Website Design Fees: Cutting Corners Cost-Wise Can Cost You More!

• Cheap Website Design Can Turn Around & Bite You! •
• A True Client Story •

Yesterday was a very satisfying day for me professionally. Damian and I provided a beautiful new (and properly SEO’d) website to yet another newbie to the world of online marketing. Now my client, whom I’ll refer to as “Jennie”, can start to really grow her work-at-home business.

I am always excited when I get a new client, especially one who has never marketed their products or services online before. I know how excited I was the first time I viewed my first website on the World Wide Web! It was an awesome experience. I enjoy sharing in that same excitement with my clients when they finally see their website uploaded and live on the internet!

But there’s more to this post than me gushing over how great I feel, and how happy my client is with her new website design.

It Didn’t Start Out All Rosy and Wonderful For Her

Jennie was referred to me about eight months ago by another very satisfied client. She and I talked about what is entailed to get a new website up and running; what it takes to get good rankings in the search engines; what she needs to know about maintaining the website; and of course, how much the website design and search engine optimization services would cost her.

I gladly offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation to prospective clients. I can make a quick assessment of your website’s design and search engine optimization status, or discuss what is involved to get your first website up and running.

Damian and I are very fair and quite reasonable in our design and SEO fees. We pride ourselves on over delivering  all aspects of our services. In our minds, we proposed a very fair price to Jennie for a “simple” yet user friendly and 100% SEO friendly website design.

“OK, Claudia … Let Me Think About That …”

If someone has never had a website before, and really has not done much investigation into the price points and fees that are being quoted for web design and SEO services, it is obviously quite hard then for a newbie to know what is a “fair” price quote and what isn’t.

Unfortunately, apples do not get compared to apples … too often shiny crisp apples get compared to rotting oranges. In other words … if I quote you $1000.00 for a custom  website design, which happens to also include custom header graphics; some special scripts needed in order that it performs as you wish; and keyword research has been performed and all your tags have been written and properly optimized; and of course there are many many more hours of hand holding and such involved before your new site finally goes live … but you find “someone who says they are really good at HTML coding” who can build you a website for $200.00 … and you JUMP at the $200.00 “deal” … what do you think you will end up with?

Hmmm??

Yup, You Will 99.99% Most Assuredly End Up With A Mess!

You guessed it. Because Jennie had no clue as to what constitues a solid, properly designed, properly coded, properly SEO’d and technically sound site, yes … she thought the price we quoted her was maybe “more than she needed to spend” (her words). Please note the price we quoted her happened to be less than my $1000.00 example.

So she thought “well gee … it’s just a website … $200.00 sounds fair to me”. And off she went and plunked down her $200.00 with that “really good HTML coder”.

But (and this is true my friends, I am NOT making this up) oh my! What she ended up with! That “HTML expert” used FrontPage to design the site. Mistake #1! Anybody involved in website design ought to know that FrontPage has been obsolete for a good while. And quite honestly, anyone who understands HTML knows that FrontPage adds a lot of code bloat, among other things.

In addition, the “design” of the site (if you can call it that) was tired looking. Maybe OK for 1999, but not up to 2008 standards. If you’re going to pay for a brand spanking new site, then please … at least make sure design-wise you are getting something that reflects current web design trends. Why start out looking dated?

So, to make a long story short, I received an email from Jennie a few weeks ago. Her first words were “I should have listened to you to begin with …”. And she was saying “please Claudia, how much will you charge to clean up this mess and get me online with a website?” She provided the URL to her “new” site in the email.

After one look, it was clear there wasn’t going to be any “cleaning up”! That website was a design disgrace. No ethical SEO consultant would even think of optimizing a site like that, either. That would be stealing money from the client.

First things first was to design her a technically correct website and one that was also properly SEO’d. I told her if she was willing this time to do it right, and spend the money necessary to start out on the right foot … then we’d be more than happy to take her on as a client! She agreed.

And remember folks, you are also paying for the knowledge and expertise the web designer or SEO consultant brings to the table! That is worth a whole lot to the ultimate success of your website project, too.

Moral of the story … you usually DO get exactly what you pay for! As I told Jennie, “I guess you can look at that $200.00 as a valuable learning curve and maybe if nothing else, it did get you motivated to write the content for your web pages!”