Build your Online Presence: Cheap Websites Vs. Good Value Professional Websites
Many online platforms offer website templates for free or for low prices (under $5-$50 a month) that makes having a website now easier for anyone.
More business are using these free website platforms now more than ever – which is precisely why you shouldn’t.
After all, cheap, easy, and mass-market is not the impression you want to leave with potential clients. Though it cannot be denied that it’s so easy to sign up to these services, the cheap or free part does come with a lot of pitfalls. Truth be told, everything has a cost, it just may not be financial.
When almost everybody has the same thing, your site can lose its sheen, and soon you’d discover that most freebies come with limits. Free and cheap websites only mean you’ll be going for a default template that anyone can avail. It’s like going shopping at the mall and finding out everyone in your neighborhood is wearing the same hat. A generic template won’t do you any favors if you want to impress clients.
But why do people go for cheap websites?
- It's free or has a basic package
Free and basic means it has data storage limits or worst, its static, with limited or no options for customisation.
- Free domain
Maybe not even a domain name really, but just a domain name under the template provider’s URL which could read like this — www.freecustomtemplates/Whangareibusiness — Imagine having that long mouthful of a website address. It won’t look good on your business cards either.
- Drag and drop navigation
You can design without any HTML or CSS knowledge, but left with only have a bunch of design presets and buttons to work with. These presets also mean your customisation and design options are limited. You can’t go for max length or using precise pixels when it comes to design layout. Also, your SEO optimisation is at the mercy of what you can do with the default template.
- Cute templates
Though design tastes vary — Cheap, flashy wallpapers won’t lend your business the visual gravitas it needs.
Some of these website platforms are as good as it gets, customisation may be limited or maximized (meaning you can’t use certain contact forms or shopping carts). Yes, just because it’s free, it doesn’t mean you can easily make a site that looks good and credible for your business.
Surprisingly, a lot of companies do go for the free mode during their start-up phase and realise later the horrors of site migration. When business becomes brisk, there’s the inevitable demand to scale up, but the process of site migration may affect any website’s SEO as soon as one starts transferring their content. They may soon realise the number of backlinks and indexed pages they’re about to lose. And all their early SEO ranking efforts will amount to nothing.
This could have been avoided early if they entirely kept away from free and cheap websites, and bought the necessary domain name and hosting plans the business needed in the first place. Remember, to be self-hosted is to be free of constraints.
So would a cheap platform work for you? There are no guarantees.
The Problem with Web Freebies
Imagine touting your business as the next big thing, and when your local customer goes online, they find your website on a cheap platform, primarily used by students, the kind loaded with widgets you don’t need. That definitely kills the professional vibe right there.
A free, cheap website will always come with annoying pop-ads, inappropriate adult sidebar ads and maybe even a paywall for your users. As a business owner, you want your services to be accessible and appealing, and more importantly, you want users to stay around for the good stuff, to get to know more about your products and services.
Hiring the right website development company is your best bet at having a good-value website that suits your needs. Here's why:
Save time
The most obvious benefit of hiring an excellent website development service is in how much time and energy you can save. All you need is a reliable web development company. Just by having a conversation with them, these seasoned website pros can immediately identify what kind of website and site structure would work well for your business. They’ll look after your technical SEO compliance, web hosting, domain name, email, UX design, and online branding. Investing in high-quality web design means more time in your hands to run your business.
Take Advantage of Combined Expertise
Off-page SEO is a quick look at your website’s social credibility. The stronger your social signal, brand mentions, and backlinks from trusted sites, the more you’ll be prioritised by search engines.
Off-page SEO is pretty much like campaigning; it’s mainly trying to get the attention of the bigger fish, which are the big industry and high-rank niche and industry sites. The goal is to get them talking and backlinking your site from their pages. If you’re a smaller fish, you can always try to win them over with honest, good quality content. Yes, the White-Hat way. There are many ways to promote your website outside its boundaries include link building, social media marketing, email marketing, and the use of advertisements.
With Off-page SEO, you have to put in the time to connect and spread content outside your website so that you can rank higher in searches. You can’t just be heavily reliant using On-page SEO, and you also need to step up your off-page SEO strategy.
Great Customisable Design
A well-thought-out and original website interface should support your branding and design; it doesn’t ignore it. Instead, the look and feel of your branding are integrated into your website.
Web developers can also optimise your website to load correctly on any screen. Ensuring your website is either adaptive or responsive to different smart devices- desktop PCs, mobile phones, tablets, etc. This is a must for Search Engine Optimisation.
Reliable Technical Support
Also, you don’t have to worry about your site going down or hitting a few snags, as a good web design firm will surely maintain your site 24/7. That reassurance alone is of good value. An excellent web design agency will keep you updated, and not kept in the dark, as improvements to your site happen.
The services of a website design and development agency with excellent technical support can be had at a reasonable cost. For affordable websites Whangarei, there’s 1768Degrees.com
We can build you a powerful and versatile website that will drive traffic and growth to your business — looking for a web design and web development partner in Auckland and Whangarei? Reach out to us!
With our professional website hosting we include .com domain but its not a gimmick. We provide this so that we can ensure consistency in your visitors experience, and ensure your domain pointing doesn’t leave your customers in a black hole.
When we build a website, we build with getting your site found. Having a site that doesn’t focus on this element, whether free, cheap or blinking expensive makes no sense. Your site has to be designed with search in mind. From being mobile optimised to meeting Panda, Penguin or even Pidgeon, we believe you need a site that is going to gain traction in the search rankings and bring in traffic for your business.
We create solutions for web design and development, digital branding, and social media marketing, SEO, and Technical SEO services.
We can’t wait to work with you!
