Thinking of building your own website? Here are 9 mistakes do-it-yourselfers make…

1. No design skills. Professional design builds trust and increases conversions, and the most people are not designers
2. SEO is critical for appearing in Google and search engines, and if you don’t know what you are doing, people will likely never find your website (biggest mistake I see, and costliest)
3. No clear value proposition
   
4. Content is written for the wrong audience
5. Omission of critical pages and obvious information 
6. Ensuring a good user experience on mobile and tablet devices of all sizes
7. Not thinking about performance. Performance matters, so you have to understand what factors affect page loading speeds and how speed affects your search rankings
8. Using stock photos
9. Focusing only on upfront costs, and not the BIG picture. For example:

• what is the cost of your competitors having a better website than you? do they look more professional and attractive? would you lose sales to them?
• what is the cost of not understanding conversion optimization, landing page design or value propositions? less conversions and less sales? a failure to build trust, credibility or position you as an expert?
• what is the cost of not having a marketing advisor for your business who understands what small businesses need to be successful in today’s digital environment? is there a potential for a new revenue stream? can you streamline a process to save time? what other opportunities may you be missing?

Bottom line: Yes, you can save money upfront doing it yourself. The question is how much are the mistakes going to cost you in the long run, if people cannot: find your website, trust your content, understand your offer, believe your promises / claims, or know what action to take next?