Typical website prices in the UK vary a tremendous amount but what kind of company do you choose when looking find affordable web design locally or within the UK?
A company that gives you an on the spot quote for a designed website instantly isn’t doing their homework. Though this kind of fee is exactly what some people want they perhaps also do not understand entirely how a website really can work to increase business, profitability and to raise a business profile.
Per page flat rate prices advertised on their site or in advertising literature should be a slight warning sign if you are looking for a website that is more involved than perhaps a small ten page information site. This might appear value for money and might work for some but not all businesses understand in depth how a good website can really help their business expand. So website prices, without being obviously excessive, should reflect exactly how your finished site will work for you.
Finding affordable web design in the UK really depends on the type of value you are looking for. A fixed price custom made website which includes a specified number of pages which costs a few hundred pounds is fine – if that works for your business – but what about finding a custom web designer that can create a website that works for your business and brings in more profit? How about branding, marketing your website online and what about hosting a large site?
Value can only be measured on how much time and money you spend with your designer and how much they put into the site so that the outcome works for you. Maybe the whole aim of your website is to sell more of your products, to advertise your business and create a modern business identity, or even a straight forward way of bringing a long-standing company out of the nineties. Whichever your reason, affordable web design should reflect what you want the finished product to do and get you there.
An Example of Bad Research and Overspend
I cringe every time I think of this, an old employer in a multi-million pound company could never sell products on his website due to the industry and services they offered, would not generate profit simply using the website and only employing around ten people there was never exactly daily news or events to announce.
Spending circa £6,000 on two versions of a custom made website he did not shop around or gain advice and simply chose a UK company that was local to the office. He spent in the region of a week specifying what he wanted, writing text for a few pages of the new site and learning how to use the content management system they had built in and also paid the company to host it on their servers etc
The finished site looked okay though he was not happy to market the site, it does not generate extra customers or profit, fails to give visitors any exciting information and was simply an exercise to modernise an old site. Visiting this site as I write this, its last piece of news piece was something that was added almost two years ago – has it increased the companies online presence? The answer is a certain no!
Value for money in this case there definitely was not, the website prices might have been fine had the owner used the site as an expansion of the business or to generate more business (it was a site made for ecommerce and incorporated an admin area to make it easy to use and update quickly), what an oversight and obvious lack of communication between two parties, had this company shopped around and gained advice from even just one more company they may have realised how not to do it!
This example should help you to see that affordable web design is dependant on your final requirements and what you aim to do with a new custom made website. We know that you want to know the price of web design immediately and a good design company should keep no secrets about pricing however a site design should come with a tailored price and at the very least a good indication of website prices on fixed websites (specified amount of pages and extras).
Posted on September 29th, 2009
