Why its Expensive to invest in cheap Website Design
These days, everyone you want to do business with will check out your website – sorry but it’s FACT!
Your website is the foundation of all your outbound marketing and your brand and image building campaigns. So a really creative website design enables potential customers to find, understand and remember your business.
However, this will only happen only if your website is designed professional from the ground up or it will just another bad site that, (if you are lucky no one will find, or take notice of even when they do get there!) will put off more of those hard-earned prospects than it converts.
Its tempting when money is tight, such in as the current environment, to be tempted by the idea of saving money by opting for a one of those cheap offers; you know; “get your own website for just £9.99 a month – 100s of superb templates that work” or getting your sister’s boyfriend’s mum’s cleaner’s cat whose previous owner worked in IT do your website cheaply as a favour.
So, what are the key attributes that will make your website stand-out and grab the attention of valuable potential clients? It’s vital that your website design is attractive, impactful, interesting and professional. If your website doesn’t look good and hold attention, no one will bother to want to know more about your business
And to be really effective and hold peoples attention, your website must be designed to must convey the essentials of your business proposition clearly – and in your customers’ terms – not yours (more on this later!). And quickly – you have 10 seconds to make an impact.
Now, what if your website design fails to achieve all this?
FACT 1 – A badly designed Website will distort your Brand Image
Its crucial to your business growth that the way that visitors to your site perceive you the way you want them to perceive you. A badly designed website will misrepresent your business and will destroy your brand image. If visitors are unable to find out what your business represents through your website, then they will make all sorts of assumptions. You want them to be absolutely clear about what you do and why they should pick you.
FACT 2 – Bad Website Design Will Have A Negative Impact On Your Business
No one wants to convey the wrong message through their website deliberately. But, if your website accidentally conveys a wrong or negative message then it may actually make people dislike you and your brand and you may never be able to recover from this. Its hard to change perceptions and one of the great things about the web and social media is that word spreads fast – remember that this can work against you as well!
FACT 3 – A Bad Website will Slowly and Silently Damage your Business
If sales are not meeting target, often businesses will spend time and resource trying to treat the symptoms, but actually fail to realise that it’s their brand image which is fundamentally causing them trouble. These days your brand image is mostly recognised through your website and these businesses continue to use a poorly designed website and continue to scratch their head as to why all their efforts seem to be ineffectual. This will cause significant damage to your business, but is fact that a lot of businesses still soldier on with a badly designed site and talk themselves into believing that its good enough and anyway a top website will cost a lot of money.
FACT 4. Cheap Website Design will Actually Cost you More
Small and Medium sized business, especially start-ups, tend to try and save money by investing the minimum they can get away with on marketing. There is then a great temptation to either do it themselves (its pretty easy if you have basic IT skills) get a friend to do it, or they hire a cheap designer.
If they are smart they will eventually realize that their website is not helping move the business forwards, because it doesn’t look professional. So, they again search for another designer. However, this time they hire an expensive designer, believing that the more you pay the better result you will get. This is no guarantee for success; there are some great graphic designers out who do not understand website design is not the same as good graphic design.
If they are smart and lucky they will then find a marketing and design company who can advise about how to create a website that both looks good and works hard to create a stream of great pre-qualified prospects to fill the sales funnel.
Doing it themselves or getting their sister’s boyfriend, cat whose previous owner worked in IT to do it or hiring a cheap website designer in the beginning will actually cost more in the future.
FACT 5 A Bad Website will ensure your Marketing Efforts Will Fail
Commonly, after designing a website, businesses use it as a destination to promote their business via different means such as sales literature, direct mail, e-marketing, radio advertising etc. You will spend a ton of hard earned cash sending all those great prospects to your site – they will expect to see something professional and will be disappointed. You will end up wasting hundreds if not thousands of pounds AND those marketing campaigns targeted to drive traffic to your bad website will totally backfire and you will continue to ruin your business image.
So Avoid All The Hassle!
As a small or medium sized business – indeed any sized business; you cannot afford to go through all this. It can all be very simply avoided by making a your first smart decision i.e. hire an experienced designer who is a proven website designer who understands the power of great graphic design, the various technology options for website development AND who really understands the fundamentals of SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing. Be a successful business owner by doing what you do best and to get genuine specialists to support your activity. Promote your business effectively with top quality website design and position your business properly in the market.
Author Matthew Simmons
