Why Does Great Web Design Cost So Much?

You’re not looking for anything complicated … just a “quick and easy website.”

So why the hell does it cost so much?

The Creative Process

From the outside, the creative process might seem like simply adding some colours and content into a website template and calling it a day.

And there are plenty of places where you can get a website for next to nothing.

But there’s a wise saying that comes to mind – something about what you can expect to get when you pay for a product at a rock bottom price.

You’ve probably heard that saying before.

Discovery

Here are some good questions to ask yourself before even starting to put pen to paper:

Who is my customer?
What are they looking for?
What is going to convince them to become a customer?

Not quite sure about the answer to any or all of these questions?

Well, then you might want to pump the brakes on laying the foundation of your new website.

It isn’t particularly hard to build a large, clunky and beautiful-but-in-a-chaotic-sort-of-way website. But that will only satisfy your goals if your only goal is to build a website.

After all, a website is a tool. It isn’t a success just because it exists – it has to accomplish something useful.

At RC Design, we only dive into wireframing, design and coding after we’ve invested the time into discovering your business and have determined what success looks like. Investing time in understanding that foundation means we can hit the bullseye with the final product.

What’s behind it all?

Alright, so it takes a bit of time before even getting into the design to ensure that the project is set up for success. Now what?

Well, let’s take a look behind-the-scenes to unpack what goes into every web project:

Functionality: What do you need the website to do? How will users interact with it?

Planning the user flow and navigation to make sure that your final product is functional is a vital step. Once the pieces are in place, it’s up to the coders to build out the final pages carefully to ensure there are no hiccups.

Features: What extra features are you going to need?

If you’re looking to add a complex login portal and database for customers, don’t be surprised if the final price jumps a notch. It takes time to build from scratch – and, just like snowflakes, no two implementations are ever quite the same.

Flexibility: How often are you going to update your website? Are you planning on making these changes yourself or will you need help from your developers?

Websites built with a Content Management System (CMS), like WordPress or Joomla, offer a degree of flexibility out of the box, but custom features and strong UX/UI are going to need some planning and careful implementation.

Being responsive

Responsive website design isn’t an option anymore – it’s a necessity. Your designers will need to consider how each element on the site will resize and rearrange itself depending on the device it is being viewed on.

Without devoting some time to this, you’ll be sacrificing the experience mobile users have on your site. And as the percentage of online traffic on mobile devices continues to grow year-by-year, that demographic is one that you probably don’t want to be offending.

Even “simple” things tend have complicated guts

Exceptional UX and UI is the process of taking something very complicated and making it very simple. The better the job we do, the less you’ll realise how complicated it was to begin with.

If you want a feature that instantly compiles, calculates and computes globs of data before spitting out beautifully formatted results then you can assume there’s a lot going on under the surface.

When it comes to implementation, well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat (sorry for the expression, cat lovers).

Consider that a rush job can result in sloppy code, which can affect site performance and usability – and this could even take a chunk out of your SEO performance.

It’s best to great thing right the first time around instead of relying on months or years of band-aid fixes.

Is it worth it?

So, with all things considered, is it really worth it to part with some hard-earned cash for a brilliant, intuitive, eye-catching, user-friendly, lead-generating website that pays for itself?

Hmm. I may have just answered my own question.

Maybe the real question when it comes to web design and development should be: Can you afford to cut corners?

It’s best to great thing right the first time around instead of relying on months or years of band-aid fixes.