Tim ran a business importing Cantar recording devices, made by a French company called Aaton Digital, and sold them to sound recordists across the UK. Good kit, proper kit, the sort of thing you buy once and keep for years. Then Brexit happened, and the tariffs and paperwork made importing them from Europe more trouble than it was worth. Tim kept selling what stock he had left, but the business needed a new direction. And a new website to go with it.
He mentioned to me that he had been thinking about just building it himself on Wix. Save the money, get it done at the weekend. Then he stopped himself and asked the question a lot of people ask at this exact point, usually before they have even spoken to anyone. Do I need a web designer, or can I do this on my own?
If you are reading this because you are asking yourself the same thing, here is how I would think about it.
What the question is actually asking
Nobody wakes up wondering whether they need a web designer for the fun of it. You are asking because you need a website, or the one you have is not working, and you are trying to work out whether this is a job for you or a job for someone else.
That is a fair question. Plenty of people build a perfectly good website themselves. I am not going to pretend otherwise just because I do this for a living.
Why Tim decided against Wix
Tim’s worry was not really about the money. It was the tie-in. Build a site inside Wix and it lives inside Wix. If you ever want to leave, you cannot take it with you. You start again from nothing, and everything you built stays behind.
There was something else too. He sold a professional product to professional buyers, people working in film and TV sound who could spot a shoddy website a mile off. His site needed to look like it belonged to the same standard as the kit he sold. Not a template with his logo dropped on top.
The bit most people do not think about at the start
When you are right at the beginning of this, the question usually comes down to time and money. Fair enough, those matter. But there is a third thing that only shows up later, once the site is live and your business has moved on a bit. Can the site grow with you?
A DIY builder is fine while your business stays still. Most businesses do not stay still for long. Tim’s certainly did not. A website built properly, on a platform like WordPress, has room to grow into whatever your business becomes next, a new service, a new product line, a booking system, whatever it turns out to be. You are not stuck with what you built on day one.
So, do you need one?
Probably not, if you run something very small, sell one simple thing, and do not mind spending a weekend learning a new tool. Plenty of people are happy doing that, and there is no shame in it.
Probably yes, if any of this sounds familiar. Your business or organisation feels like it deserves better than a template. You want to own your site outright rather than rent space inside someone else’s platform. You expect things to change over the next couple of years, even if you are not sure how yet. Or you have already tried the DIY route and got stuck somewhere in the middle, which happens more than people admit.
What it actually looks like to hire someone
This is the part that puts people off before they even start looking. It sounds expensive, and complicated, and like the sort of thing that ends with you being ignored once the invoice is paid.
I quote a fixed price before any work starts, so you know the cost upfront. No surprises halfway through. Once your site is live, I do not disappear. I offer maintenance plans and record short videos so you can make small changes yourself if you want to, without needing to call me every time.
What Tim chose
Tim came to me instead of building on Wix. I built him a WordPress site that looked right for the market he sold into, with room to grow as a business and work out its next chapter. He owns the site outright. No tie-in, no starting from scratch if he ever wants to move host.
