Having my sleeves rolled-up and making my hands dirty in web design & development (still loving it), I can tell you in a nutshell.
You don’t just need a web designer. You need a web partner.
If you too have spent years in your web development & maintenance, you probably know what I am taking about. But if you are a startup or need a website for the first time, I bet you will know this in few months or years.
A website is not a one-time thingy. You can’t create it, shut it and forget it.
When you hire a web designer to create & launch your website, you must consider “the game has just begin”.
Now, let’s understand why don’t you need just a web designer, but a web partner. In other words, the reasons why you need long-term support and maintenance from your web designer.
#1 Website Maintenance
If you don’t hire a web designer to regularly maintain your website, you may experience several issues down-the-road.
I am talking about the issues like error messages due to outdated plugins or themes, slow loading speed because of outdated codes or viruses, website hacking and so on.
If you don’t want to get into these problems, you better hire a web designer who can provide you with full support. And maintain your website as well.
In other words, your web designer must be responsive enough to help you maintain your website.
#2 Fixing issues & Bugs
When you launch your website, it is very likely that you may notice some issues that may produce hindrances in the normal functioning of your website.
These issues might have been overlooked by you or your web designer before or at the time of website launch.
Therefore, you must hire a web designer who is reliable and always available for you to fix these issues promptly.
This is the reason that you don’t need just a web designer, but you need a long-term web partner who’s always ready to help you.
#3 Website Enhancements
As I have mentioned earlier too, website design is not a one-time thingy.
Based on your users’ feedback & comments, you may need to upgrade it from time to time.
Perhaps, you may notice that you’ve left out some important features in the first phase of your website design which you may want to incorporate now.
If you web designer is not available to enhance your website, you may have to look out for another designer.
Switching over a web designer is not a tough thing to do, but it may take-up your significant time. Because you may need to explain about your website fundamentals, objectives, flow, features etc. to your new designer.
Other than the additional time-effort, you may also end up losing money too. Because the new web designer may require more time to understand and make necessary enhancements.
However if the enhancements are done by the same designer who developed your website, he may require lesser time to add new features and therefore, the cost to enhance your website may be reasonable too.
So, here’s another reason that you must hire a web designer who can help you not just with your website development, but who’s always available for you to enhance your website.
#4 Website Marketing
If I tell you that a web designer can help you to market your website too. Will you believe me?
But that’s the truth, my dear friends.
Here are but few ways in which your web designer can help you to market your website:
- SEO Integration: Your web designer can help you to make your website SEO-friendly by integrating SEO algorithms like meta tags, image optimisation, loading speed optimisation, internal linking and so on.
- Analytics Integration: By integrating web analytics codes such as Google Analytics, your web designer can help you to track the visitors behaviour on your website.
By analysing the important metrics of visitors, you can plan to make necessary improvements on your webpages. This can help you to market your website well. - Social Connectivity: Your web designer can also help you to connect your website with social websites such as Facebook and Twitter in such a way that whenever you post any new blog or offer on your website, your social pages will get updated automatically with those offers or posts.
Conclusion:
If you really want to make your online business journey smooth and successful, you must hire & retain a web designer who can always help you to create, redesign, fix or enhance your website.
