A lot can go wrong with cheap web design – and often does!
Small business owners often think cheap web design will be enough to promote their business online. That’s understandable, but there’s a catch.
Underinvesting in your website will cost you far more in the long run. It can even cost your entire business.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve helped many small firms recover from this mistake. So I’d rather help you avoid it.
Still, that does not mean every website needs a five- or six-figure budget. After all, my budget web design and affordable web design packages cost far less than that. What it does mean is that simply seeking the cheapest web design you can find is likely to cripple your business.
Skip to “How To Avoid The Trap”
How Can Cheap Web Design Be So Dangerous?
Because business web design isn’t a commodity. It isn’t all the same except for price. It isn’t even a product. It’s a multi-disciplinary, professional business service that involves a lot more than using automated tools to build a website.
Also, because websites are most firms’ main marketing vehicle, competing in a 24/7/365 race for sales. Your competitors invest in professional design specifically because it keeps them ahead of those who don’t.
You won’t win the Grand Prix in a DIY go-kart or cheap runabout.
Why Cheap Websites Cost More
Nothing costs more than lost opportunities. For instance, if your average profit on each sale was £50, losing just one sale a week to competitors with better sites would cost you £2400 a year.
Similarly, no matter how good they look, weak sites need other advertising to drive traffic. That often means paid ads, which tend to cost around £1 per visitor or more.
However, paid ads often don’t work. Most cheap websites convert under 1% of visitors into customers. So paying just £1 per click can easily cost over £100 per sale. It’s easy to overlook this cost because it is incurred slowly, click-by-click.
Investing in a better website can attract free visitors through search engines and get better conversion rates. That reduces the need for an ongoing ad budget and the number of visitors you need to get a sale. So a well-designed site will pay for itself by cutting other marketing costs and boosting your profits.
Still, some other costs of cheap web design depend on who’s doing the work…
The Hidden Cost Of DIY Web Design
If you think DIY web design will save you money, think again. It can be fun, but it will waste a lot of your time. Time is the most valuable resource anyone has. You can never buy back wasted time. So unless you value it properly, you’ll waste far too much of it.
Learning to build a website takes time. Learning to build one that can compete takes far longer. DIY web design adds the cost of that wasted time to all the sums outlined above.
What About Cheap Web Designers?
Sadly, cheap web designers are often either amateurs or moonlighters. Others lack the business experience to help you make money. Many run at a loss, and I’ve met some who didn’t even realise it. None of these will be around long enough to support you when you need it.
Most of these cheap web designers believe they are helping. They just don’t understand how professional design could boost your profits. Some even claim that professional design is “overpriced” — as if all the successful firms who invest in it are just gullible. Risking your business on designers like that is just asking for trouble.
If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. — Red Adair
How To Avoid The Trap
First, here’s what most people imagine a business website needs:
- A good offer — which is true, but that’s your job
- A pretty website — which helps, but is less important than the stuff below
So all you get from most cheap website design services is a pretty site. In fact, many cheap web designers only have a visual (graphics and print) design background, and think that’s all there is to building cheap websites. Some just sell images of web pages as “web design”, expecting you to hire someone else to build the layouts. Within a large corporation, that can be a valid viewpoint, but it’s not what most people want from cheap websites.
Focus On What Really Matters
In any case, good looks don’t help without visitors, and Google doesn’t rank sites by how pretty they are. Besides, making things pretty is art; design is about making them work — and a lot of that involves non-visual skills. So here’s what really matters:
- Audience targeting
- Content quality: relevance, readability, structure, usefulness, interest, expertise, authority
- On-site SEO
- Legal Compliance
- Security — including SSL certificates
- Domain and DNS management
- Server and software maintenance
- Site speed & “web vitals”
- Crawlability: sitemaps & code quality
- Mobile-friendly, responsive web design
- Performance management: stats, analysis & experiments
- Interactivity & Engagement: forms, chat, animation etc.
- User-centric design
- Branding: logo, typography, colours, brand “voice” & values
- Structured data
- Email marketing: newsletters, outreach, deliverability
- Social Proof: reviews, video testimonials, client logos, accreditations
- Off-site SEO (backlinks, directory citations etc.)
- Content updates
- Video marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Process automation
- Accessibility
- Interest Targeting & Keyword Research
- Target Audience Personas (UX/UI)
- Conversion Rate Optimisation & A/B Testing
- Google Business Profile
- Bing for Business
- Paid Ads and remarketing strategies
- Lead magnets and sales funnel design
Overlooking any of those can seriously undermine your chances of success and profits. So to avoid the cheap website design trap, you need to partner with a web designer who understands all of that — and that’s not likely to be “cheap”.
Cost-Effective Websites Beat Cheap Websites
My Affordable Web Design packages include help with the bold items on that list — and options to help with the rest too. So even my budget web design solutions are built with that in mind.
You won’t get that from amateurs or inexperienced designers — and most experienced designers focus on established firms with large marketing budgets. My goal has always been to help smaller businesses.
Most cheap web designers focus entirely on looks and ignore these performance factors. However, I want you to have the best chance of success you can afford. That’s why I offer cost-effective solutions, not just cheap ones.