up on the offer you could be making a big mistake. Here’s why:
Designers are not Marketers
Web design and internet marketing are completely different jobs and skills. In fact sometimes they are at odds. What might look good visually on a website may not translate well for search engine optimization and other marketing methods. Web designers often ignore a lot of backend SEO principals such as meta tags, duplicate content, and may choose visuals over written content that can be crawled and ranked.
A web designer’s main concern is to create a user friendly and visually appealing website. An internet marketer’s main concern is tweaking that website to be Google-friendly so it appears in the search results, while promoting it through social media and advertising campaigns.
They Don’t Do Content
Most web designers build you a website as a template that you must then fill with your own content. If you yourself are not experienced in internet marketing, this could be disastrous. Do you or the web designer know how to formulate an effective landing page? Do you know what keywords you should be targeting and how to include them on the page so it doesn’t look spammy? If not then an internet marketing company what you really need.
Internet Marketers are Full Time Marketers
An internet marketing company by its very nature is immersed in internet marketing every day. So while some web designers and design companies may offer some basic marketing services, chances are they do not have the experience or dedication of the professionals. Do they really have time to monitor your traffic and ad campaigns, refining them daily and working towards a long term goal?
Why pay for half a job, when you can hire somebody who will go above and beyond to make your site a success?
Web Designers Have Outdated Knowledge
An internet marketing company will be at the forefront of the marketing industry with all the latest tools and techniques. They’ll know when Google’s algorithm has changed, the latest trends in social media, and how to use the latest analysis software.
A web designer however may only know the basics and might even have outdated information that could ruin your marketing effort and get you penalized by the search engines.
Web Designers Don’t Stick Around
Unless you hire them as a webmaster to manage the day to day running of your website, a web designer is not usually going to stick around. Their job is to make the site, and when that job is done they’ll be on to the next client. This is terrible for internet marketing as promoting a site is an ongoing project that never ends. You can’t market the site for a month and then forget about it. Especially when SEO, social media and other marketing channels are constantly changing.