\We received a call the other day from a business that was looking to have a new website made. Within a few seconds of answering the call, we found ourselves in a familiar script:
Caller: How much does a website cost?
Us: It depends. Much like a new car, there are models and features that can impact your costs.
Caller: Well, we got a quote from someone that was $500 for a five page website. He’s a college student who is learning web design.
Us: OK. I see. Well, we are a professional web design team and we couldn’t come anywhere close to what the student quoted you.
Caller: Ok. Thanks for your time. Bye.
We hope it works out well for the caller. Maybe the student he found was particularly adept, focused and knowledgeable about web design. Maybe he’ll make a great website for the business. Our experience tells us, however, that seldom does the buyer’s expectations and needs meet the novice designer’s end product.
Here are a few critical problems with novice designers:
- The project is on-the-job training. We often find low price quotes are used as a way for a novice designer to get some money for a project they are woefully unqualified to complete at the onset. They don’t ask for a lot of money because they don’t have a lot of skills. They hope to learn as they go along and figure things out. Seldom is the final product (if it even gets to this stage) something that is useful. Timelines are seldom adhered to.
- They have no search engine optimization focus. There are many decisions a web design team makes that impacts the ability of a website to be found online. There are several things an experienced team will do to help the buyer produce good, web-ready content. Without an understanding of these issues, it is unlikely the website will do well on the search engines. It’s kind of like building nice restaurant without any roads leading to it.
- No design sense with great programming or no programming sense with nice design. Websites have a visual aspect that is supported by underlying website programming. Most people who work with websites have a definite skillset that is often in the “designer” or the “programmer” sphere. Seldom does one person have very strong skills in both areas. This is why you almost always will do better with a team working on your site instead of one individual.
There are, of course, times when the low cost provider can produce something that is well beyond the value of what is paid. Most of the time, however, the you really do get what you pay for.
If you’re looking for a professional web design experience and project in Hawaii, give us a call at 808-329-6077.