When you hear the words "cheap website design," it probably doesn't ring any alarm bells. Everyone likes cheap! Here's why that's not necessarily a good thing.
Cheap website design is a popular idea. And it makes sense.
In the business world, every decision made is about cutting costs and maximizing profits. Web design is just another line item. Why not cut the costs where you can?
With some websites costing 18 million dollars, it makes sense that business owners are looking for a cheap option to avoid going out of business before the first click comes in.
Unfortunately, a poorly designed website will do anything but cut costs.
At best, a cheap site will reflect poorly on your brand. Your website is an advertisement, and nobody trusts a company with a bad one.
But, depending on your business model, the costs of bad design can be an inability for your company to function. And if that's the case, you'll wish you'd paid a little more.
Here's our look at why the cheapest option isn't the best option.
You Get What You Pay For
This is a cliche, but it's particularly true when it comes to website design.
Building a website takes resources. That means it takes a lot of man hours both building the initial features and testing them time and time again.
Multiply that by the sustained commitment you'll find with any good website designer, and you can see why it's so expensive to have your site built.
Another way to think about it is this: a website isn't just one thing. It's a combination of parts working in unison to create a functioning product.
Just like a smartphone or a car, creating such a complicated machine doesn't come cheaply or easily.
Design Is Art
The ideal web designer treats your website like a passion project. They spend hours learning about design principles and digital marketing trends.
Then they use that information to build your site.
Compare this to the cheap designer. They don't read design blogs. They don't care about design trends like functional minimalism.
They care about making a website as quickly as possible before going on to the next one.
Cheap website design means sacrificing all of the things that make a website interesting or compelling to get one that's merely functional. And this is the best case scenario.
Worst case scenario, you wake up in a few weeks to find major problems with your website.
You Need Commitment
How likely is it that your $5 web designer will fix those problems quickly and well, and for an affordable price?
Not likely at all. His job was selling his service, finishing up, and going on to the next site. As soon as you've paid him, you probably can't expect a sustained commitment to the product.
This means you'll either have to take the website down or spend more money hiring somebody else to fix problems that wouldn't exist if you didn't decide you wanted cheap website design at all costs.
You get what you pay for when it comes to design. And, more importantly, you don't get what you don't pay for.
The Modern Online Customer Is Mobile
You need your website to be mobile friendly.
You aren't just missing out on a lot of customers without a mobile friendly site. You're missing out on the majority of them.
That's because, last year, mobile web browsing overtook browsing via desktop for the first time.
The modern online customer is probably visiting your website from a smart phone. And they don't just expect a design that's passable on this medium: they expect a design that's engineered specifically for it.
If you can't give that to them, their competitors can.
If you go with cheap website design, you won't have the option of delivering high-quality mobile browsing to your customers.
At best, you can get a desktop-based site that looks vaguely passable on a smartphone. At worst, your website will be nonresponsive to the majority of your customers.
At worst, your website will be nonresponsive to the majority of your customers.
Ugly Websites Will Not Be Tolerated
In addition to the importance of mobile traffic, you need to consider the way a bad website looks in 2017.
Years ago, you could get away with a website that phoned it in. The net was new, and people understood that not everybody is a tech genius.
Your customers would be willing to give you a pass on a website that was ugly, not entirely responsive, or just boring.
Today, this will kill your conversion rate by causing your customers to click somewhere else. In 2017, incompetence is a cardinal sin.
If you plan on having any semblance of a conversion rate, you can't afford to skimp on the cost of web design.
Security
Cybercrime costs the global economy $450 billion every year.
When you add to that the loss of productivity you'll no doubt experience from this, you can see just how toxic security flaws can be to a business.
Unfortunately, cheap website design is anything but secure. This is particularly true if you go with the bargain bin companies that offer
This is particularly true if you go with the bargain bin companies that offer web hosting along with their website design services.
If you want a quality and secure website, you'll want to spend a bit more money on design and hosting services.
Even if your website doesn't get hacked, wouldn't you rather have some peace of mind?
That way, instead of focusing on avoiding cyber attacks you can shift your attention to making more money through your social media marketing strategy.
An insecure website is a major headache and can be a major pain in your wallet if you aren't careful to avoid an incident.
This is another reason you absolutely need to avoid cheap website design and hosting.
SEO
One of the most important aspects of digital marketing is search engine optimization or SEO. It's probably why you're reading this post.
Search engine optimization is an incredibly complicated concept. But its goals are simple: make sure that when people search for something, they find you before the competition.
This is important because most people don't do in-depth research online before buying a product or service.
Most people are looking for the first thing that catches their eye. It's easier to solve a problem right away than to look for the best solution available, especially if that solution is four pages deep on Google.
In the same way, physical location is essential to making sales offline, online sales are all about being found first.
And if you aren't the first result for a particular search, one of your competitors is.
A Multifaceted SEO Strategy
Part of having a high-quality strategy is content creation. Blogging and keyword planning can go a long way when it comes to being found.
But part of it is benefitting from the wide variety of options that quality web design gives you for search engine optimization.
Being able to change your URLs and other elements of your site will go a long way. Cheap website design just can't compete with spending a few extra bucks on something good.
SEO really works, and it's one of the reasons expensive web design is likely to give you a high-quality ROI.
Don't be afraid to shell out a few extra bucks for something that really works.
Cheap Website Design vs. Fair Website Design
"All of this is true," you say to yourself. "But I just can't afford expensive, luxury website design."
Luckily, you don't have to.
There's a difference between cheap website design and design being offered for a fair price.
The difference is the goals of the person selling it.
A person selling cheap website design cares about offering the product for as low of a price as possible. Quality, security, and features all enter the back seat.
Basically, as soon as they give you something that can be considered "a website," their job is done.
Website design offered for a fair price, on the other hand, is about putting a high-quality service in an affordable package for your business and your customers.
This means cutting down costs on our end instead of costs on yours.
So instead of spending huge chunks of our budget telling you we offer cheap website design, we spend them getting to work on your site.
This should be an obvious approach. Unfortunately, common sense isn't always common in the tech industry.
Go With The Best Option
Ultimately, the reason to avoid cheap web design is simple.
When you go with the cheapest option, you get a weak product made by disinterested people.
That means being unable to appeal to mobile browsers, failing to take advantage of SEO, and not even having confidence in your security.
To succeed, you don't need to go with the cheapest option. You just need to go with the best option.
We offer high-quality and affordable website design to businesses looking to get a leg up in a digital world.
Our work is creative, user-friendly, and most importantly, built with local businesses in mind.
Whether you're a burger joint or a bank, you need a great digital presence.
So don't get burned by cheap website design. Instead, get started with us for something you and your customers will love.