What could you expect from a low cost website and cheap web designer?

You'll find plenty of web designers who will happily produce you a cheap website for between £200-£400, and for some people this will be acceptable. But there are many reasons that it might not be.

There could be hidden costs such as additional fees for updates and fixes and other services which many other more realistically priced web design services would usually include in the price.

It's also possible that corners could be cut in the design and production of the website, which result in reliability issues, poor search visibility, and potentially a loss of business due to functional or display errors on desktop and mobile devices.

One very important thing to bear in mind is the technical ability of cheap web designers, and their capacity and willingness to handle updates, but more about that later.

Usually one of the first questions I'm asked by a new potential client is “How much is a website?”

It's perfectly understandable for any web designer to be asked how much a website costs, but it's not always easy to answer.

Here's why...

There is no shortage of ads on social media, YouTube and TV for cheap web design, and in a lot of cases the emphasis is on “The cheaper the better!”

In some cases that is exactly what people want to see, and they'll make a shortlist of low cost web designers who they'll contact and try to negotiate a better price by saying that they could get it done cheaper elsewhere.

I can get a website built for less than half that price!

Do you know what each of those competing web designers will produce for your rock bottom price website?

Do they even know what you need?

Do YOU even know what you need and what your options are, or have you been led to believe that the best and only option for your new website is WordPress?

When starting and running your own business, it makes sense to save money where possible. But when taking everything into consideration from buying equipment, advertising, paying bills, taxes, accountants, etc., in addition to the time spent actually doing what you do for a living, how much do you think you’d have to make each and every day to make your business viable?

Let’s say, for example, that you need to make between £250 and £300 per day.

For a web designer producing budget websites for about £300, that could mean that he’d have to build a new website every single day... That’s 5 websites a week, 20 per month… every single month.

IF he could build that many budget websites each and every month:

• How many of those websites do you think will have been built to the clients specifications?
• How much time will have been spent discussing and creating content, preparing images, deciding on page layout, navigation, colour schemes, contact form creating, etc?
• How many will have been thoroughly tested on mobile and desktop?
• How much attention pre-and-post launch will have been given to SEO (keyword research, website structure, internal linking, progress monitoring, etc)?
• How many of those clients can expect to be given the attention they expect, when there that web designer had also built 19 other websites that month, in addition to the 20 websites the previous month, and will be building another 20 websites the following month?
• How many of those budget web designers are likely to still be in business this time next year, and what will happen to all of those clients and their websites which can no longer be supported?

So when you’re presented with a quote for a new website, it’s worth taking a moment to think about the reasoning behind that quote and the value it could bring to you and your business, instead of responding with the all too familiar response, “I could get it done for half that!”

So besides wanting to know how much, the underlying questions should include:

• What do you expect from your website?
• What do you need the website to do for you?
• Who will be using your website?
• How will you be making people aware of your website?
• Who are your competitors, and what kind of website are they using?
• Do you have content and images which can be used on your website?
• Do you plan on adding and updating your own content after the website has been built?

There are many more possible questions, but the above examples should help you to be clear on what you want, and will help to get the conversation with a web designer off to a good start.

Some people are cautious that if they ask for too much, it will cost them a fortune. That isn't necessarily the case, but if there are specific things that your website absolutely must do or have, then ask!

But then what?

In most cases the website is just a part of the overall picture.

If you're expecting a ball park figure for the cost of a website, and plan on negotiating on price based on other web designers being cheaper, you're likely to be thinking in terms of the thing in the centre of the diagram below... the website ... and nothing else.

The reality is likely to be a cheap unsupported website, with little planning or strategy, a lack of customer focus, and hoping that it will magically attract visitors who will arrive, like what they see, and stick around long enough to become customers.

Is that a chance worth taking?

You'll find plenty of web designers who would be happy to produce a website like this for between £200 and £400 over 2-3 days, and for some people this will be acceptable. But for most businesses it won't be.

Surrounding the website you'll see that discussions, planning, competitor analysis, and other things usually come before design and coding. Further along the process will be implementing ways to get visitors to the website, measuring the number and type of visitors, monitoring what strategies are working and what needs to be improved.

The actual website could be anything from a few pages to a several hundred pages... even more... and you might require functionality to handle anything from tailoring the customer journey based on their characteristics, preferences, and selections made.

Here are some other typical things that many businesses want from their website:

• You might want to sell products, offer discounts or free delivery for orders over a certain quantity or value.
• Do you also need order tracking, cancellation and returns capabilities?
• What about getting people to sign up to a mailing list for news and promotions?
• Do you want methods of allowing people to share your pages on social media with a simple click of a button, or have some of your social media posts display within the pages of your website?

I could go on with many more typical examples of requirements, and all aspects of website's design and functionality will require different types, methods and levels of testing.

So... let’s ask again, “How much is a website?”

This is not intended to scare you into thinking that a website suitable for your needs will be expensive. As long as you have realistic expectations, and don't set out to negotiate between web designers until you find one who will give in and do it for rates far below minimum wage, and then complain that it's slow, won't work on mobile and doesn't get any visitors!

And there are options within a manageable budget...

As previously stated, is no shortage of people offering cheap web design, but why or how can they build websites so cheaply?

Let's look at who is more likely to build a cheap website. They could include:

• A beginner with limited knowledge and experience, and finds it easy to drag images and text into pre-built templates.
• A part time web designer who wants to earn some money from their hobby.
• Designers who are only able to get business by being cheaper than everyone else.
• Someone who might be based in Eastern Europe or Asia.
• A web designer who will use pre-built templates to produce many cheap websites.
• Someone using AI to generate web pages.*

Let's face facts... No solution is completely risk free, but you're more likely to get reliability and have success by using someone with experience, knowledge and commitment to providing a professional service.

Cheap website designers are also unlikely to provide the level of support which most people expect, because they might need to produce several new websites each week to avoid going out of business. Handling so many clients with cheaply built websites can result in lower levels of service, and high instances of reliability issues.

So you might now be asking:

• “What will happen if I want to have my website updated?”
• “What happens if something on my website breaks or it stops working?”
• “What will happen if I can no longer contact the person who built my website?”
• “Will I actually own my website, or will it belong to whoever built it?”
• “Will the web designer be able to handle SEO work to get more people to visit my website?”
• “Will the web designer be able (or even willing) to build landing pages for promotions that I want to run?”
• “Will my website be legally compliant where GDPR, cookies, etc, are concerned?”
• “Will the web designer submit my web pages to Google, Bing and other search engines?”
• “Will the web designer be able to set up Google Analytics so I can see how many visitors I get?”
• and so on...

Targa offers a number of budget-friendly fixed price website packages which go beyond the website and also has a really easy-to-use website cost calculator which you can use to work out what your next website could cost.

Website Cost Calculator Fixed Price Websites