The Benefits of Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency to Build Your Website

If you are thinking about creating or updating a website, you may ask yourself if it is worth hiring a marketing agency to help you out. While it is possible to build your own website, hiring an agency has many important benefits that will make your website run more smoothly, stand out against the competition, and save you time. 

Ask yourself these questions to find out if hiring a digital marketing agency to build your website is right for you.

Do I Have the Time?

Building a website takes time. You’ll need to plan what you want for a website: what’s your brand (what kind of colors, photos, language, and fonts will you use), what’s the purpose (will it be used for e-commerce, as a brochure, or to educate), and how many pages will be within the website (home page, product page, contact us, about us, etc). 

It’s important to understand that a website is not a “set it and forget it” task. You’ll need online management and support to continue running smoothly. A marketing agency will offer 24/7 emergency repairs, automatic alerts, and ongoing updates. Most DIY website software offer customer support, but some, like Wix, are limited to certain hours and some, like Squarespace, only operate online (no phone support).

In most cases, after the initial fact-finding meeting, the agency will take your vision and run with it, with minimal time needed on your part. You can use the time saved to focus on building your business. 

Do I Have a Strategy?

Besides knowing what you want your website to look like, you also need a strategy. A digital marketing agency will help define who your customer personas are, what your competitors are doing, and how best to market your product or service. 

Marketing agencies will optimize your website for SEO (search engine optimization), which ensures that your business appears front and center when potential customers initiate an online search. The goal of SEO is to have your business rank organically for keywords that are relevant to your product or service. This is done through on-page and off-page efforts. Digital marketing agencies will structure your site to help crawlers better understand the content on your website. An agency will also create relevant content so that other websites will want to link to your site due to the information you have provided. This off-page SEO shows Google and Bing that other websites trust the content you produce, thus greatly increasing your ranking efforts. 

Although Wix has made some improvements to their on-page SEO capabilities, they still don’t have the capability that a custom built site would have. They don’t offer AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) support. AMP simplifies your content for mobile devices, making it load instantly. Also, unless you pay for the premium version of Wix, they’ll run ads on your page, which is not ideal. 

Squarespace’s SEO limitations are different than those of Wix, but they are still substantial. Squarespace includes auto-generated sitemaps and allows you to customize page titles and meta-descriptions. Depending on the template, you can have issues with the way this information is relayed to Google and on your site. 

A digital marketing agency can also create ongoing marketing campaigns in conjunction with building your website. These campaigns will be tailored to your business and can be geared toward different end-results. Some examples of campaigns are email capture, ads, abandoned cart, and event landing pages.

Do I Need a Custom Design?

Although most website building software contain plenty of themes to pick from, there is no one theme that meets every company’s needs right out of the box. Marketing agencies have designers on staff who are adept at formulating the right fonts, graphics, color combinations, and layout that will set you apart from your competition and solidify your brand. The designers also use premium design software, like Adobe Photoshop, to create and modify images and logos that will stand out against competitors. When hiring a digital marketing agency, you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it. 

Digital marketing agencies know how to build brands. They know the impact that color choice, images, tone of voice, and page organization have on a consumer. Have you ever had someone send you an email for a professional organization written in purple comic sans? How seriously did you take that organization? That’s what we thought. 

Marketing agencies employ copywriters, social media strategists, SEO/SEM experts, and designers, and often have a development team as well, so you know your website will be looked at from every angle to make sure it meets the highest standard for UX/UI (user experience and user interface). 

Let’s talk a little more about the importance of user experience and user interface. Understanding why a consumer visits a site is simple - they have a problem and they are looking to solve it. The problem could be a leaky pipe and they are looking for the best plumber, a new puppy and they need advice, a resolution to lose weight and they are searching for a treadmill...you get the idea. Having a website that moves the consumer through the buyer’s journey seamlessly leads to less frustration and a higher rate of conversion, whether the conversion is purchasing your product, signing up for your newsletter, or contacting your company. Digital marketing agencies have the knowledge and experience to provide the best UX/UI for your customer. 

Other components that contribute to a positive user experience are the page load times and content delivery. Some software, like Wix, runs on Javascript, which can negatively impact page speed and visitor retention as well as contribute to unreasonably high bounce rates. Squarespace requires clunky workarounds in order to increase load times because they do not optimize or compress images. Squarespace also provides hosting that is shared with other website owners, which can negatively impact page speed and retention. An agency will use cutting edge server configurations and a top of the line hosting platform and compression, along with image optimization and caching, to increase page speed dramatically and help reduce bounce rates. This leads to increased conversions and visitor retention on your site.  

Many people don’t realize that you need to build your website with elements that will respond differently based on the device on which it is being viewed. This is called responsive design. Some of the DIY website software are fully responsive, but others, like Wix, are not. With Wix, you’ll have to manually tweak your design for smartphones and tablets. With the rise in smartphone use, especially for viewing web pages, it is critical that your website is mobile-friendly. A digital marketing agency will take care of the responsive design for you.

Do I Have the Budget?

Some people say that in the end, it all comes down to money. That may be true in some cases, but it’s important to look at how the money spent on a professional website can increase profits. When people have a better user experience, not only are they more apt to buy your product or service, they will also promote your company to others, leading to even more customers. More customers equal more sales, and pretty soon your website pays for itself. 

If you are a business owner or blogger that is just getting started, and you want a small website just to get your name out there, then perhaps the cost of hiring a marketing agency to build your website doesn’t make sense. But if you are looking to add e-commerce to your business or bump up your online presence, then using a marketing agency can give you a serious edge over your competition. 

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that a website is an investment in your business and is the main connection between you and your customers. It should look professional and run efficiently in order to draw new customers. A digital marketing agency will ensure that your website is fully optimized for SEO and that the functionality and design of the website are flawless. 

If you are looking for a new website, or to upgrade your existing one, contact AirTank.

We have a full marketing and development team standing by to help you with your needs.