Should I Hire Someone to Design My Tennis Club Website? Tip for Tennis Coaches

It is essential for any business to have a website. While you can outsource your tennis club website creation to an agency or freelancer, frequently it is also possible to handle this job yourself.

There are many web design platforms available that allow you to design your own website. All of those platforms claim that all you need is creativity. But is it really that simple?

Below are some of the pros and cons of designing your own website. We suggest you read over this blog post several times and come up with your own pros and cons before deciding on whether to build your own website for your tennis business.

Benefits of designing your own tennis club website

1. You save money (well...maybe)

Designing your own website is usually cheaper than hiring an agency or freelancer. If you have limited experience, you can try to use templates or user-friendly drag and drop style platforms. Keep in mind that if your website does not perform well, it ends up costing you more money than it saves. Nobody wants to visit a slow or unattractive website that has a bunch of broken links or does not resize well on mobile (or purchase products and services from it).  

2. Builds on your skills

Creating your own website is a rewarding experience because you build on your own skillset, which may become handy in other aspects of your life and career too. Additionally, while you go through the process of creating your own website you learn how to communicate your ideas to other web developers and freelancers, which is another excellent skillset. 

3. You are able to make changes faster

When you create your own tennis club website, you already have the tools and skills necessary to make quick content changes. Not having to wait for a freelancer or agency to complete the work for you speeds up your communication with your clients (e.g. new tennis program or tennis product launches, tennis tournament announcements, tennis club news).

4. You are doing it at your own pace

Being able to work on a project at your own convenience is great. You set the priorities, the pace, and you are your own project manager. Just make sure you do not take forever to complete your tennis club website as this may result in problems with its look and feel. For example, websites that take too long to complete oftentimes start to look disjointed or thrown together because you end up forgetting what you have in mind, to begin with, and one page ends up looking totally different than the rest.

Problems with designing your own website

#1 Problem - You end up getting what you pay for

The problem is pretty clear - you built your own website but the end result is not even close to what you imagined. If a website is not designed correctly and does not include all of the elements to attract visitors and convert them into customers, then the time investment is that you put into it will be worthless.

#2 Problem - You spend too much time

How much is your time worth? Is it worth learning web design from scratch? Is building your own website higher priority and more interesting than your other tennis business tasks and projects?

So many of our clients come to us, at Resourcely®, after spending weeks building a website that is halfway done to only realize it has taken them forever to build something that they cannot finish. So, in the end, you have wasted a lot of time and the project is still not finished.

#3 Problem - Your website is not scalable

There are many platforms that allow users to build a simple website using pre-built templates, drag and drop page editors, and create everything from a food recipes blog to a small online store in little time.

Unfortunately, many of them end up looking generic. Others do not allow you to easily scale up or transfer to a more scalable platform (e.g. your platform has a maximum allowed products or variations). So, yes, you got a website quickly enough, but a year down the road your business grows while your website cannot, so now you have to start it all from scratch.

When to hire a web designer and developer

• When you need custom work.
• You have the budget
• You do not want to deal with it

When not to hire a web designer and developer

• You cannot afford it
• You are eager to learn website design and development
• You only need a very basic website or blog

What to look for if you decide to work with a web design freelancer or an agency

So what is it going to be? Are you making your own website or will you hire a pro to do it? Either way, if you are a tennis club or tennis business owner, please share your experience below, and feel free to leave your website link too!