What That “Cheap” Website Is Really Costing You

Tighter budgets mean marketers are looking everywhere they can to find savings. While the website can feel like an easy place to economize, cost cutting on what should be considered one of your most valuable brand assets can backfire. From underperforming lead generation, to a build-up of technical debt, to a loss of marketing agility, the cost of short-sidedness can have long-term business impact.

Understanding the true value of your digital footprint is essential to helping you decide where saving strategies can make the most sense. While there are ways to economize around your website, it’s important to fully understand the ramifications and make more informed choices. Being thoughtful upfront can help you keep from getting burned by unscrupulous vendors and unclear offerings.

Your website is a business asset, not a line item

As your digital front door, your website supports a number of essential business functions. First and foremost, it establishes credibility for your brand. It is the first place people go to find out who you are, what you can do for them, and who else relies on your solutions. Most companies are investing in marketing efforts that send people to the site. When they get there, it needs to be good. Your website does the heavy lifting in the early stages with prospects. It plays an essential part in delivering on your other marketing investments.

• High-UX sites correlate with stronger overall effectiveness.
• Slow sites drag rankings and engagement.

 

In addition to building trust with your target audience, your website drives pipeline, which makes site performance and user experience extremely important. While cutting corners can result in lost leads and credibility, a strong site actually multiplies the value of your go-to-market strategy. Budgeting wisely for web redesign can help you make the most of all your marketing dollars.

Upfront savings often have hidden costs

While your instinct may be to delay a web redesign until the economy improves or to find the lowest cost provider, these “saving” strategies may cost you in the long run. Waiting too long to start a redesign can put you behind your competition at exactly the moment when you need to be able to hit the ground running. Maintaining a regular three- to four-year refresh cycle is essential to keeping up with the latest technologies and web trends. In addition to optimizing funnel function, ensuring your visitors have a modern web experience is key to building credibility.

While there are some ways to effectively economize, bargain basement web design will quickly erase initial savings either through poor performance, scope creep, or the need for rework. Beware of low-ball bids (if it seems too good to be true, it is) and always make sure any proposal you receive includes all of the components your business needs. What may look more affordable at the outset can often become the most expensive option. Add to this the frustration of having to continuously chase problems and website redesign can quickly become a distraction from driving growth if you don’t have the right partner.

Red flags in “too good to be true” proposals:

• Vague scope (no IA/UX, content, accessibility, or SEO migration)
• No performance budgets or KPI plan
• Custom features promised on rigid templates
• No authoring model or governance plan (you’ll pay later in tickets)

DIY AI, offshoring, and productized tools are risky shortcuts

In the rush to cut costs, you may think about options like AI, offshoring, or productized tools. While web design agencies may employ some of these strategies to help you manage costs, attempting them on your own is a recipe for disaster.

Without robust guidance, today’s AI builders create generic, error-prone experiences that lack essential strategic thinking. Like any marketing effort, identifying the right strategy for your site is at the heart of differentiation and delivering returns. AI does not have those capabilities. Likewise, offshore vendors can be adept at the production side of things, but the strategy and vision can be lacking. As a result, you’ll end up with added costs and time due to quality and communications issues. And using template-driven platforms will leave you with a site that looks exactly like your competitors.

The right model: strategy first, then apply AI and modern tooling to speed production, improve quality, and reduce TCO. Templates are fine for foundations; differentiation requires intent.

Lead by focusing on long-term value

As the centering point for many of today’s most effective marketing strategies, your website must be optimized to consistently deliver for years to come. This kind of big picture perspective is particularly important for growing companies. You need a well-built site that can scale with your business instead of one that must be rebuilt in 12-18 months. To accomplish this, you need a partner that can help you focus your site strategy, design, and technologies to help you achieve your business goals.

This more strategic approach will help ensure that you implement web platforms that can keep you future-ready. While the upfront investment and resulting development may be more, the overall total cost of ownership will be lower because they deliver the performance, efficiency, and ongoing operability that will better serve your business.

Finding the best of both worlds: optimal web performance and cost efficiencies

In a world of disposable websites, you want to ensure that your site is a growth engine. To help our clients achieve this, we align the business and customer experience to drive engagement and deliver on expectations. We use AI and technology platforms as accelerators, not replacements for strategy. And we stay focused on delivering on your business goals at every stage of your digital journey. We recognize the increasing pressures on budgets, which is why we make sure that every site we develop delivers lasting value

To discover how our approach to web development can help you economize more effectively, let’s talk. Get the future-ready website that will drive the business results you need.