As a small business owner, it’s a big decision to invest in a high-quality website design and website designer. Knowing when it’s best to invest in a website can actually save you time and money. In the long run–in both rebrands and redesigns. Some website designers say it’s never too soon to invest in a website, but I disagree entirely.
While I don’t think it’s ever too soon to put together your own website on easy-to-use website platforms. I never recommend investing thousands of dollars into a professionally designed website if you’re not ready yet. I recommend having established a few key elements before investing in a website design; keep reading to find out what they are.
Proven services or products
Before investing in a professional website designer, you should have proven services or products. This doesn’t mean your products or services can’t evolve–this is actually expected! But you should have the baseline of your offers established in a specific industry.
Creating your brand, website, and copy will revolve entirely around your offers. If you change your offers, your industry, or your niche, you’ll have to change your website completely. Redesigning a website, rebranding, and rewriting copy isn’t a cheap or quick process; so we definitely want to get it right the first time.
Understanding your ideal client
If you don’t know who your ideal client is, you lose out on a lot of strategy in the design process. Especially if you’re investing in branding and website design simultaneously, you must understand your ideal client avatar (ICA). Knowing the ins and outs of your ideal client will help us create a brand and website that appeals to them on a level deeper than aesthetics.
Their gender, age, income level, education, interests, values, dreams, and aspirations are all easy places to start. Knowing their pain points, struggles, and stresses also helps us lean into how your offers serve as a solution. As you dive deeper into demographics and psychographics, we’ll start to uncover how we can design your website (or your branding) in a way that will appeal directly to your ICA.
Long story short, having a deep understanding of your target audience and your specific ICA will pay off big time over the years–saving you from rebrands, redesigns, and second-guessing your offers altogether.
Branding that resonates
Before a website design, you need to have established branding. But not just any branding–branding rooted in strategy (hint: “understanding your ideal client” is just part of creating a strategically designed brand). There’s a big difference between brand identity (colors, fonts, and logos) and brand strategy. We’ll talk more about this in another post!
When designing your website, I use brand strategy paired with brand identity to create a website that stands out to your ICA. Without branding (strategy or identity), your website can get lost in a sea of competition. While creating an aesthetically pleasing website is fairly straightforward, you need design rooted in strategy to take your business to the next level. As they say–if you’re speaking to everybody, you’re speaking to nobody.
It’s never too late.
In some cases, it may be a little too soon to invest in website designer, but it’s never too late!
If you have proven offers, solid branding, a clear understanding of your ICA, and experience under your belt, but you’ve been relying on social media to get you leads (calling you out my Instagram-only business owners)! You’re in the perfect position to invest in a website project if this is you. You likely have experience working with your ICA, and you know what resonates with them. You get to skip a lot of the market research required to create a website strategy!
Clarity matters more than years of experience.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business for a week or a year. When deciding whether or not you’re ready to invest in a website, it all comes down to clarity– on your offers, your target audience, your branding, and your business plan. The good news is you don’t need to have all of this figured out before getting started; I can help you gain clarity on your ICA and branding through brand strategy. We’ll even consider where you plan to grow your business years from now, so your website is designed to grow with you.
Through my website in a week service, we’ll work together to design and develop the perfect website for your business in just one week. Fill out this short form, and we’ll get started!
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