Are cheap websites good value?

If you're looking for a cheap website on a tight budget, there is a chance that the web designer might be doing it for a hobby or to make some extra money in their spare time. It is therefore likely that they have limited experience, technical and design skills.

This could be perfect for you if you’re on a very tight budget and your business isn’t dependant on your website reliably and efficiently generating enquiries, leads and sales, but a lack of flexibility, scalability, expertise and experience could quickly lead to costly problems and restrictions.

Understandably you won't want to spend more money than you have to, but it could be wise to avoid entrusting the design and management of your website to inexperienced or part time web designers who can only attract business by being the cheapest.

Here are some of the things to be aware of when choosing a web designer based mainly on price...

Corner Cutting
Undercutting the competition usually means cutting corners on the work they do.

To build even a small professional website properly can take time, because the needs of the business will need to be discussed and understood, and the needs and expectations of their target audience will need to be given sufficient attention. Those needs will also need to be met... and tested... on desktop, tablets, and mobile.

Search engine success
SEO success usually doesn’t happen without analysis, tweaking and monitoring, which can take time, effort and experience. In addition there might be Schema markup used on each page to enhance search engine results, and also Open Graph tags. These all need to be set up and tested properly.

Getting what you pay for
This is why professional web designers and developers charge more. But that's not unreasonable, given the skills required and the time involved. On the other hand cheap websites are likely to have been built very quickly. That could mean:

   • little attention to detail;
   • a That will have to do approach to getting the job done in the limited time available.
   • an increased chance of there being problems, technical issues and design flaws.

For example the website might look okay on a laptop but doesn’t work properly on mobile because of oversized images impacting speed, as well as width and other layout and design issues.

Problems
If anything goes wrong, how willing is the web designer likely to be to spend the time to investigate and implement a fix, and thoroughly test it afterwards to make sure that the fix hasn’t led to another problem.

The likelihood of you needing a more experienced web designer to fix those problems or even build you a new website is therefore quite high. Problem solving, testing and monitoring takes time, patience and experience, which are rarely top of the list for those web designers out there who can only attract business by being the cheapest.

Unless the web designer continually produces lots of cheap websites with a quick turnaround so they can move onto the next, and the next, and the next, they might not be able to stay in business for very long, and then what will happen to your website?

Why not call us for an informal chat? We might be able to advise and help you on your way without costing you a penny!