Excellent question and as the owner of a digital marketing firm that offers web development, one that I have been asked more than once. The responses range from simple to subtle and include: The old business adage “to grow a successful business, do only those things that only you can do”. In other words, to be successful you have to effectively utilize your time and resources. Among the dozens of operations that your business requires during a day, there are few high value, mission critical tasks that demand your specific knowledge and expertise. When those tasks get pushed aside so that you can work on tasks for which you could instead hire an expert, your business may suffer. There is a reason that most of us purchase our food at the super marketing rather than growing it ourselves. Time is a commodity and leveraging the time of a specialist is often a smart business decision. There is much more to being successful on the web than knowing how to code. A good web development partner will deliver much more than the technical, task oriented, coding and development that you can learn from videos. Working with a qualified web success partner means more than saving time and can help assure that you actually enjoy a return on your capital investment. Coding is important, but a successful business web ambassador is powered by the following areas of specialty:

• Pre-development planning
• Informed Design
• Future Proof Development
• Search Engine Optimization
• Effective Marketing
• Analytics/Testing
• Responsive Optimization

All areas of specialty with which a professional web developer can help your project excel. Regardless of the web development platform used, if your website is intended to be a successful marketing platform, speaking with, and receiving proposals from, 2 or 3 professional developers before starting the project will likely be valuable. Ultimately, the discussions may make clear that the investment in a web success partner will pay dividends beyond saving you time.