Why You Will Probably Pay Too Much for Website Design
Why Design Firms are Worried – And how you benefit
When you are unfamiliar with how to carry out a certain task, many services will be available out there for you to use. The question is, how much are they charging you and why? If there is an abundance of options available to you, the price usually goes down. If it is more of a niche market, the options may be much more limited so the price would most likely be higher. In web design, however, that does not seem to be the case.
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A more accurate description would actually be, that it is more extreme. On one hand, you have very expensive custom web design services that cost thousands of dollars and you are not required to do much of anything. (For that price you shouldn’t though right?) On the other hand, you have the very cheap option where you are given the basic tools to design most everything yourself. Even though there are literally thousands of options available to you out there, there doesn’t quite seem to be a middle ground.
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On top of that and to further complicate things, the cheap design services that give you the tools to take care of the design process yourself almost always have a closed system or a proprietary format. This then only runs on their software and on their hardware. On the totally custom web design services that don’t even start at anything below a whopping $1,000 or more, you may have a design made that you actually know nothing about. You also would not be able to make small edits without the designer’s services. This again costs you time and money each time.
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Long-Term Costs – And what it really costs you
Another scenario is a web design company that may only charge a couple hundred dollars or so, but it is a monthly charge. Do you really want to keep paying for the same design every month? A $200 per month fee, for example, may not seem like a lot for a site design. Besides it’s important to your business or online image since a lot of your sales come through there. However, that will eventually come to nearly $2,500 per year. In this case, you may be better off with that one time fee of a thousand dollars or more!
So is there a reason why this is the case? What has many design companies worried is the rise of Wix that gives you the freedom to create, design and develop your web presence. Having this web design tool gives professional designers the ability to design websites for clients in a very efficient and highly customizable way. With the introduction of the newer Editor X, this has been elevated even further to a professional level.
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Wix continues to be the dominating website design platform with a majority market share. It is the fastest growing web based design tool for several years in a row.
Ensuring that all plugins and add-ons are developed by Wix and tested thoroughly for stability and easy of use creates a user friendly and reliable web design platform. Even with third-party Wix plugins are they ensured to conform with Wix standards and stability. Wix is not just a blogging tool that developed into an unstable and unsecured web design tool, but developed from the start with web design in mind.
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Why Design Firms are Worried – And how you benefit
So why does that have designers worried? Because it finally bridges the gap between expensive and proprietary custom web design services that they can no longer charge a small fortune for and very cheap do-it-yourself designs that in many, many cases simply look awful. This is especially true in regards to responsive
design which allows a website to look good on a desktop computer as well as a tablet and smartphone.
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Since WordPress itself is free, you do not need to pay for the software. Using a powerful web design tool called Divi, a small number of design companies such as Hosting And Designs L.L.C. are able to offer custom web design services geared towards those clients who want that $2,000 looking website (many designers charge a lot more). They may even have an interest in knowing how to edit parts of their own site themselves. A small number of design firms such as HostingAndDesigns.com can whip out all the bells and whistles. We can create that same thousand dollars or more looking website. At the same time, still adhering to important web design practices that Google demands;
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1) Responsive design.
2) Search engine friendly design.
3) Fast loading.
4) User/visitor friendly.
5) This will go on but you get the point…
Many proprietary and cheap do-it-yourself web design services often times do not comply with industry design standards. This means they all show up differently in various web browsers such as Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox etc. Many times they are actually not mobile friendly either, even though they may even appear to be on your particular browser. Your visitors will no doubt be using one of at least four major web browsers available. If a design looks good in the Chrome browser but not so great on the Safari browser, that means millions of iPads and iPhones will not display your website correctly.
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Self-Designed – Can be risky
A good comparison is when logos are designed by professionals and those that are not. A logo is not text next to a small image, but how many logos have you seen that look like that? Too many. Work with someone who can work with you to accomplish that.
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Your company defines your logo, your logo doesn’t define your company.
The same goes for your website. All too often website owners view templates as a design that can define what their business, hobby, passion or local blog’s mood and the theme is going to be. Using the super inexpensive do-it-yourself templates for a web page design will do this. In addition, you will end up with a design that looks remarkably similar to a few million other sites out there. It will also have defined your site at the same time. You don’t want your online presence to take this route. You don’t want a logo to look like that either. Make a good first impression on your visitors just like a logo. Logo’s and websites will help your visitors or clients remember the good experience they had in dealing with you. Don’t ruin that by going the cheap route and hurting your image year after year.
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If your budget dictates you having to use templates, make sure the web designers can at least steer you in the right direction on what template is appropriate for you to use as well as, color, type, and layout. Templates are not evil of course as they are a viable low-cost option in a minority of situations, but it’s easy to pick the wrong one since you don’t have any design experience and templates rarely ever have anyone to guide you on which one to use for your particular project.
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The old saying; you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover does not apply in the custom web design services world one bit. Web designs are always judged by their “cover”. It needs to appeal to your visitors of different backgrounds, devices, and expectations every single time.