Web Designer for Small Business: How Much Does a Website Cost?

Web designers design websites, correct? But not enough! A web designer takes great care of your whole customer's experience online. And if that’s your main playground, just like most start-up companies are, you definitely should have a look. A terrible website designer will take customers and orders away from you, and nobody wants that. Then it’s high time to have your hands on a design website and things revolve around this subject.

So, are you ready to read another guide to be successful online with a nice and neat website? Read on to know more about web designers, why it’s important, the pros & cons of having a website, and many more. 

1. Everything you should know about web designers? 

What is a web designer?

A web designer is the one who is responsible for creating the visual and experience of a website. Their scope of work will consist of creating guidelines and planning before executing website elements. This could briefly contain structures, layouts, images, colors, fonts, interface, search engine optimization, and creating content. Web designer's scope is quite large and they take in-depth skills to completely deliver the best result. 

You might mistake the progress of a design website with web development. While web designer mainly working on visuals and experience, web development is all about coding to make your website work smoothly. And when it comes to building the nice and neat web, you’ll need the joining hands of these two. 

To begin with, a web designer will use your ideas and expectations, turning them into mock-ups and demo websites. This will allow you to see and feel what your future website could offer. In simple words, web designers take care of the creative parts. Then it comes to the work of web developers. They will turn all the mock-ups into life by making them functional and run well. 

Last but not least, it’s time for user experience. By most of the time, the web designer will responsible for this part. However, as the digital world grows, these 2 works tend to differentiate themselves from one to another. UX developers will optimize and help to make your website visible much friendlier and efficient to users. It could consist of choosing where to place the buttons, the size of text and images and so many more.

Why is website design considered important? 

Do you believe in love at first sight? If yes, then that’s exactly what happens to websites. We strongly believe that in just the first few seconds, a user/ customer will decide whether they like the interface of your website or not. This then affects the decision of them to your products and services. If it doesn’t look good or feel good, you’re losing one sale. And let’s scale up a little bit to how many customers click on your website every day? 

Stop holding your brand down with a clumsy, confusing website. Don’t let your customers think that you’re out of business, stop working, or just don’t put that much care. One-click online can build a lifetime relationship, which benefits you much more later. So just by knowing that, would, you let go of any smallest chance with your customers? 

How to evaluate good website design? 

Nothing is good or brilliant once your customers don’t like it. So before jumping into trending layout or beautiful design in your mind, you’ll have to do some research. Find what your customer is looking for when they click on your category's website. Visualize who your target customers are, what they care most about, and how to make their clicks become a conversion. From then, you can decide what journey you would take them in to finalize with a conversion. Based on this information, you’ll have a draft of what good website design is to your customers. 

But in general, to save you some times, we have a few suggestions for you: 

• The call to action is king. Let them know where to purchase, sign up, or ask for more info.
• Limit distractions, don’t overwhelm your customers with tons of choices. 
• User friendly, be available on any device. 
• Relevant contents only – too much text you’ll be annoying, too little then you’re lack of info. 

So to sum up, a good website design is attractive and effective at the same time. Invest some extra time and money on it, and you’ll see the huge benefit it brings.

2. Why should you have your website? 

‍

Should I design websites on my own? 

It’s possible since most website platforms are making it much simpler so you can build one from scratch. However, we don’t recommend this as much. Web development is a complex project that requires a lot of skills to make things go right. Depending on your need and budget, you can choose from hiring freelancers or an agency to do it all for you. 

With freelance web designers, just scroll through their portfolios first to see if their styles match your aesthetic. Then a talk to share your expectation with them is vital. In this way, you can save most of your budget and still get the job done. However, remember to look at their previous projects and clients to make sure you won’t get into any scams online. It’s best to meet up and have a detailed contract before you start working together.

You can also create your website using a template website builder. However, with this option, you’ll have to work more and even handle some parts that are completely unfamiliar to you. You’ll be limited to templates and design, so it’s hard to express your brand identity through it. But if you’re short on budget, then this is just right and helpful. 

Working with an agency is the simplest way, especially with a complex e-commerce design website. With sophisticated requirements, choosing an agency will give you the advantage of the professionalism and simpler management. We know it might cost some extra money, but you’ll not regret anything once it works and begin to attract sales. Be specific of what you need and expect, for example, to maximize search engine optimization, or to easy purchase,… Let us know what you’re looking for, Socialectric will satisfy you at ease.  

3. How much does a website cost? 

How much does it all cost? 

It depends on a lot of things before we could finalize how much does a website cost. There is absolutely no range to decide the price of website designs. It could go from $3000 - $100,000 for a custom design, to a $50 template. Surprised yet? So, it all depends on your budget and how much work your website requires to build a complete web. You’ll have to understand the sitemap that you want since 10 pages are much cheaper than a 50 pages web. 

But in our experience, it will normally cost around $2,000 - $5,000+ to build and an extra few more to maintain.

For example, a website domain is roughly around $20 - $60, depends on the domain that you choose. Hosting could go up to $400 while website design could be around $200 if you’re using templates. To add an E-commerce template in its simplest form shall be $40, but the more complex the more expensive it shall be. Then you will need content to feed SEO and marketing purposes, which will be another additional fee. However, if your internal team could handle creating content then it shall not be a big problem. 

In any ways, after having a good-looking website, you’ll need to focus on its usage and SEO. In this way, you’re more likely to be visible to your potential customers and get their attention. Without a decent investment in SEO, it’s hard to reach your users and turning clicks into real conversion. And at this stage, conversions could be anything from newsletter receive, sign up as members, or actual purchase. All are necessities for your brand to grow healthily.

Are website builders worth using? 

You can clearly see most website builders advertised themselves as an incredible tool that allows you to drag-n-drop to create a professional-looking web. With a website builder, you won’t have to learn even a line of code to make the job done. It sounds extremely tempting, but is it worthy? 

Pros:

Quick and easy: Imagine having a functional website overnight, isn’t it magical? It’s the best choice to make a super quick web page with the help of easy-to-use tools. And let’s not forget thousands of templates you could use just with a few bucks. 

Cheap & ready to use: Using a website builder is much more cost-effective than hiring a freelancer or agency. This is an affordable option for a young start-up that doesn’t have many resources in hand. 

Helpful tech support: With professional web builders, you’ll have the support of a strong tech team, mostly 24/7. They will be ready to assist and help you through many rough tasks within a few minutes. 

SEO improvement: Although SEO on website builders are considered poor, they’re making some strong improvement. These guys bounce back much faster than we could think and improve their SEO game day by day. Now you could alter the heading, tags, and important SEO info on a website builder.

Cons: 

Website owner: Is not you, that’s the bad news. You don’t own your website, it’s just like renting a house. However, if you’ve just moved out, what’s bad about renting a house, right? 

No custom design: The main drawback of web builders is that they have some standard layout only, and it’s hard to add customized features. However, with just a few extra bucks every month, you can have access to massive storage of templates. Although it couldn’t stand out from the crowd, you can still work with what you have. 

Loading time: Since it’s a no-code platform to build your website, you cannot modify the source code to optimize it. Therefore, it’s hard to upgrade and speed up loading time for your user convenience. Despite this, we have had great experience with Webflow in terms of ease of use, and speed.

We only recommend using these platforms once you’re in a hurry and don’t have enough budget to invest. But if you’re taking the business much more seriously and eager to earn more, then it’s time to work with a web designer. With the help of a pro, you can expect a much better version. Remember to let them know your business goals so that the final website would meet your needs.

4. Benefits of building a website with a web designer

Unique & professionalism: everything on your website, from design, layout to sitemap will be customized and tailored to meet your requirements. No more worries about having that exact same website as your competitors anymore. 

Leads are most important: A great team of website designers – developers will know how to make things work to get leads pouring in. Just a little change in the button placement or a word could make a massive difference that generic templates could never. 

Better for SEO: To climb to a better rank in any search engine, a restricted set of tools from web builders is not enough. Every smallest detail in your website has to be optimized to meet success. 

It’s your website: Owning a domain and hosting means your website belongs to you and only you. You don’t have to depend on any bigger guy to have access to your web page, thus it’s much simpler to export to other platforms. 

Better speed: Keep in mind that the faster your page can load, the higher rank it could go and the more satisfied your user would be. While you have much control over this aspect while using website builder, now you can improve it remarkably. 

With small businesses, there is no true winner. It all depends on your decision and the stage your business is in. So before choosing any option, whether to work with a web designer or using a web builder, consider carefully both pros and cons. For more detailed explanations and helpful advice, stay up to date with Socialectric!