This is what happens when you hire a cheap web design company

So, you just had the brilliant idea to start a business. First off, congratulations! I am sure that your local business or e-commerce store or whatever brilliant idea you came up with will be successful in no time!

I see that you have planned every step of the way beginning from the budget going all the way to long term goals, impressive! You truly are a visionary!

Now I hear you want to establish an online presence for your brand. That is great! Every business should learn to do that, be it for winning the local SEO game or generating organic traffic to gain a larger audience of consumers.

Wait a minute now, you are telling me that you are going to hire a cheap web design company? Stop right there, mate! We need to talk.

You shouldn’t hire a cheap web design company.

I get that you might be shocked. You are thinking “Well, it’s not like I want to hire a cheap website design company.

I just don’t have the money for an expensive one.” or “It is just a site; I will pay them enough money to make it look chic and gorgeous and that will win me customers” or even “I am only running a small business.

Having a legitimate website isn’t THAT essential!”. At first glance, your opinions on this matter seem quite logical.

I mean, if you don’t have the money or patience for it, well, you don’t and that’s it. After all, it’s best to find a bargain rather than going for the elite web design services, right? I’m sorry, but NO.

“Why shouldn’t I do that?”

The answer is quite simple to state and rather difficult to explain: Hiring a cheap web design company will ultimately do more harm than good in the long run.

As much as it sounds like a reasonable thing to do (considering that you want to allocate your budget to more “important” things), you must optimise your online presence as much as you can.

Obviously, I am not telling you to shift your focus from producing good products or providing good services to marketing.

I am trying to say that you want, nay, NEED a good website in order to have a chance of survival in this ruthless market, be it traditional or digital (especially if your business revolves around the internet in any shape or form). Moreover, that website must have a good design and structure.

1. Because you will lose customers

To put it simply, if the site’s UX (user experience) isn’t optimised to the best of your (or web designer’s) abilities, there is a high chance that you will not generate enough organic traffic. Therefore, no new customers. Let me demonstrate.

For the sake of the argument, imagine that you have a marketing business and you did hire a cheap and sketchy web design company which probably resides somewhere far, far away (but it says in their portfolio that they are situated in New York, so it has to be legit, right? RIGHT?!).

You transfer the money and they say that your site will be ready in a week or so. You receive your site after three weeks and you are officially online.

You can tell that the design is off but somehow, through the power of the almighty Google search algorithm, you get two visitors to your site.

Their experience will probably be like “Ok, new site. It took two minutes to load, but let’s see how it goes.

Top 10 reasons to hire a good web development firm

This site looks…ugly, the design is just off. But maybe the services are good! After all, All I’m looking for is a company that I can consult with. Wait, where is the about us tab?

No contact us? Why can’t I open this tab? Why is it so buggy? Why are the contents so outdated?

Why are the colours so weird? Why does this site look like it wants to sell my kidney in the dark web?”.

This description was obviously exaggerated. Because the visitors usually don’t need that many reasons to exit the site and never come back.

2. Because your website will not be SEO-friendly

When your pitch your idea to the web design company, they will come up with a lot of tech mumbo-jumbo about the design that you might not understand and you will think “Wow, these guys seem to be quite the professionals!”.

But in reality, they are not. In your contract, there may not be a mention of SEO or mobile optimisation, which are two of the most essential pillars of building a website (especially for local businesses).

That is probably one of the widest red lines imaginable. Why? Well, let’s say you opened up a small restaurant joint.

You did all you could in the marketing department but you still aren’t getting enough customers. The reasons are the two points mentioned earlier: SEO and mobile optimisation.

These days, most people search online for what they want before attempting a purchase. How are you going to pop up in their search results if your site doesn’t use specific keywords or its on and off-site SEO game aren’t on point?

Even if you somehow generate a little organic traffic, how are your viewers supposed to navigate your site if you haven’t optimised it for mobile phones? After all, they are mostly using their cell phones.

Bottom line is, responsive web design is a must for any starting business and without them, your website will become obsolete in the long term.

If you are looking for a company to help you in this endeavour, Team-X Web Design could be of great help.       

3. Because your website will have many technical problems

As mentioned above, there will be many problems with your site, and some of them will be technical. Now we are going to talk about those.

Your run-of-the-mill cheap web design company (or in some cases, inexperienced or unreliable freelance web designers) are infamous for creating websites that look good on the outside while being in pretty bad shape on the inside. Let me explain.

Some mistake the concept of web design as the art of making a website look “pretty”. The reality is that web design and web development go hand in hand almost all the time.

The design and the functionality of a website must be integrated in a way that will benefit both.

If you are not mindful of who you hire (some freelancers advertise themselves as “just” web designers), you will face many problems such as the site not being scalable (meaning the site will not work well if there are too many visitors at the same time), the site having a weak internal quality (internal coding and other tech mumbo-jumbo you don’t want to hear about), risk of a security breach and many other issues. 

I have only scratched the surface of this dire complication. Do yourself a favour, don’t hire cheap and sketchy web design companies.

4. Because you will have to pay a lot of money to fix all of this! 

As you can see, we have circled back to the answer of our initial question. Think about all these difficulties that come after hiring a cheap web design company. Now think about all the money you will pay others to fix them. Yes, I agree. It really is a scary thought.

Conclusion

Look. You might not believe me and that is fine. After all, there are some companies or freelancers out there that provide good services for a bargain.

Who am I to undermine them? All I am asking for is you doing all the research possible before agreeing on a deal that may cost you your business (well, more or less).

Just make sure the company doesn’t ask for too much (or too little) money and it provides all the services you agreed on beforehand (content management services, after-sales support etc).    

In the end, Paul Rand said it best: “Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”