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Website: Do it Yourself or Get a Pro? Depends on how you create
Answer: It depends.
In my case, I wanted a pro, or I thought I did, until I realized that what I wanted was going to be hard for designers to accomplish, and I decided to devote two weeks of my life to doing it myself. The fact that I just relocated my company in the middle of nearly-1929 conditions and was - what's the technical econ term for it?; pretty low on cash - helped me to decide to use my time, not my retirement savings. But it was more than that.
The way I create anything - my classes, my books, my talks - is not a step-by-step process that is finished before the first student walks in the door or the first solid draft hits the finish line. No, the way I create is organically. I need to see a completed prototype and go from there. I need to be able to say, "You know, that design doesn't really work after all. We need to start from scratch, in blue, with a banner that X and with the material in links and ..."
That kind of stuff, very properly, is a change that needs paying for. Corporations and organizations do it all the time. Ask Boeing why the 787 is two years behind schedule. Many, many things had to be redesigned when it was discovered that they - wince - wouldn't fly. And we know that our heroine doesn't have Boeing's profit level.
I need to see things in order to feel if they are right. I need to be able to update the website, move things around, wahtever, immediately after I get the idea - at midnight, which is when I had a brainstorm last night.
Now please note, I am not talking about switching things around for the sheer heck of it, or because I'm bored. It's about chipping away at the vague feelings of "It's not quite right," until the itchings all go away and my soul is at peace. Marketing experts will tell you not to monkey with your brand. Quite right. For General Motors. At the stage of creation, you monkey away as much as you want until you get it right.
I also want to caution everyone about the back-and-forth syndrome. You will find a website that is very effective and use a white background like hers. You will find another website that does something else. Your friends, business colleagues, everyone that you ask for a usability/design review will weigh in. AND THEIR IDEAS WILL CLASH! You need to be able to take it all in and be swayed by none of it. Thank everyone for sowing your mind with great ideas. Then make the website your own. Your own voice. Your own amount of white space. Your colors. There is research in these areas, yes. Pay attention to it.
When it doesn't clash. The visual designers say be spare and don't clutter your website with too many words or long pages. The marketing people say conclusively that long pitch letters get more customers than short pitches. They are both looking at aspects of the truth. I have as many words as I need to make the sales proposition clear to my customers [please email me with "You have GOT to be kidding! I have no idea what XXX meant." All feedback appreciated.] AND I have enough white space to be enjoyably readable.
The time I spent creating this could have been spent marketing for customers, theoretically. In reality, marketing without a website is a total waste of time in many businesses, but I suppose I could have been marketing the Reiki energy healing and the intuitive card reading. If I could have found someone to work for less than the GNP of Zambia, I probably would have just eaten the cost of the three re-designs. The Use Your Time for What You Do Best argument is cogent.
The most effective place I went for recommendations on a web designer is friends and business people [designers don't have to be local, unless you don't have much experience working with people remotely] and Linked In, which brought me an avalanche of wonderful people and one idiot who called me at 9 AM on a Sunday.
What worked for me was to sign on with a very robust template company. Blue Moon and Go Daddy are the most famous. I picked Homestead by Intuit. I have two websites I like a lot. They aren't as slick as the most slick, but they project a professional quality. I have all sorts of additional bells, whistles and comm options that I have not yet learned about or added. The learning curve was steep and littered with vocab stronger than heck, yeah, but it feels good to have learned this new skill and it feels good to be able to add a new idea at midnight. If you like to be very hands-on this part of your business, getting a designer who will give you the keys, so you can edit at will, is a good idea. It's possible that getting hands on with this part of your overall marketing effort - the most important in many cases - IS a good use of your time.
And maybe it's not. If it wastes time that you would be spending doing more critical work, and if you have a good creator who can work quickly and effectively, you could recoup your money spent on that designer. If you need a more creative design, because you are in a creative line of work [like my reiki], or if there is a high level of competition and nothing less than slick will cut it, then you need a designer.
My only conclusion is that this decision should not be made from fear. We don't like to admit that it's fear that we are feeling. Fear is unmanly, weak in American culture. Hogwash. Marketing relies on fear 24x7 and we buy and buy and buy. We want the illusions they spin for us. A woman in this month's issue of Oprah is presented with the fact that tanning several times/week will make her look like a leather shoe when she is 45 AND will quadruple her chances of melanoma, a deadly and chemo-resistant form of skin cancer. She is going to think about cutting back a little. Insane? Yes. Sure you can say that she's in her twenties, but those of us who ought to know better are just as vulnerable. How much money do 50-somethings spend on anti-aging? How many people tell me that I look so young, like that's a compliment? [They mean well. I thank them.] I'm not desperately trying to turn back time. I'm not afraid of who and what I really am.
In the same way, if you are going to create a website or have someone else do it to your specs, make sure that you are making the decision from a calm place of personal power. You are not convinced that you can't figure it out yourself. It's not your old fear that you can't do math or can't deal with computers rearing its head. You CAN do it. You ARE smart, competent, capable. From that calm place where marketers can't make you do things because you don't feel inadequate in any way, you can choose and choose wisely. In that calm place where you don't shy away from a plethora of options for which designer to pick because you are paralyzed by the fear of making a costly mistake, you will choose and choose wisely.