Thanks to beginner friendly tools, it’s become much simpler to create a professional-looking website without technical skills. That said, many website owners utilize the same platforms and site-building tools. So, if you go this route, you’ll likely end up with a generic layout that does little to impress visitors or bolster your brand.
With this in mind, you might want to hire a WordPress website designer to build you a unique website that matches your style. This way, you can also make sure your site has all the functionality you require. And, it’ll be optimized for search engines and mobile devices to get more traffic.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the different options you have to design a website. Then, we’ll discuss six main tasks that a WordPress website designer will perform (if you hire one). Let’s jump right in!
What are the options for designing a website?
If you’re ready to set up a website for your brand, you have various options. But typically, there are three main methods:
- You can build a website yourself using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress.
- You can use pre-made templates or site-builder tools.
- You can hire a professional website designer to do it for you.
Naturally, handling the task yourself is the most affordable solution, but it requires a certain level of technical knowledge, and website maintenance tasks can be time-consuming. While site-builder tools make it possible for complete beginners to achieve beautiful designs, your customization options can be limited.
With that in mind, a website designer might be preferable. When you choose this option, you’ll get a custom website that looks (and functions) like no other. What’s more, hiring a designer can even reduce long-term costs, since you may be less likely to encounter website issues further down the line.
And if you do face problems, you’ll have a WordPress expert on standby to resolve them. Better yet, a website designer ensures that your pages are built on clean, high-quality code. Plus, hiring one frees up time for you to focus on other (more important) areas of your business, like growth strategies.
What does a WordPress website designer do? (6 key tasks and responsibilities)
Now that you know why it can be a good idea to hire a WordPress website designer, let’s take a look at six key tasks that these experts will handle for you.
1. Create custom themes and layouts
One of the main responsibilities of a WordPress website designer is to provide custom themes and layouts for your web pages. Without a professional, you’ll have to activate one of the free WordPress themes listed in the directory. Or, you can purchase premium themes from third-party sites.
The problem is that lots of WordPress users tend to stick with popular WordPress themes like Storefront, Astra, OceanWP, and more. While you can add your own brand colors, fonts, logo, and images, the overall structure of your page may look very similar to others using the same theme.
Additionally, site-builder tools or plugins often provide their own templates for key pages like the homepage, blog page, and contact pages. But again, these tend to rely on generic designs that can be difficult to shape into the exact type of layout that you want.
With a professional website designer, you can build your own themes and layouts from scratch to help you stand out from the competition. The design process will consider your business goals and mission to produce a unique blueprint which can be tweaked and updated many times.
For example, you might want to add a custom navigation menu to highlight your best pages/products and improve the user experience (UX). Additionally, a custom theme can incorporate animations and interactive features like parallax scrolling or hover effects. And, the designer can add custom CSS styles (rather than predefined styles) to change the appearance.
2. Add ecommerce functionality
If you want to sell products or services from your WordPress website, you’ll need to extend the functionality of the CMS platform. Generally, users will install the WooCommerce plugin which is completely free and lets you transform your existing site into a thriving online shop.
Better yet, it comes with useful features like built-in payment gateways, optimized cart and checkout pages, and much more. It also supports an unlimited number of products. Plus, you’ll find a range of free and paid WooCommerce extensions to take care of certain tasks like order fulfilment and shipment tracking.
That said, a WordPress website designer can build a custom ecommerce store utilizing WordPress and WooCommerce best practices. This also makes it easier to scale your business if you’re expecting significant growth. For example, you can start out with the base version of the plugin and add more features when you need them.
What’s more, some web designers also provide hosting services for online stores, so that their sites experience maximum uptime and performance. Since you’ll be dealing with customer data, opting for ecommerce hosting can also help ensure compliance with laws and regulations. For instance, you’ll likely get a well-maintained infrastructure and security practices like real-time backups and vulnerability scans.
3. Perform search engine optimization (SEO)
For any website, it’s important to drive as much organic traffic as possible from the search engine results pages (SERPs). And instead of using paid advertising methods, you can use SEO best practices to boost your search rankings for free and gain more visibility for your website.
There are multiple factors that affect SEO including page speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, and more. Many users rely on WordPress plugins for SEO. But, for SEO to be effective, it needs to be audited, monitored, and updated regularly (which some users don’t take the time to do).
Therefore, it can be easier to hire a WordPress website designer to optimize your website for you. For example, designers can configure meta titles, alt tags, robots.txt, and sitemap.xml.
Plus, all pages will follow proper URL and permalink structure to improve content organization. And, if you’ve recently migrated your website, redirects can be added to retain SEO value.
Not only that, but a WordPress website designer can perform thorough keyword research to find relevant words and phrases that match your audience, goals, and industry. Better yet, some designers will set up tracking and reporting for your website to ensure that your keywords (and content) are performing well.
4. Make mobile-friendly websites
Mobile internet traffic currently accounts for nearly 60 percent of global internet traffic. Therefore, it’s important that your website can seamlessly adapt to different screen sizes to ensure mobile-friendliness.
Otherwise, people may visit your website using a tablet or mobile device and find the content distorted or with items overlapping. In extreme cases, the content may not appear at all. This creates a poor user experience (UX) and may result in people quickly leaving your website, which sends signals to search engines that your site lacks value.
There are various ways to make mobile-friendly websites, and although some of these are possible to execute yourself, it can be easier to hire a website designer. First off, you’ll need a responsive theme. And while most WordPress themes are mobile-friendly now, a designer can choose the right image sizes, file formats, CSS, and layouts.
What’s more, it’s a good idea to feature a concise menu that doesn’t have too many items, since this can make it hard to navigate on smaller devices. Alternatively, a WordPress website designer will often create a separate hamburger menu which features a small icon that users can click on to explore other web pages.
5. Improve the user experience (UX)
One concept we’ve touched on a bit already is the user experience (UX). This refers to how easy or difficult it is for visitors to navigate your site and interact with your content. A good UX can encourage people to stay and explore your website, which increases time on site (TOS) and reduces bounce rate.
Therefore, a WordPress website designer will have the knowledge and skills to build you a website with an optimized UX. For instance, one of the main factors that influences the UX is page speed. In fact, conversion rates can decrease by an average of 4.42 percent for each second of load time.
A professional website designer will analyze your site’s existing performance and apply a range of speed optimization techniques like image compression, the removal of unused code, lazy loading, caching, and more. Additionally, an expert will design you an accessible website in line with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Typically, this means that your website can be used by individuals with hearing or vision impairments, cognitive disabilities, and other disabilities. As such, you can adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and avoid discrimination. To give you an idea, a web designer might allow keyboard navigation, include alternative text, and implement predictable navigation structures.
6. Provide ongoing maintenance and support
Once you have your website up and running, you might think the hard work is done. However, website maintenance is a proactive job that includes many routine tasks to keep your site operating safely and securely.
If you don’t have the time to think about website management, or you don’t understand enough about it, the simplest solution is to hire a WordPress website designer. This way, all software on your site will be updated frequently, which can prevent a range of security issues like hacking attempts.
What’s more, a professional can keep your system secure via regular vulnerability scans and audits to detect any issues that make it susceptible to attacks. Meanwhile, if malicious software is identified on your site, most quality designers will clean it for you. This way, your site will be running smoothly again as soon as possible.
How to choose a WordPress website designer
If you decide to hire a WordPress website designer, it’s important to choose a quality agency. To do this, it’s a good idea to thoroughly read client testimonials, check out the designer’s portfolio, and look for any additional services that are included.
Freshy is an excellent option, whether you’re a startup, small business, or enterprise organization:
With Freshy, you’ll be matched with your own personal project manager who will communicate with you every step of the way. Plus, your unique goals and objectives will be taken into account to create your custom website.
Better yet, Freshy provides fully responsive designs, accessible layouts, and technical SEO practices to capture more traffic. Meanwhile, you can also get access to premium website hosting, and ongoing maintenance and support – including backups, updates, and repairs.
Conclusion
Although you have the option to design your own website, it can be challenging to build a unique (and practical) layout, especially if you have more complex needs like ecommerce functionality. Instead, you can hire a WordPress website designer to handle the process for you.
To recap, here are the six main responsibilities of a WordPress website designer:
- Create custom themes and layouts.
- Add ecommerce functionality.
- Perform search engine optimization (SEO).
- Make mobile-friendly websites.
- Improve the user experience (UX).
- Provide ongoing maintenance and support.
At Freshy, you’ll be paired with a dedicated project manager to help you communicate your unique goals to your WordPress website designer. Better yet, our team takes on projects of every size. That means you can get a totally custom website for your startup, small business, or enterprise organization. Get a quote today!
Featured image credit: Pexels.
