Have you ever wondered why some companies pay tens of thousands of euros for a website when another company paid just a few hundred euros? Is there a big difference between an expensive, cheap and inexpensive website? What to choose?
For small businesses, we always say that price is very important, but the price of an “affordable” website will always be a much more economical long-term solution than a cheap website.
It’s worth protecting! Website design companies , including those who call themselves professional web design companies, often advertise an extremely low price as a strategy to grab customer traffic. However, this low price only becomes an illusion when (only later) you understand what a web design company actually offers – and then what you have to pay for any “optional” add-ons or changes.
Before we delve into the specific differences, we want to define the price terms we will talk about below:
Expensive – costly, labor-intensive, and difficult to perform. Expensive products are usually of extremely high quality and are superior to all others.
Affordable – a service or product that you can afford for yourself or your business, it is within financial means, it replaces the most expensive high-end products, and consumers buy affordable products where the price paid depends on quality rather than a limited budget.
Cheap – easy to perform, simple, uncomplicated, poor, poor. Cheap products or services are often a treasure for the consumer in a deprived state, but it is understood that they will only last for a short time and will not bring benefits as they are perceived to be of poor quality compared to others.
No matter how easy it may be to explain the difference between expensive and cheap websites in one sentence, it is impossible to do so, because, as in many places, you need to know about this area. It is for this reason that there are still developers of “cheap” or “free” websites, as well as “free” development platforms, which we will discuss in more detail in the next article.
However, we will explain the essential differences in detail below!
There are many reasons why you can consider building a cheap website.
Many business owners do not consider websites to be the most important marketing tools. But with a great website, you can get a lot more customers and orders than you might think. It’s not just about conveying your business ideas or services on your website. It also has to do with having a website that is optimized to be found.
Sites can be more complex than visible on the surface. You think you want something simple, but will it be easy? The simplicity of a website is not only related to the number of pages on the website, but also to the “simplicity” of the layout. Rather, the systems that create those pages. A website that looks “simple” can be quite complicated.
Honest enough, but before ordering a website, carefully consider your niche, its dependence on digital marketing, and how much you could earn from a new order, then consider what quality of website you can get for the size of your chosen investment. Usually a cheap website doesn’t even pay off because it’s just not worth it.
You talked to a website development agency and you were convinced that all you needed was their cheap website. You’re even glad you found such a cheap solution. But there are always a few things to consider. How generally can some agencies offer such a low price?
We know of a lot of cases where website creation agencies even advertise for free, but there has never been a time when a website would be really free if you go into your terms. In most cases, cheap or free sites charge a significantly higher annual fee, making it more expensive in a few years than paying immediately. Also, websites are not optimized properly, often the content needs to be loaded by themselves, creating pages that take a long time for the inexperienced.
Many agencies that offer cheaper sites will use pirated add-ons or themes. It’s not just unethical and illegal. It also violates the security of your site. These plug-ins and themes can be downloaded from questionable locations. In addition, they are unlikely to be updated, leading to significant security issues. One of the main ways hackers hack WordPress sites is outdated software.
Website design and development services are heavily influenced by the 60/40 rule. This means that 60% of all work takes up only 40% of the time, with the last 40% taking up 60% of the time. The work that takes less time is website design, layout, uploading text and photos. However, there is also a less visible side to the site, its overall completeness, structure, optimization and tracking, which takes a long time. This means that companies looking to cut costs often spend the last 40 percent. How does this affect you? Your website will be imperfect, not fast, secure or search engine optimized, unlike a properly designed website.
Cheap websites give you significantly fewer customers because they are not search engine optimized. A variety of factors affect your ranking on Google and, as a result, your site’s ability to attract and convert visitors.
Website loading speed is a factor that most people do not take into account when managing their website. However, this is one of those things that we immediately notice when we visit a slow website. It becomes very frustrating once that is the foundation. Google also knows this and treats you worse if your site is too slow. Why? Because Google and other search engines want to give our customers the best experience and the most up-to-date information. If your site takes a long time to load, visitors will shut down your site and stay on the page longer. Google knows this and uses this metric to determine the quality of your website. In fact, according to Google, website speed is a valid signal for website rankings. Google Link: Speed is now one of
Google search and ad ranking factor.
One thing is clear, it is very important to make a fast website. But what’s so hard to make a website fast? Why don’t agencies just make faster websites?
The answer is simple, getting a good website loading speed is a long process.
Impressions of a website created by competitors before we redesigned it. GTMetrix Speedometer Data.
Website caching can take a long time. Developers do not have time to implement these changes at such a cost. When you pay € 400 per website, you can’t expect them to make these changes, as it wouldn’t be profitable for developers to take the time to optimize their website, the site will contribute to a huge sea of slow websites. A lot of customers ignore the speed at which a site loads unless it’s really tragic. Many people perceive a website as well designed if the design is beautiful, rather than if the loading speed is optimized.
GTMetrix Speedometer data from a page we created.
A well-designed website should take up to 3 seconds to load. The information on the screen should appear much faster than all the remaining information on the site is loaded, or when a large amount of information is loaded, the preloader should be used (a small rotating icon in the middle of the site).
Internal website structures designed to grow are often not optimized. When you pay for a cheap site, it probably won’t have extensive dynamic content generation systems. Search engines love new content. Let’s say you can’t dynamically generate pages based on information you enter in your content management system. In this case, you probably won’t be able to easily create new content, upload articles to rank better in search engines. Or the design of the uploaded content will be too different from the overall design of the website.
When creating a website, we first start with research and planning on how to get around competitors. Every page and item should be created for some reason. The site is growing outside the delta that it just exists. There needs to be constant change, maintenance and an appreciation of how the audience behaves on the site, making an effort to get them back. This should bring new content relevant to the existing audience at the time. For example, we created this page and plan to create a directory of useful information for various business owners. The information provided here is derived from our own experience in the professional industry, and we truly believe it is valuable information.
By comparison, a poorly designed website will most likely be done with a template. Templates are usually not designed to create pages with specific layouts, they contain common sections that contain only text or images that can be changed. While these “one-size-fits-all” solutions may seem like the right site, they won’t be optimized for a good user experience in a long time, and many modifications will be required to change at least something. We are frustrated to monitor website developers or designers who try to circumvent template restrictions with questionable practices. An example might be a time when we had to redesign an entire client site because another agency was using slow email. The store template has been created by more than 20 important non-email pages. Trade. The trouble was that the pages took 12 seconds to load, the browsing experience was not intuitive and the whole layout looked very poor. In the end, the customer had to pay twice for 20 pages and the entire site until they finally got a professional and optimized solution.
That’s right. Cheap websites can be much more expensive in the long run. More than 50% of our business is made up of customers who have not been satisfied with their previous website development agency. It may not sound like it, we know, but hear us right.
Maybe you, like many, have already had a huge headache when it came to making small changes to a website, but it was extremely difficult to find a company to replace it or had to pay a lot of money for it?
Example: about a month ago, we were contacted by a woman who had an email with another agency half a year ago. store, but she and people close to her have noticed that the top menu of the site is very awkward and pointless. She figured out what she wanted the menu on her website to look like, drew it with a drawing program, and asked the same agency to change the menu according to the woman’s vision. The agency knew that they were using a template to create the site, and that it would take a long time to reprogram the entire template to change the menu. The agency did not want to admit to the woman that it would be difficult and costly to do so, so she simply gave up the job. The woman spent a lot of time looking for someone to change the menu, but no one who watched wanted to take on the job. In the end, the woman had to pay over 100 euros to finally have someone change the menu.
After all, it’s such big money for such a small change! And all because of the agency that chose to build such a website with a template. We have heard countless examples of such “cheap” sites, but people still simply don’t know where to start when ordering a site.
For all of the reasons listed, we choose templates only in very exceptional cases where a website is needed very quickly, on a low budget, for a short-term solution where user-friendly customization of the website is not critical. We typically only create professional, unique, and optimized websites that can always be modified, supplemented, and applied based on the visitor’s experience on the site or any vision of the owner.
We have seen so many examples of companies buying websites for a few hundred euros and then wondering why they are not growing online. Usually the reason is that there are so many vital components of a website, not just the design of the website, what you see on the surface. Many companies choose to contact certain website development companies only for design updates. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things to consider in order to have a growing website, but those things are often overlooked. And who will update the website software to ensure the security of the website? Is the site fast enough? How can you create new, exciting content for your audience and search engines? What optimization has been done in general to make your website grow? What steps can be taken to turn more visitors into customers? This is just a small list of things that are vital but not obvious to unsuspecting customers. Once you get a poor site and realize that changes are needed, you won’t even be able to optimize and maintain your site properly from scratch.
If the developer of your site did not talk about maintenance, then your website may have security vulnerabilities.
WordPress, for example, now manages about 40% of its 10 million websites. From 2017 WordPress is part of the HackerOne program, where people are rewarded for hacking into websites and finding vulnerabilities.
WordPress itself is not insecure. Unfortunately, the people who build your site create the most vulnerabilities. Common errors:
A trusted agency will keep your plugins and topics up to date. They will have reliable backups of your site and other precautions to prevent hackers from hacking your site. Of course, nothing is “impossible,” but if you strategically build more obstacles along the way, intrusion will be much less likely and site recovery will be much smoother.
Before building your website, we always try to fully understand your business and customer needs. We get to know your industry, your competitors and where you are in the market. This will allow us to create a website that can really interact with your visitors and build trust in your business prospects.
Without wasting time understanding your business, how can we ensure that your new website is tailored to your values and customer needs?
We see an infinite number of websites that perform poorly and never generate a return on investment as developers miss this important first step. They rush straight to the design stage without doing any research.
Your website needs to get the job done. Everything is fine with a “beautiful” website, but it has to generate customers.
We will design your site based on a specific purpose. We will take information from our research and design your pages to speak directly to your target market. We will also use certain encouragements and content on your site to encourage your prospective visitors to take the next step with you.
Other web designers may not take the time to create a conversion-oriented website. They may completely skip this step and probably won’t make a sale.
Each website we create is unique.
Believe it or not, many web “designers” don’t really create anything. They use pre-made templates or themes to build your site. They will just buy an online broker template for around € 30 and then install it on your website. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you do it yourself, but if you pay a web designer and they use a template, what do you really get for your money? We don’t like templates, we know they have very limited editing and they often have a lot of unnecessary features that can slow down your site.
We create all our websites brand new. Each of our clients receives a unique website designed specifically for their business. It is tailored to speak directly to your target audience.
Your website will be visible worldwide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Also, if your site is a success, you’ll need full access to add, edit, and delete things right away. Once you’ve created your new site, we’ll teach you how to make the changes yourself. You will have full access to your site information so you can update it at any time. Your website must belong only to you! Also, everything related to the website, domain, hosting will be at your will and you will be able to change the service provider or make any changes to the elements of the website at any time. Editing a site will never require a major overhaul and changes will never be expensive.
Understandably, having a visually appealing website is beneficial for any business that is trying to attract new visitors or retain customers. But as we have already mentioned, beauty is not everything. According to Google, if a site loads in 1-3 seconds, there is a 30% chance that a user will leave it compared to a site that loads in less than 1 second. In short, even if you invest a lot in design and page flexibility and even if you optimize the speed of your website but have problems with hosting, you will lose a lot of traffic.
Hosting is an integral and very important part of a website, it is a virtual space, a server that is rented from a provider that supports the operation of your website on the server 24/7.
Thus, the response time of the server depends on the quality of the hosting, which contributes to the overall loading speed of the website. If a website loads in 5 seconds or more, it is simply left prematurely by virtually all visitors, and you simply lose the opportunity to connect with these potential customers. Every good programmer knows how important it is to optimize the code of a website, but little one thinks about the chosen hosting provider, even less does anyone understand and know the real situation.
We are interested in research, and we know from experience what hosting is the fastest and best in terms of price. Based on various researches, such as the response time research of the most popular hosting server conducted by techonologijos.lt , we see that hostinger.lt does its job at its best. Our hostinger partners are located in Lithuania, but their bases have spread over more than 170 countries in 9 years, and their services are used by 29 million users. As stated by many, hostinger is the best in Lithuania in terms of its speed, price and customer support.
It is very frustrating for us to watch other website development agencies offer their customers expensive, slow servers that are also still connected to other websites they have created, so the customer does not even get full access to their leased server. We have already switched customers’ hosting to a reliable provider countless times, thus reducing costs and improving the speed of the website. The question is, why do other agencies generally choose inferior hosting providers? The answer is quite simple, creating a website as cheaply as possible, they also earn from your hosting, because they buy a server that holds a lot of websites cheaper and thus lease the space to earn another euro. Well, or just not interested and buy the one you are used to.
Also, we have been their partners for a long time, so we have a personal discount code that we always apply to help our customers save at least a little.
If you want to be found online, search engines should NOT be treated as unintended. We have a lot of experience in search engine optimization (SEO), so we will have to be very careful when creating a new website to make sure that it is designed to be user-friendly not only for the visitor but also for the search engines.
Before Google shows you in the search results list, they’ll want your site to meet certain criteria.
There are so many important factors that can affect your search engine rankings, such as:
You need to be sure that your web designer is doing this and providing an easy, well-optimized website.
Some other agencies will not take search engine requirements into account when creating a website, and you will end up paying for it later. To learn more about SEO and when Google’s ranking may be high, read our other articles.
After the research phase, we start building your site based on your ultimate goal – whether it’s increasing sales or email. Collection of postal addresses, or even brand recognition. We create sites that do what you want. To do this, we will be open to your views and suggestions. Also, let’s say when we don’t think something will work based on our many years of experience creating converting sites. You always decide at the end of the conversation, but we notice that our clients value our partnership and the joint efforts needed to achieve their goals.
We will also advise and help you make the most of your website. The site should not exist in a vacuum! It should be flexible and constantly growing. We provide assistance from content marketing to social media. You will always have a lot of questions during the process and will want someone to advise you. It is likely that we have encountered these issues many times before. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions customers ask us on a daily basis.
After creating your site, you’ll have access to a series of tutorial videos that will break down each element of your site and show you how to make changes in seconds. You’ll always have access to these videos if you need them, and we’ll be happy to post more if you have any questions that haven’t been discussed yet.
Other web design companies may not give you access to their website. They may want to continue to monitor your site and request payment to make changes. We see this constantly, and in some cases, making small changes can cost hundreds of euros.
Even if they give you access, you may not know how to use it. Not very useful.
We provide all the best online tools to make your website a great fit for your business needs.
Your website will be fully equipped with all the best features such as an interactive image gallery, an attractive video library, easy on-page software, social networking capabilities and much more. We buy all the plug-ins you need and fix them, so you don’t have to worry anymore.
Some other web design companies will give you just the bare minimum. They will only install free plug-ins with limited functionality. These add-ons can slow down your site and cause problems later.
We will send you regular updates throughout your website development process. You’ll get detailed videos and screenshots so you can see what we’ve done since we last spoke.
Some web design companies will only update you once or twice throughout the process (usually after you have to follow them). This can make it difficult to keep track of things, not to mention that if you don’t like something when the project is complete, it may take more time and money to come back and make changes.
Beto, if you already have a website but we need to redesign it, we use external servers to build your website. There you will see your new website throughout the development period, but your main website will remain functional and functional. After the development work, we quickly move the entire site to your domain, so you can update in one day and not lose the visitors who found you during the development of the site.
In this long article, we’ve tried to detail the differences between cheap and expensive sites. However, it should be understood that websites can have endless features to work in different business sectors. As a result, the quality and performance of each of the features on a website that just wouldn’t take enough time is drastically different on cheap and expensive websites.
In summary, businesses should do a lot of research before deciding on a website agency. The disadvantages of low-cost websites are unfortunately hard to spot from the surface, and they can include terrible website speed, security, optimization, design, and much more. A great website will not only have a nice website layout, but will also be optimized, fast and secure. I’m sure by reading this article you can understand why it’s worth paying more for your business website. And why cheap sites work against you and not you.
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