Professional web design services are facing a new competitor in the form of a more web-savvy consumer capable of developing their own website. This is seemingly evidenced by the thousands of different programs and companies that will allow a person to create and publish their own website for free. But as with most things in life, you get what you pay for; and free websites often come at a significant hidden, cumulative cost. Considering a professional web design service might ultimately save you money despite the initial costs.

Web Design: Functionality

There's a lot more to designing a website than using a free software program and a cheap GoDaddy domain. If your site's navigation and loading features aren't configured correctly, search engines may penalize your site and human visitors will be likely to click away if they encounter any problems. Free website designs often have such flaws, although they may appear to work to an untrained webmaster.

Only a professional web design services company - like Pittsburgh Web Design firm ProFromGo - has the skills to ensure that the fundamental structure of your website is as efficient and appealing as possible. Additionally, the page loading, outgoing and inbound links, robots text and all navigation features may need updating from time to time. Having a professional monitor and fulfill these needs is essential for the long-term operation of your site.

Web Design: Search Engine Optimization

Even people with advanced HTML, PHP and other coding knowledge probably don't know about search engine optimization or SEO. SEO refers to a set of critical strategies that must be employed in order to develop and drive organic traffic to a web site or web page. This is a highly specialized field that not all web design companies have experience in, but some design firms do. Without proper and ongoing optimization efforts, your site will almost certainly flounder and fail.

If you can find a firm that incorporates both web design and SEO right from the start, you've likely found a company that you'll want to work with for a long time to come. Otherwise, you'll need to hire a professional SEO firm.

Web Design: Content Development

The backbone of any website is its content: videos, articles, blog posts, games, opinions, press releases, jokes and other content of many different types are the reason why visitors go to websites in the first place. Writing your own page content is sometimes okay, but without incorporating the principle elements of both SEO and copywriting, your website will probably not perform well.

A professional web design firm understands that content is the most important part of a website and in most cases can help you develop content or create the content for you as part of the design process. As is the case with SEO and web design, if you can find a design firm that also develops content, you should consider yourself lucky.

Unfortunately, there are two major problems when it comes to web design today:

1.) Otherwise professional web design firms don't understand the importance of SEO

2.) Site owners design their own sites using inferior tools and without an understanding of internet marketing principles

If you're looking for a complete web design package, then you need a company that can build a stunning and flawlessly functioning website, stock it with brilliant content and optimize the hell out of it to ensure that relevant visitors will find it. Finding a company that provides this level of comprehensive services while maintaining consistent quality is hard to find, but they're out there.