Why you should hire a website consultant

Published on December 15, 2025, Modified on June 21, 2026

tl;dr: Hiring a website consultant gives you 1:1 access to expert advice, feedback, and assessment of your DIY website building efforts.

Consultants in any industry are established and experienced within their trade, and hired to provide professional advice, or offer objective feedback on a case-by-case basis.

As a website consultant with over 30 years of website-making experience, I can step in at any point of your project to support you with the before, during, or after:

Before
I consult on the steps needed to properly strategize and plan out your website:

Branding Guidelines
Content Strategy
User Experience

During
I consult on the typical design and development phases of a website project:

Web Design
WordPress Development
Accessibility and Responsiveness

After
I consult for ongoing management and optimization of existing websites:

SEO
Blogging
Maintenance

Knowing what consultancy is may be enough to understand why you should hire a website consultant in the first place, but if you’re not yet convinced I’ll outline some real-life scenarios where you can see how having a website consultant on your side can make all of the difference.

Why you should hire a website consultant? The stack of journals, magnifying glass, and maps shown on this wooden desk represent the knowledge and experience that goes into planning a website. — An experienced website consultant has the expertise to put together a plan, before you start your website adventure, so you’re more likely to be prepared for anything!

Why DIY-ers should hire a website consultant

If you are not a trained designer or developer but have the responsibility of creating or maintaining a website, you should absolutely hire a website consultant.

Website consulting before you start your website

Consulting at the beginning of your project will help you form a process and become aware of what steps to take.

A lot more goes into creating a website than you might think. Sure, you can select a template, swap out the images and text, and press go, but if you do you might find yourself wondering why your website isn’t performing as well as you would have liked.

For example, as someone who builds websites professionally, I have a 6-phase process where each stage is accounted for:

Discovery,
Strategy,
Design,
Development,
Launch, and
Post-Launch.

Within each of these phases are multiple deliverables that must be completed before the website is ready to launch. It may sound like a lot but going through each step, in order, will almost always reflect a more efficient and cohesive project.

“A developer or agency can make sure your site looks great, is customized to your needs and is easy to navigate for web visitors. They can optimize it for search engines so it ranks higher in search results. They can save you the time and effort you’d have to devote to creating a DIY site. And they can build in back-end functionality to integrate the site with your other business systems.” – BDC

If you have DIYed your website and haven’t been thrilled by your results, ask yourself these questions:

Did you design and layout your website without having your logo, brand colours, or typography guidelines in place?
Did you test all your pages on desktop, tablet, and mobile to ensure your content displays properly across all devices?
Did you follow best practices for both SEO and Accessibility when building your website?
Did you do any keyword research, editing, or optimization of your website copy before populating?

Essentially, the steps you take during Discovery and Strategy phases provide you with answers to questions that will inevitably arise during website Design and Development phases.

Hiring a website consultant during these early brainstorming stages can set you up with a proper roadmap so you’re not left trying to figure out what you need to learn to be a one-time professional designer or developer.

Close up view of UI Developers brainstorming the layout and content of a website. — When you build your own website a lot of questions arise. Instead of scouring the internet for multiple answers, work 1:1 with a website consultant to get custom feedback meant specifically for you and your website.

Website consulting during your website project

Consulting during your project will give you a third-party perspective, professional feedback, and insights before you launch to the public.

You may have already poured the blood, sweat, and tears into your website. You could launch it as is, but wouldn’t it be better to make sure you haven’t missed anything important?

Whether it’s broken links, no site icon, poor responsive design when viewing the site on mobile, or just about anything else that can go wrong – it can’t hurt to have someone else audit your work…

…especially if they already know what to look for!

Why copywriters should hire a website consultant

Copywriters know their stuff. They do endless amounts of research, are skilled and trained with grammar and editing, and have a gift for creating words.

Writing for the web is different.

There are keywords that you need to optimize for, heading tags that need to be used in a certain order for accessibility, CTAs for lead generation, and integrated internal or external links.

Website copywriters that have a good understanding of how their words are integrated into a site will write better content. It’s science, or something!

💡 Tip: Start by learning how WordPress SEO plugins work and what focus keywords are.

Cropped photo of a woman planning using sticky notes on a whiteboard. — More than one role goes into building a successful website. Support yourself with the mentorship and guidance of a website consultant, to fill in those gaps that your current skill sets lack.

Why agencies and graphic designers should hire a website consultant

Agencies manage to give their clients specialized services by employing multiple experts in their respective fields, or subcontracting one-off contracts to freelance web developers.

If an agency already has an in-house graphic designer, website work is often put on their plate. However, being trained in print, brand, or marketing design doesn’t immediately translate to web best practices or standards.

This is where a website consultant can help!

“During the preparation stage for my client’s website redesign project, it became clear to me that I would need support from a website developer. I was looking for someone who would not take over the project but instead, who could guide me and who could coach me through the process.” – Katia K., Graphic Designer

As a graphic designer, pairing with a website consultant, you will:

learn best practices to continue implementing in the future,
be able to ask hands-on troubleshooting questions via shared screens, and
offset missing skills or expertise needed to develop a successful website.

The initial cost of having two individuals work together will pay for itself as you build upon your skills, bringing more experience to your future projects.

This can be especially beneficial to my fellow freelancers out there, as knowledge is our power, gaining the confidence to take on new website projects and build our portfolio is heck’n rewarding!

A very excited individual sitting cross legged at the end of a blue couch with a laptop in their lap, excitedly raising both arms in the air, celebrating the launch of their new website. — Be proud of the websites you launch, knowing you put your best effort into publishing them.

💡 Tip: Learn how to prepare for a professional website consultation.