In my last article, I wrote about why your website sucks and your web designer hates you:
https://marketingforconsultants.com/why-your-website-sucks/
On LinkedIn, Philip asked me:
If I’m my own web designer, does this still apply? 😉
Yes. Yes, it does!
Why Is It so Difficult to Self-build an Effective Website?
Apart from the lawyer joke references – “A web designer who works on his own site has a fool for a client” – there are some straightforward reasons why it is so difficult to build a good website for yourself that will bring in business, despite the plethora of free and easy-to-use website builder tools available nowadays.
Let’s look at the core skills that are required to build a professional, effective website:
To build an attractive, reliable and effective website, you need all three of these basic building blocks:
- Graphics to make it look good and be consistent with your brand identity
- Technology to join all the separate components and make it work reliably on all devices
- Marketing strategy to make it effective for your business
Sidenote: many small web design studios are partnerships between a tech person & graphics person. These often produce websites that look and work well, but aren’t very effective from a business standpoint. (See the previous post for more details.)
Superman’s Big Problem
Even if you are Superman and you do have all three core skills to build your own Superwebsite, there’s still the Kryptonite: it’s nearly impossible to dissect your own marketing strategy from within your own business.
“You can’t read the label from inside the jar. It stumbles when you’re doing it for yourself. It’s sort of like why surgeons don’t operate on themselves.” – David C. Baker (author of “The Business of Expertise”)
This is why so many business owners have a business coach, or participate in masterminds, or have a business confidante to bounce ideas off.
If you do want to self-build your website, and have the tech & graphic skills to do it, I’d love to help you with the strategy part of the equation: book a free call and let’s find out if I’m a good fit to help you with that.
Credits: Web Design Skills Triad from WebsiteDoctor.com, SuperPhoto from Esteban Lopez (@exxteban on unsplash)
