MN Interactive

The Pitfalls of Hiring Your Best Friend to do Your Site Design

Starting a business can be an expensive venture, and when you factor in costs like web design, web maintenance, and additional uploads, your often thin budget can feel very stretched. No wonder you might be tempted to cut costs by hiring your friend, neighbor or the kid down the street to design your site for you. My advice is, don’t!

Your website is the face of your business, more so if you don’t own a bricks and mortar presence. This is the place potential visitors and repeat customers will come back to. A website that is hard to navigate or not interactive where it should be, will lose you businesses. In trying to save pennies by hiring someone cheap, you will in the long run be losing pounds. And then there’s that all important factor when it comes to hiring a friend or family member- how do you tell them their work sucks (if and when it does)?

Friendship is always held a fine balance. You might know a good friend for years, but maintaining a friendship in constantly changing times and situations calls for hard work. Add business into the mix, and it’s sure to put a strain on the relationship. With relatives, you have the additional burden of other family members being involved. And resentment will eventually build up – if you pay too little, if you pay too much, if you don’t pay on time, if the work delivered was unacceptable – there is always cause or reason for someone to feel unhappy with the end result.

Wherein possible, keep work and your private life separately, unless there is valid reason for them to overlap. Not convinced? Here are 3 top reasons most professionals agree, your friends should not design your web site (or any other part of your business for example):

Support: When your web content needs updating or your site gets stuck half-way through the day, you need to be certain you can call for assistance and get an immediate response. You also need to know you can ask questions, no matter how irrelevant they may seem, and get straight answers. A professional web design company will also store your web information (domain registrar, web host details, passwords etc), and handles important issues like site renewals for you. All this is invaluable support, which you should be able to take for granted.

Updated knowledge: New technologies, new offerings and updated coding standards are all part of the game. Web design companies are expected to keep abreast of the latest offerings which they can then pass on to their clients. You cannot expect someone who is not in the business 24/7 to have the same access to all these services. Your friend may be able to design a site for you, but would it be the most suitable design for your business?

Time invested: Designing and creating a website will take up a sizeable amount of time. Over and above this, your site will require regular maintenance. Will a friend make the time to do this for you? Not if you are paying him peanuts for the job, which was the reason why you first hired him, right?

So what happens if your friend or family member is a professional web designer? Does that mean you still ought to give his services a miss? It’s okay to hire people you are close to work with you, if you can apply a Donald Trump attitude to it and take emotions out of the equation. Most of us however will find it hard to say: You are fired!

You could of course also try and set limits, rules and regulations when you hire a friend. But how seriously will they be taken? Friends are known to flout rules and yet expect to be forgiven. Turning up late for a dinner party is not the end of the world. Not returning your phone calls when your website is down and you have a client presentation due in two hours, can lose you a lot in terms of clients, money, professionalism, and more important, your friendship.

Instead, consider hiring a professional company to design your website. As with any hiring decision, ask them for references and take a good look at their portfolio before you begin. Pick up the phone or send them an email outlining your requirements to see if they can fulfill them. By hiring a reputable firm, you will be sure to get the professional look your site demands, along with the latest technology to keep it current. And since that’s taken care of, kick back with your friend and enjoy it all!