Meet Susie Jones, a small business owner with ambitious goals. Susie’s boutique sells handcrafted products, and after years of steady growth offline, she’s ready to take her business online.

Like many entrepreneurs, she decides to create her website herself, hoping to save money and get it done quickly.

She heard from a friend what Wix is really easy to use and has a lot of drag-and-drop features.

She also remembers hearing about Squarespace on a podcast and liked the sound of the beautiful templates.

Three months later, her website is live, but something’s wrong.

Traffic is minimal, her online store feels clunky and disjointed, and she’s losing potential customers because the checkout process isn’t user-friendly.

She now is getting reports from mobile users that when they tap the checkout button they receive a cryptic error message no one can decipher.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, she realizes she’s made a critical mistake:

She tried to perform a DIY “surgery” on her business.

Why DIY Web Development Can Be a Costly Mistake

Building a website may seem simple on the outside, especially with so many site builders advertising ease of use, but it’s far from straightforward.

Platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Wix offer tools for creating sites, but they don’t account for the complexities of web design, development, and customer acquisition.

Think of it this way: if your business is your patient, would you try to perform surgery without the training and experience?

A website is the foundation of your online business — it requires the same level of expertise and precision to handle.

This is where web consultants step in.

Understanding the Roles in Web Development

To appreciate the value of a web consultant, it helps to understand the various roles involved in creating and maintaining a successful online presence:

1. Web Designer: The artist who creates the look and feel of your site, focusing on layout, color schemes, branding and user experience.

2. Web Developer: The builder who turns designs into functional websites. They write the code, apply styles, ensure the site works, and address technical issues.

3. Internet Marketer: The strategist who drives traffic to your site using SEO, content creation, email marketing, paid advertising and any number of other methods to gin up fresh interesteds for your business.

While each role is vital, coordinating them can be like herding cats; cross any and you’re looking at a dog’s breakfast.

The Linear Model is Dead

The model described above has been in place since the dawn of the internet.

It’s reasonable to assume the technological advances since then has made it even more critical to employ specialists for each aspect of your online business.

This often ends up causing headaches since there is no central coordinating factor.

What if there were a more holistic approach to building your business online?

Instead of a number of specialists all adding their own confusion to the mix, why not employ a professional in ALL those fields?

What Is a Web Consultant?

A web consultant is like a holistic general practitioner for your business’s online needs.

They bring together the specialties of developers, designers, and marketers, creating a cohesive internet strategy tailored to your goals.

Instead of treating your website as an isolated project, a web consultant evaluates your entire online ecosystem:

• Are your web pages designed to convert visitors into customers?
• Is your site optimized for search engines (SEO) to attract organic traffic?
• Are your online ads targeting the right audience, and is your budget being spent effectively?
• Are you getting a lot of unqualified leads, wasting your time or are you getting pre-qualified leads, already ready to buy?
• Is your email marketing going nowhere fast, or is it like an ATM bringing you revenue on every send?

A web consultant ensures that all these elements work together seamlessly, delivering better results with less effort on your part.

And the best part is you only need to deal with ONE person, not 3 or 4.

How a Web Consultant Can Transform Your Business

Let’s revisit Susie Jones.

After realizing her DIY site wasn’t working, she hired a web consultant. Here’s how they turned things around:

1. Audit and Strategy: The consultant identified the site’s bottlenecks, from slow loading times, vague and generic copy, lack of clarity and poor navigation. They created and implemented a plan to optimize the site for user experience and search engines.
2. Design Overhaul: The consultant revamped the site to align with Susie’s brand while improving usability and accessibility.
3. Development Enhancements: The web consultant fixed broken links, improve mobile responsiveness, and streamlined the checkout process.
4. Marketing Integration: They implemented SEO strategies, created targeted ad campaigns, began lead generation techniques, added a pre-selling mechanism, implemented an automated 5-star review process and created an automated email campaign.

Within three months, Susie’s site traffic tripled, and her sales grew by 60%.

The investment in a web consultant paid off, saving her time, stress, and money in the long run.

Why You Need a Web Consultant in 2025

The digital landscape is evolving rapidly, and businesses need to keep up. A web consultant is your strategic partner, helping you:

• Save time by streamlining processes and managing specialists.
• Reduce costs by avoiding trial-and-error marketing or poorly optimized websites.
• Increase sales by creating a seamless, user-friendly online experience.

Whether you’re launching your first website or optimizing an existing one, a web consultant ensures that your efforts lead to measurable results.

My name is Kevin Gilleard, owner of GillyTech. I have been in the web development and internet marketing game for 15 years.

Throughout my career I have run every part of the internet marketing stack from systems administration, web design and development to sales, email and fulfillment.

My clients have enjoyed millions in additional revenue thanks to the simplicity and effectiveness of Web Consulting.

Schedule a free 15 minute call with me and let’s see what I can do to make your business boom!