There are over hundreds of thousands of web design agencies around the globe. And the ROI (return of investment) varies depending on the quality of your website. Also, the pricing of web design services is very confusing, especially if this is your first time hiring a web designer or web design agency.
In this post, I will point out few specific things that will help you to find a reliable website design company or individual freelance web designer. You will also know the specific questions to ask before buying any web design services.
This process will ensure your return of investment.
What Is Web Design
Web design refers to create the user interface, layout, look & feel of a website. To be more specific, it indicates the front-end of your website. And it does not involve the back-end.
If you’re curious enough to know more about web design & its applications, see a post on the World Wide Web Consortium website.
Sometimes we mess up web design with web development. These two are very similar to non-tech-savvy but they have their own uniqueness.
Web development refers to creating features & functionalities of your website. For example- creating custom post type, backup feature, custom registration & login process, adding new membership role & permissions, the list goes on.
Luckily, you don’t have to worry too much about the differences. Once you ask few specific questions to the website design agency, their answer will help you to make the correct decision. I will discuss the questions after.
Web Design Best Practices -Dos and Don’ts
To provide best value to your visitors, you have to make sure few things on your website:
- Mobile responsiveness
- Website security
- Fast loading speed
- Make posts & pages primarily for your users instead of web crawlers
- Ensure uniqueness & content engagement
- Valuable information
- Never swindle your visitors
- Monitor website for hacking & hacked content, and remove injected content from your website
- Prevent spammers on your site from spam commenting
- Do not create Autoblog and never insert automatically generated content to your site.
Web Design Cost
It depends on your unique requirements. But imagine you reached out to a few different web designers or agencies for the same requirements. What do you expect about their prices?
Their price will be totally different. Aside from the random pricing model, there are few other components that have an impact on web design pricing:
- Demographics of the web designer or agency
- Office and utility expense
- Education level
- Salary of the team members
- Reputation
- Quality of work
- Social proofs
- Certifications
- Current work volume & business
- Popularity
Cheap Vs Expensive Web Design
Generally, you hear the term “Affordable“. Aside from its word meaning, it also has a social meaning which is “Cheap“. Does it’s worth it?
Back in 2016, one of my colleagues forced me to create an account on a freelance marketplace. And I created an account to test the waters. I was charging $1000 (one thousand) to create create a complex website. On the other hand, I saw other guys are offering only $20/30 for the same type of websites.
It’s not about my story, it’s you! Do you think the clients are stupid who hired me at a higher rate? If your answer is “No”, then why those clients did not hire other guys to save their money?
But if you ask me instead, I would answer- it’s worth it.
Because you’re also investing your invaluable time on your project, not only the developers or designers.
Imagine, you hired someone to build your website just for five bucks. Does it really matter if you lose your five bucks?
Maybe the five or fifty bucks does not matter too much, but the time does!
Many buyers want to test multiple web designers at the same time, or one after another. Sometimes they forget about their own efforts and time.
Of course, buyers are not dumb, they will indeed hire web designers or agencies with the lowest price possible and according to their budget. And it’s very natural. But cheap web design will never ensure their ROI (return of investment). This is what I can tell to you confidently and according to my past experience.
Does All The Expensive Web Design Ensure Your ROI
No. It doesn’t. You have to apply your own intuition. Sometimes the web designers and agencies also try to see the impact by upgrading the prices.
There are lots of buyers who think that higher rated (priced) agencies are the super expert. Unfortunately, it’s not always true. But the expert agencies or designers are listed here. And not in the low priced list.
You just have to find them out!
What an Expert Web Design Agency Looks Like
The internet is full of experts, resellers & frauds. So be careful before throwing your hard-earned money.
There are lots of people who call themselves experts. They will create your website without much planning & with lots of pages, posts, placeholder texts, images, contact forms. Is this what you really wanted?
The answer is simply “No”. A bad website will cause you to waste money on other marketing methods as well. Because your website is the main hook of all your marketing strategies.
An expert web design agency never calls itself “Expert”. They will show their expertise instead of just telling themselves as experts. Their website is full of valuable content & resources, and the content is unique & created by themselves. An expert web design agency at least has 5000 (five thousand) organic visitors (monthly) on their website. This is how an expert web design agency looks like!
Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Design Agency
Don’t take their word before hiring, know everything upfront. Ask them following questions:
| Q-1: How you can benefit from their work? |
| Every expert designer has a process of work & a proven track record helping past clients. So they can tell you what to expect from their work with an ETA (estimated time of arrival). |
| Q-2: Have they completed any similar websites in the past? |
| The expert probably covered your niche in the past and that is why they are called “Expert”. Collect the link of the sites and invest some time in their past work samples. Do not just take their word for it, look for their agency name in the footer. Not to mention, every website owner does not allow web design agency names as a courtesy. In this type of case, contact the website owners and ask if it’s true. |
| Q-3: Does the web design agency have any money protection escrow for the payment? |
| You can love everyone around the globe but you should not trust. What if your expert designer or developer arises an issue during the development process? So be on the safe side by putting your money in an Escrow. Once you’re satisfied with their work, release the fund for their hard income. |
| Q-4: How much time it may take to generate revenue from your website? |
| The main goal of a (for-profit) website should be to earn money, no matter whatever your niche. It should generate revenue someway. Know from your expert how much time it may take to generate the revenue. Also, ask them what if it fails to generate the revenue after the ETA. Will they make improvements with a reduced price after? Probably they will because it’s their liability. |
| Q-5: Do they have any questions for you? |
| Ask them if they have any questions for you. Expert people generally ask relevant questions. It also ensures they have understood your project requirements, and just need few clarifications. Unsmart web designers generally tell “I can do it” at the beginning. |
Content-based Web Design Vs Design-based Content Creation
Every unique website is content-based, and that’s why its design has been created from scratch.
If you have great content on your website, visitors will come to your site because it’s worth reading the content.
On the other hand, if you have placeholder text or silly written content, Google will not send traffics to your site. No matter how outstanding design you have. The only thing you can do is send people to your website by advertising and direct link.
That’s why content-based web design is the best.
Many newbies are just installing demo or pre-made templates. And then just replace the placeholder text with their own text. This is just because they like the design too much, or unable to create a better design themselves. That’s why you see hundreds of similar websites. Those websites get zero traffics.
However, if you write content for your website based on the pre-made template, the content may be not so appealing or engaging. Because it’s just a substitute of placeholder texts.
So if you want people to come to your website and take action, you really need to focus on content-based web design.
Prerequisite of a Website Design Project
Few prerequisites are mandatory, such as domain & hosting and a few are optional such as logo, favicon, text content, etc.
That means you can start building your website without the logo and upload it after, or when it’s ready.
But I highly recommend you to get your content ready first and then start building your site. Your content will help your web designer to imagine & apply a better layout, look & feel. The design will also match your niche. Finally, you will get a unique website.
Domain:
It’s a mandatory prerequisite. If you already got your domain, that’s fine. But if you’re thinking to buy your domain, make sure it’s very aligned with your niche, easy to spell, has “com” TLD, meaningful. Read another post to learn more about finding a good domain name for your business.
Hosting:
There are lots of good web hosting companies out there. Feel free to buy web hosting from any reputable company. Just make sure they provide an SSL certificate, have SSD storage, and their support team is available 24/7. If you have not purchased hosting yet, see a price table (from lowest to highest) in another post.
Content:
Text content is very important for any website. Write down all the necessary information about your business & website in plain English. Then think of the web pages you need initially, for example, Home, About, Services, Blog, Contact, etc.
Once you shortlisted the name of pages, hire a professional content writer or agency to write the actual content for you. Be sure to attach the necessary information to the writer.
Now you have all the text content for your web pages. It would be one step further if you also write three blog posts initially.
There are many professional writers who can write engaging & relevant content for your website. Once you got the text content, be sure to check for plagiarism.
Once you have the content, ask your web designer to design the website based on your content.
Monitor Your Website Performance
Once your web designer completed the website, ask them to connect your website with Google Analytics, Search Console. Also, ask them to create a “sitemap.xml” file and submit it to Google, Yandex, Bing.
The web crawlers will index your site periodically upon “sitemap” submission. You can check your website performance from “Search Console”. And it will show you the rankings based on various keywords. Also you will be able to see other performance such as impressions, clicks, average position, etc.
How Much Time It Takes to Rank Your Website
It depends on your effort, effectiveness & competition in your niche. But in most cases, it generally takes 6 months to rank your website.
It doesn’t mean that all the website will rank on Google. The prerequisite of ranking is unique & valuable content. So you have to make sure you have it on your site. During the six months, you have to keep posting content on your site, at least one valuable post in a week.
Mandatory Pages of Any Websites
About Us, Contact Us & Privacy Policy are the three mandatory pages of any website. No matter what type of website is it, you must have to include those three pages to maintain the best web design practices.
Your visitors want to know about who you are, what you do & what is the purpose of your website. The “About Us” page will cover that information.
You should allow your audience to contact you. They might have questions, concerns, complaints, suggestions & requirements with your business or website, and that’s why the “Contact Us” page comes into play.
Finally, the “Privacy Policy” page is a commitment to your user’s data. They should know what data you collect, what exactly you do with their data, how you collect their data, what you do once anyone submit their email, photo, etc. So you have to make things clear to your visitors and they have the right to know about it.
Also, these three pages are mandatory to have before you apply for Google AdSense.
Why Blog Is Important for Any Business Websites
Many website owners just create 3/7 pages websites and sit down there. But the problem for those websites are lack of visitors & customers. Because it’s not findable in search results.
The blog is part of your website. And a blog is just a collection of your posts. It becomes very handy to build your reputations and search appearance.
Your target audience is searching for a solution to their problem. And your blog posts bring them to your website if you have the solution on your blog post. It’s a nice introduction between your business & the target audience.
So ask your web designer to include a blog archive in your website. As I mentioned above to get ready with at least three blog posts initially and before you start building your website. This would be a nice start to your business online.
Imagine, you created a nice website and no one reads it. That would be a real pain. So make sure you have given a reason to your visitors to come to your website. And the blog would be the solution to your pain.
Should You Write Your Own Blog Posts
The answer is probably “No” if you are not professional in writing. It requires huge research before you start writing. You have to complete a topic very precisely in your post and it should be very detail oriented solution or answer.
Don’t get me wrong. You know the best about your own business. And even you know better than a professional writer in your nice. But the writing style is totally different between you & a professional writer.
So it’s always the best to make a combination of both.
You can choose a topic for writing yourself and write it down in plain English as much you know. And then send your own writings to a professional writer to make it more engaging, detail-oriented, on point, and SEO friendly. This way the final article or post will be super effective.
Now you know what is involved behind a successful website, how to find expert web designers and agencies, what specific questions to ask them, what if your website failed to generate revenue within the ETA, what an expert agency looks like & how to handle with them, how to ensure your ROI, etc. Actually, we covered a wide topic. But if you still have questions, let me know in the comment and I will answer everyone’s questions.
