Affordable versus cheap web design

You’re an established small or medium sized company, or a start-up and you need a new website. There are a multitude of competitors to choose from – thousands of agencies and freelancers  (literally)  – so where do you start? what is affordable vs cheap?

Optimise your Budget

For most companies, budget will tend to dictate the scale of ambition – so it’s important to get the best possible value for money. Notwithstanding, there are certain situations where cost differences are downright misleading. For example, by visiting certain freelancer portals you can find a vast pool of web developers for $10 per hour who can create a website for $250.

But what are you really getting? Not much – at this rate it will be someone who will do a quick and dirty implementation of a WordPress theme (for example) and populate your content. Any custom design or features would require more development hours and the involvement of a UX/Design consultant. Any of those with a shred of competence would invariably exceed $10 per hour and would probably be too busy to bother with making minor amends to a WordPress theme.

Don’t tick the box – differentiate!

Of course, if your goal is simply to tick the box of having a website – then the quick and dirty theme implementation might be for you. However, if you are like most of our clients – who want to clearly differentiate their product or services, then it would be far better to avoid cheap and think about something affordable. This means selecting an agency that can help you deliver a creative design, clearly signposted customer journey combined with powerful content conceived with SEO in mind from the outset.

Anything less than this is simply ignoring the truth that an identikit template, ill-conceived content and lack of SEO will deliver zero upside for your business. Of course, you may be a digital native and able to negotiate these shortcomings by filling in the gaps yourself or skilfully hiring freelancers. Some of our Clients do have a good understanding of digital, but most are too busy running their businesses and simply don’t have the time.

Avoid headaches – hire an affordable team

An agency with design, build & SEO competencies, has all of the skills you need under one roof. With careful consultancy and planning, and a competitive hourly rate a good agency will only be marginally more expensive than hiring freelancers for every task – and with considerably less headache and project management overhead for the client.

All things considered, when you think about the drain on your time and lack of results – cheap is always inferior to affordable web design & development. With offices in London and Riga, Sheer deliver rigorous British standards of quality control combined with best-in-class Latvian talent. So please get in touch if considering your next web project and we will help you avoid the pitfalls of the cheap with an affordable way to make your digital life easier.