The question on most business owners' minds is, 'How to Find Affordable Web Design To Boost Your Business'.
Websites are great for small businesses
They’re brilliant advertisements. An authoritative and trustworthy website can bring in leads, twenty-four hours a day.
Websites offer an outstanding ROI: so it’s not surprising that world-class web design can be staggeringly expensive. Nonetheless, a modest budget can still get you a high-quality design that fits with your ongoing business needs.
The challenge for smaller businesses is to find a way to balance cost and quality.
In this post we’ll talk you through some of your options. If you know you’re working on a shoe-string budget - or if you’ve already had some overblown quotations for your design - don’t despair. There are ways to find great design, even for a modest investment.
Great Web Design Can Be Affordable
First, let’s just be clear: this post is about cost-effective web design. It’s not about low-quality web design.
Unfortunately, whatever price you pay for a website, there’s a chance that you’ll get shoddy work. There are horror stories for all price points.
The problems might be on the surface: with unappealing colour design, page layout, or navigation systems.
But the deeper problems are equally worrying. A good-looking site can be built with bulky code, making it difficult to load. Hiring an off-shore may be cheaper, however, it's not surprising to hear of sites that look great but are made with coding which means you can't update them without going back to the developer for every. single. change. A badly scripted site will also be difficult to adapt or develop as your business grows.
And if your designers don’t build a properly responsive website, you might not realise how badly it displays on a phone or tablet. By the time a customer or client tells you, you’ll already have lost business to your competitors.
So whether you’re looking to pay hundreds of dollars or thousands, get to know what ‘good' design looks like. This is a subject that website designers love discussing! You can find out what web designers are talking about on Instagram, or look to specific designers for guidance.
Whatever their rates, a quality designer will be proud of the websites they build. And you don’t need to pay top dollar to get good results.
Use Templates to Get Yourself Started
However, if you really are worried about investing in your site, you can make a start on it yourself.
Once upon a time, you’d have to learn reams of HTML tags before you did anything. Nowadays, most tech-savvy business leaders can produce a decent-looking setup,
Choose a domain name, register for a hosting account, and sign up to a service like Wix, Squarespace, Canva, and WordPress. These companies are well-known for good reason: they reliably help novices build their web presence, without major costs.
When you’re doing things for yourself, you’ll find that ‘less is more’. A few simple pages can introduce your company, your brand, your products and services, and offer potential customers a next step to take.
You won’t create a masterpiece on your own. But you create a way for clients to easily find your products and services, building trust and engagement as you go.
Freelance Platforms are a Risky Choice for web design
If you don’t have the time to invest in creating a site yourself, you can look for someone to look after that responsibility. Generally, these freelancers are off-shore and in a different time zone.
The cheapest available workers often advertise via freelancer platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and People Per Hour. Such platforms can be very useful, offering some security around payment and delivery.
There’s heaps of great freelancers on these platforms. And sometimes, you’ll find people offering first-rate services at a very low price. Freelancers from countries with lower GDPs than yours may have a high level of skill, with much lower compensation expectations.
However, these channels come with high risks.
It can be difficult to get to know the freelancer. In spite of their eagerness, you might find it challenging to communicate your needs. And overall, you could just end up with much lower-quality work than you expected.
So, going through a freelance platform is an option. But you may end up getting much less than you hoped for. If these platforms seem too good to be true - they almost certainly are!
An option is to hire a local freelancer to develop the design and produce a Scope of Works (SOW) to provide to the developer. This will ensure you get exactly what you want in relation to design, functionality and ability to update.
Connect with a Freelance Web Design Specialist
Those freelancer platforms have some major flaws. But there are other ways to find a good freelancer who balances value, service, and quality.
A personal referral is a great way to proceed. If you can’t find a direct contact, LinkedIn is space to start a conversation with a freelance designer, giving you insights into their attitudes, priorities, and skills.
Furthermore, hiring within your locality can help you to communicate better than with someone who lives kilometres away.
Your local area may offer cheaper options than the biggest urban centres. For example, affordable web design in Melbourne, Adelaide, or Sydney will be hard to find! you may have more luck finding affordable web design in Seaford, or affordable web design in Frankston.
Conclusion
Whatever the size of your business, there’s a way to build a quality website - whether that’s through a template, a freelance platform, or a personal contact. Affordable web design is achievable!
If you’re struggling with your website, why not get in touch and see how we can help? At Manage My Marketing, we are proud to create websites that help deliver inbound leads.
