It’s tempting to put a website together without professional assistance, and at first, it may seem like a perfectly attainable goal. There are a number of easy to use tools and companies that can provide a design template and some basic e-commerce functionality. Still, it will quickly become clear why hiring a professional design firm, even with all these new solutions, remains the best choice for a business. Professional design is particularly important for companies that rely heavily on their online presence and want to stay on the cutting edge of web and mobile trends.
What are the benefits of hiring a professional to design an e-commerce site?
There is an incredible range of perks to bringing in an experienced team, including benefits in both form and function. Some of them include:
- A sharp look – Templates may be pretty cheap, but they still have to be implemented properly, as they can’t be used out of the box. If a business doesn’t have the expertise to manage such a task, they will likely end up with an unattractive layout and broken plugins. The fact is, users judge sites based on their appearance, and a professional web design firm will be able to generate a nice looking, one of a kind look for a company.
- Improved media presentation – Business owners are often frustrated with how their photos and videos don’t load right or look fuzzy. High-DPI photos are a current trend in the industry, as mobile devices like phones and tablets can render extremely high-resolution images. Taking advantage of this new technology can make a site pop, and can only be reliably handled by a professional.
- Greater reliability – Even if a business manages to get a site up without assistance, what will the company do once the site breaks? And it will break eventually. Perhaps new photos can’t be uploaded. Perhaps the layout keeps shifting for some reason. Whatever the reason, the solution can allude a business for a long time, and all the while the site looks unprofessional. Eventually, a design firm might have to be brought in to fix the issue, and they might have to put in extra work to undo any mistakes made on the backend. If a company hires a professional to begin with, they won’t have to stress out over the inevitable, because an expert design team will anticipate any problems.
- Improved SEO effectiveness – Search engine optimization is one of the only ways to effectively improve the sites rankings, so it is essential to bring in additional traffic. Professional design builds a clear hierarchy and produces site navigation that Google’s crawlers will be able to access without incident. This will ensure the site is indexed properly, presented in Google the right way, and considered to be more relevant.
- Improved Security – Professional web designers and programmers are acutely aware of the need for security in the modern age of credit card theft. E-commerce sites should be PCI complaint and only a professional has that level of expertise.
A professional firm will also be able to adapt new plugins and trends for a company’s site, ensuring it is always on the leading edge. And when it comes to design, the leading edge is where the most successful companies typically lie.