Should I Build My Own Coaching Website or Hire a Designer?
The site you built in a weekend is costing you clients every month it stays up. Here’s when DIY is fine, and when it’s quietly killing your business.
Forty years in business. Sales up 30 percent in 45 days. Course enrollment climbing 12 percent every quarter.
That’s Hatmasters. They sell cowboy hats and teach people how to shape and restore them. Great product. Loyal customers. Decades of goodwill. What they didn’t have was a website that worked.
I built one. Everything else stayed the same.
That’s the whole argument for hiring a designer. But let me give you the rest of it anyway.
You’re Too Close to Your Own Business to Design For It
When you build your own site, you fill it with what feels important to you. Your story, your credentials, your method. All the things that took you years to develop.
Your visitor doesn’t care about any of that yet. They care about one thing: can this person fix my problem?
A good designer looks at your business the way a stranger does, which is exactly the perspective your site needs. They know what to put first, what to cut, and how to arrange things so someone who knows nothing about you still understands why they should stay.
That’s not something you pick up in a weekend with a Squarespace tutorial.
The Three Mistakes I See on Almost Every DIY Coaching Site
I’ve redesigned sites for coaches who’ve been in business over a decade with almost no online growth. The mistakes show up in the same patterns every time.
Too much or too little on the main pages
Either a wall of text explaining everything, or so minimal there’s nothing to act on. There’s no middle ground when you’re designing for yourself, because you can’t see the page through fresh eyes.
The offer is buried
Think about someone reading your site on their phone. They’re scrolling. They’re impatient. If your clearest value statement is halfway down a long page, most people never see it.
Nobody tested it before it went live
Broken links, missing images, 404 pages where service pages should be. I’ve seen this on sites that have been live for years. If your site breaks, you’re not just losing a visitor. You’re telling them you don’t pay attention.
The Marketing Agency Trap
This costs coaches real money and I see it constantly.
A marketing agency’s job is to sell your website after it’s built. Traffic, ads, email funnels. That’s valuable, but it comes after the site is right.
No amount of marketing fixes a poorly designed site. None. You can drive a thousand people a day to a confusing homepage and get nothing back.
A dedicated web designer understands layout psychology, how the eye moves across a page, what font and color choices do to reading behavior, why certain placements get clicked and others don’t. That’s a specific skill. It’s not the same skill as running ads.
Look at any designer’s own site before you hire them. If it’s a mess, keep moving.
On Platforms: It Matters Less Than You Think
Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Webflow, Kajabi. Everyone has opinions. Here’s mine: good design works on any platform. Pick what fits your delivery model.
Live coaching sessions? Almost any platform works if it handles scheduling and takes payments.
Self-paced courses? Get a proper learning management system. LearnWorlds, Kajabi, LearnDash.
Pick the right tool for how you teach. Then hire someone who knows how to build on it.
What to Actually Look For
Someone whose own site is well-designed and clear. Someone who asks questions about your business before quoting you. Someone honest about what you need versus what they can sell you.
They exist. There are people who do this every day specifically for coaches, who know the mistakes, know the platforms, and are genuinely interested in whether your business grows after the site goes live.
Stop trying to do it yourself to save money. The site you build in a weekend is costing you clients every month it stays up.
Find someone good and let them build it right.
