If you don’t have a website in 2019, you’re far behind the times.
Creating a website for your software company gives you benefits beyond branding and marketing that other companies don’t. You can use your website to push messages about your software, or bring together a community of users.
You don’t even need to manage it yourself. A web developer can ensure your website is running and that it continually revolutionize your business. However, a website is nothing without a good web designer.
Before you can start experimenting with how a website can change your company, you need to make one in the first place. You can try to build one yourself, if you know a lot of about hosting or technology. For it to be effective, though, you need to hire a professional.
Yet, it’s confusing to know whether to hire a web designer or a web developer. Even if they sound similar, they perform different jobs. Keep reading below to learn the differences, and to find out which is right for your company!
Make Your Website Understandable With Web Designers
The point of any website is to convey information about your company. It should let people learn about who you are, what you, and how to contact you — at least. Just because you put that information on a website doesn’t mean people will be able to understand it.
Information needs to be organized and presented in a way that people can understand. It’s not enough to slap a few paragraphs onto a website and expect people to read it. Most people don’t read past the headline of an article; why would they read your website?
To ensure people get the information they need about your company, you should hire a web designer. They lay out different sections of your website and organize information so that the average user will easily understand it. The benefits don’t stop there, though.
Web designers are also trained in how to make a website just look good. And by having a good looking website, you will stand out against your competition. A good looking website is like a good-looking storefront: it shows that you care about what you do and that you’re a professional.
People will always choose the professional to fulfill their needs, and why should you be any different? If you just need to set up an outline of a website and ensure it’s designed well – hire a web design professional.
Web Developers Make Your Website Work
While it’s good to have a professionally designed website, you also need to show it off. Just because you have the HTML and CSS documents doesn’t mean your website is online and usable. And if you’re not sure how to operate hosting technology so that other people can use it, hire a web developer.
Web developers are a lot like web designers since they both work on your website. Web developers may also have experience in designing websites. Yet, they generally focus on the backend, behind the scenes technology which makes your website work.
They are usually responsible for setting up hosting servers and connecting your website to the internet. Web developers also manage your website while it’s online by analyzing traffic and watching for suspicious activity. They are the first line of defense against malicious activities like DDoS attacks or SQL injections.
They use tools from companies like Quality Logic to continually test website and ensure peak performance. They pretend like the website undergoes different situations to ensure that the website stays up and running.
That’s because web developers are meant to think ahead. They plan for everything.
If it seems like a web developer is lounging around all day, never doing anything, it’s because they’re a good developer. It means they’ve already planned for any unexpected situation and can meet new demands on the spot.
Know How Much Knowledge You Have
To know whether a web designer or a web developer is right for you, first you need to do a little self-reflection. Ask yourself about how much you know about technology and code. Do you naturally know how to design things well, such as by picking matching colors and keeping designs within a specific brand?
You should also ask yourself how much time you have to devote to managing a website. There’s a reason that it’s usually left to professionals: it’s a tough job which requires you to be available almost 24 hours a day. You never know when a server may go down or someone may attack your website. Without a web designer there, you’ll have to be the one to manage those situations.
Even if you answered highly of yourself to all those questions, you may still want to hire a professional. You may not fully understand how much you don’t know from either the design or technical side of making a website. While you may think everything may be fine if you do it yourself, your customers may think otherwise.
People innately pick up on when a website is poorly made, and a poor website reflects on the whole company. Customers may see a bad design or may have trouble accessing a website and end up thinking the company just doesn’t care. And if the company doesn’t care about its own website, why would it care about them?
Professionals Should Work On Your Website
Even if you opt out of hiring a web designer or a web developer, you should still ensure your website is professional. Make sure you are formally trained, at the very least, before tackling any online project for your company. Having a website is powerful for your business, but it has to be a good one.
Having a bad website is like having a cluttered, messy, and unkept storefront. It does more to drive people away instead of bringing them in because they can’t trust the business. People expect professionalism and expertise when they go to a company for anything: your website should meet that.
And to ensure you make a great website, get some 2019 inspiration from our hundreds of website designs! These are all designed with you in mind, to ensure you leave a mark!