By: Michael Emanuel
Date: July 11, 2026
This is going to sound arrogant coming from a professional website designer. After all, I have an incentive to encourage as many businesses as possible to spend their money on professional website designers – particularly myself. However, I don’t write this for the purpose of making money, but to save YOU money. How? Because most of the time, business owners make websites without knowing anything about performance, search engine optimization, or good user experience.
Approximately 70% of small business owners make their own websites and 90% of them fail to accomplish the intended goal. Many of my own clients have faced similar problems that I have had to fix for them. So, let’s figure out why this is the case and why you shouldn’t do it.
We’ve all seen plenty of ads from DIY website builders that talk about how easy it is to drag and drop content onto the screen and voila. But here’s the thing – those people in the ads know how to build a website. You probably do not. Look at all these choices you have to make:
And that doesn’t even cover the technical aspects of building the website. What looked like a weekend project quickly becomes a multiweek rabbit hole. And every hour spent “figuring it out” is an hour not spent running your business.
Think about it. 70% of business owners make their own websites using DIY website builders. That means 70% of people like you are using the same pre-made templates. You might not think this matters to your customers, but it does. They’re going to think it looks cheap. If it’s cheap, it probably isn’t trustworthy. After all, if you don’t invest in your business and its image, why do you expect anyone else to? Remember, 90% of DIY websites don’t achieve their intended goal (i.e., they don’t make any money).
Building a website is about understanding:
A DIY builder is a good tool, but it doesn’t give you a strategy for attracting customers online. That’s what you actually want.
A poor performing website is like a poorly maintained car. The engine oil is old, the radiator is busted, the brakes are worn out, and the shocks are a distant memory. This thing doesn’t drive well at all, but it sure costs you a lot of money.
A website that doesn’t perform looks like this:
If you build a website that doesn’t perform, you’ll end up with that crappy car. You won’t get ranked on Google, most people won’t find you, and the people that do find you will leave without buying anything. And it’s still costing you a lot of money.
I’ve heard this line plenty of times – “It’s cheaper if I do it myself or have a friend/cousin of mine do it.” What many business owners don’t realize is that being cheap is very expensive. True, you can spend about 10 times less money upfront by building a website yourself rather than hiring a professional. However, for the 90% of DIY websites that perform poorly, this is where the real costs hit you:
Let’s do a simple thought experiment. You have a choice to either hire a website designer to build you an e-commerce website for $1,500.00, or build it yourself for $200/yr. You choose the latter option and save $1,200.00. Now let’s say that your cheapest item costs $50.00. You need to sell at least 4 of these items to cover the cost of the website. Unfortunately, your website doesn’t rank on Google and isn’t set up to convert visitors into buyers. So, you’re not selling anything. Which means every year that goes by, you spend $200 on something that doesn’t provide value. Contrast this with the professional designer that would cost you $1,500.00. Because your website was set up by a professional, you sell 10 items every month on your website (i.e., $500.00/month). That means after 3 months, you’ve paid the cost of the website and are still making money every month after that. You would make $4,500.00 over the remainder of the year, assuming you don’t grow during that time. See how much you missed out on?
About half of my clients started off on the DIY route and they all told me the same thing – “I didn’t know what I was doing.” Most DIY website builders don’t, which is why professionals exist. I don’t know more about fixing my car than my mechanic just because I can buy the right tools in the store. Not only would I not know what I’m doing, I’m probably going to break something that wasn’t broken and now I have to spend more money. That’s what happens to DIY website builders – they spend money trying to solve a problem that they lack the expertise to handle. Then they have to hire a professional and spend even more money. Some free advice:
I hate to break it to you, but the truth is that DIY websites really aren’t for most business owners. They’re great for personal blogs, temporary projects, small portfolios, and hobbies. But they don’t give you the things that make a business grow online:
This is why DIY is a trap. You look like you’re getting the same thing that all the pros can deliver, but you’re only getting a piece of the overall puzzle to grow online. And the “savings” that you think you’re getting just causes you to lose out on the opportunities that would have made you more money.
Your time, brand, and online footprint are all immensely valuable. A professionally built website:
Don’t let the sticker price spook you. The reason it costs so much to build a high performing website is because it will make you money long after you’ve finished paying for it. You’ll be paying for a poorly built website forever.
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