The true cost of a DIY Squarespace website vs. hiring a professional designer.
In the world of small business, the appeal of a Do It Yourself (DIY) solution is obvious: save money. With platforms like Squarespace making it incredibly easy to get a visually appealing website online quickly, the choice to handle it yourself seems like a smart financial move. You look at the template, you see the drag and drop interface, and you think, "I can absolutely do this."
And you can.
But getting a website online is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what that website should say, how the content should be presented, and how to build it in a way that actually moves your business forward. This is where the initial savings evaporate, replaced by a series of hidden costs that sabotage your revenue and waste your most valuable resource: time.
We are going to move past the simple sticker price comparison and look at the true, strategic cost of building your own site versus bringing in a professional who specializes in turning clean design into a clear, converting business asset.
The hidden fee: The cost of your time
When you decide to DIY your website, you are trading your cash for your time. The problem is, your time is exponentially more valuable when spent on the core activities that generate revenue for your business.
The time investment trap
A professional web designer who uses a platform like Squarespace can launch your complete, custom website in as little as two weeks because they have a proven, efficient process. They have the expertise, the systems, and the templates ready to go. They work on a tight, clear timeline, guaranteeing the work gets done quickly and correctly.
When you take it on, you are suddenly dedicating countless hours to tasks that are entirely outside of your zone of genius:
Learning the platform: Even with Squarespace’s user-friendly interface, you spend days navigating menus, understanding block types, figuring out custom CSS for minor tweaks, and troubleshooting display issues on different devices. This is time you could have spent serving existing clients or developing new products.
Strategic copywriting: Writing copy that sells is a requirement for an effective website. Most entrepreneurs spend weeks wrestling with what their website should actually say. You are too close to your own work. You know what you do, but communicating what makes your business different to a stranger takes strategic wording and distance. A professional provides targeted writing prompts and delivers copy that is strategically worded to resonate and convert.
Endless design decisions: A blank canvas is overwhelming. The time spent debating between two fonts, five different image filters, or rearranging the hero section for the tenth time is not productive. It’s paralyzing. A designer makes these choices efficiently, based on years of expertise in what looks modern, clean, and professional—not just what feels good in the moment.
The true cost of your DIY site is not the monthly Squarespace subscription; it is the three to five months of fragmented, stressful hours that steal focus from your business and delay your launch, ultimately pushing back your revenue.
The missing foundation: The cost of poor strategy
A professional website is not just a digital brochure; it is a system built to walk the user through a process that leads them to buy at the end. When you DIY, you often focus entirely on the aesthetics and miss the fundamental architecture of a conversion-focused website.
Clarity over confusion
As one of my favorite quotes from Donald Miller says, “People don't buy the best products and services, they buy the ones that are communicated the clearest.”
The user journey: A designer builds a site with an intentional, step-by-step pathway. They know that the homepage must lead clearly to the services page, which must lead clearly to the contact or booking page. They organize content so it’s easy to understand and anticipates the user’s questions before they ask them. A DIY site is often a beautiful collection of pages that don't talk to each other, creating a maze that frustrates visitors and causes them to bounce.
Conversion optimization: Where should the primary Call to Action (CTA) button be? What color should it be? How many times should the offer be repeated on a service page? These are strategic decisions based on design best practices and user behavior. The DIY approach often places CTAs randomly or relies on generic buttons that lack urgency and clarity, leaving money on the table every single day.
The about page mistake: A DIY site's about page is usually about the founder. A professional site's about page is about the client and how the founder's experience (like mine, working with major global brands) uniquely qualifies them to solve the client's specific problem. This strategic difference is what turns a biography into a sales tool.
The long-term penalty: The cost of visibility (SEO)
You can have the most beautiful, clearest website, but if people can’t find you, it's not serving its purpose. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a magical trick you tack on at the end; it is a technical foundation that needs to be baked into the design process from the start.
SEO is a design decision
Many DIY websites look beautiful but fail to rank well. This is often because the creator, focusing on the visual layout, overlooks critical technical and structural elements:
Header tags: Using the right hierarchy of H1, H2, and H3 tags tells Google which parts of your content are most important. Design programs often make it easy to use H1 for everything just because it looks like a bold headline, confusing search engines and penalizing your visibility.
Image optimization: Large, uncompressed images slow down your load time. Site speed is a massive factor in SEO and user experience. A professional designer ensures that all images are properly sized and compressed without losing quality, and they add crucial descriptive alt text, which is required for both SEO and accessibility.
Mobile-first mentality: While Squarespace is naturally mobile-responsive, an expert designer ensures that the content is presented beautifully and intentionally on a mobile screen, not just that the layout shrinks. This attention to detail protects your rankings because Google prioritizes mobile experience.
When you miss these foundational steps, you aren’t just getting less traffic; you’re losing potential clients to your competitors who invested in a site that was built with visibility in mind.
The financial reality: Investment vs. expense
It’s easy to look at a designer’s fee as an "expense" and the DIY project as "free" (minus the subscription). The reality is that the designer’s fee is an investment, and a poor DIY site is the real expense.
The cost of lost revenue
A website built by an expert is engineered to sell. It is clear, it is easy to use, and it guides a higher percentage of visitors toward your purchase goal.
Let’s imagine your DIY site converts visitors at 0.5% (meaning one out of every 200 visitors contacts you), and a professionally designed, strategy-driven site converts at a conservative 2% (two out of every 100 visitors contact you).
If you get just 1,000 visitors per month:
DIY site (0.5% conversion): 5 Leads per month.
Professional site (2% conversion): 20 Leads per month.
If your average client is worth just $\$1,000$, that difference of 15 leads per month translates to $\$15,000$ in lost revenue potential per month that your DIY site is costing you. The fee for a professional designer pays for itself the moment you close just a few extra clients. It’s not a line item to cut; it’s the engine that powers your future revenue.
Ultimately, the choice is between using your time, settling for a potentially confusing user experience, accepting limited search visibility, and even losing out on revenue - or making a strategic investment that delivers clarity, speed, and conversions, is yours.
My process is simple: I combine years of experience designing for global brands with personal knowledge of building a small business. I cover the copywriting, the design, the technology, and the strategy, all in one efficient web design package.
