Why Should I Hire a Web Developer and Not My Uncle's Friend's Barber's Brother?
By Eric Friese

The only downfall of the web design industry is that anybody can drop by Barnes and Noble, pick up a book on HTML, and call themselves a web developer. I have seen many sites designed by a friend of the family that looked like they were from the early nineties. While this may be a low cost alternative to hiring a developer, it can have its drawbacks.

Presentation

In the business world image is everything. How you present yourself can be the difference between a boost in sales and a decrease in sales. Having a professional looking web site has become par for the course. Most amateur designers have no formal graphic design or software education. What does this lead to? Boxy web sites that are utterly embarrassing. Many of the pages can be found on the web site webpagesthatsuck.com. The owner of the site wrote a book called Web Pages That Suck showcasing what bad design looks like.

Search Engine Nightmare

When designing a site, keeping the search engines in mind is imperative. Amateur designers usually know nothing about search engine optimization; which leads to your site not getting indexed. Many engines take up to 2 months to re-index your site. Mess up one time and your site is lost for months. When it comes to SEO, it's a good idea to stick with a professional.

Security

Do you own an e-commerce site? If you deal with money transactions online you need an experienced developer. When customers enter their information and credit card details in to your site, they are expecting that their information will be safe. Many amateur designers know nothing about encrypting data and how to store credit card information. Mess up one time with this and you will be looking at a hefty lawsuit.

There are many things that can go wrong with using a designer that less than experienced. If you want to determine how experienced your developer is, read our Web Developer Checklist . It will also provide our answers to let you know more about our company.