Website Design For Small Business Salt Lake City – Website Design often seems to be a challenge for small business owners. I wrote this article because we are a website design Agency in Salt Lake City and we design a lot of websites for small businesses and over time we have seen many of the same questions come up repeatedly, so we wrote this short guide to help small business owners understand what they are really looking at when it comes to website design for small business.
The short version of this whole article is this:
There are a lot of options when it comes to website design for small business. They range from simple do-it-yourself website design like Wix or Squarespace, to complicated e commerce websites like BigCommerce.
The thing small business owners struggle with is the cost. The more content you want to add, the more pages you want to add, the amount of custom design work you want done, and the amount of functionality you want the website to have, all drive up the cost.
An Inexpensive Provider:
Dr. Media will build a WordPress Site for someone in the medical field for $500 start up fee, and then around $80 per month. They advertise unlimited revisions for that price. I have known several people who have used them, and I have seen their work, and they seem to do an adequate job (especially considering that price). But somehow the people who use them (the ones I talk to anyway) are usually unhappy with the outcome they get.
I actually tell these people that the website they received is actually pretty good. How can they expect customization for $500 and $80 per month? But they do.
There Are Tiers of Website Design and Expense
There are lots of website design companies for small business out there who will build you a website for under $1,500, but ZERO customization, no help with the content, and ZERO functionality.
And honestly, there isn’t anything wrong with that. What can you expect for $1,500?
What I think small business owners need to realize about website design for small business is that there are “tiers” of service and design within the web design world.
When you are just starting out, you tend to fall into the “under $2,500: tier.” You can get a decent website in this price range. You provide the content, and do the updates yourself, and the SEO. All the web company basically does is build out a template for you with what you give them. And hey, this isn’t a bad deal. There isn’t anything wrong with that at all. You can usually get decent results for this kind of money.
Stepping Up
The next tier is actually the problem for small business website design. It is the $4,500 to $7,500 range. Notice there isn’t a tier between the $2,500 or less range and the $4500 – $7,500 range. And it is this leap that really throws small business owners off. They don’t really aren’t expecting such a big jump in price.
At this level you can expect to get some customization, help with your SEO (true help), help with your images, probably a little bit of marketing consulting, some functionality (like installing a calendar booking software app, payment button, etc), and maybe even some help with writing your content for you (we offer that at this level).
But even at this price range, you can’t expect what we call an “art installation” level website. If you think you can because you found “some guy” – you should read our last article about website design disasters. And frankly, this is just a regular website. You shouldn’t expect to build any kind of ecommerce website for small business for this price. Our e commerce websites start around $10,000.
The Art Installation
And then there is the next tier up. We call this the art installation tier. This is a fully branded, customized, work of art with unlimited options and unlimited revisions. And the truth is (even if nobody will tell you this), as a small business owner, you probably can’t afford it. These websites range anywhere from $15,000 all the way up to the millions of dollars, and probably average between $35,000 and $100,000. We don’t offer this kind of website. We don’t feel like being involved in these types of massive never-ending projects. It just isn’t us.
Summary
The problem with website design for small business is that often, the business owner deep down expects the top tier custom website design service, but they can only afford the $2,500 and below level.
Website design companies just can’t make that work. Custom websites are just too much work. Can you find some person working on their own to design a custom website for you for $2,500 – again, go read our article about website disasters.
Am I saying you get what you pay for? Not really.
What I am saying is that often small business owners really struggle to bridge the gap from the under $2,500 website to the semi-custom website design range. Because of this, they are often underwhelmed by the results they get. Designers in turn are often frustrated because of unrealistic expectations. This makes sense to me. I think business owner WANT the better website, and in the beginning just can’t afford it.
We Over-Deliver – And Add Tremendous Value
At Stay Wild Digital, we strive to over-deliver results for small business website design. And we do. but even we have to contain expectations to some degree. We can’t do fully custom art installation level work at semi-custom prices. Our business wouldn’t survive the amount of time we would have to spend for such a small amount of revenue.
What I would say is the thing you want to be very careful of, are the web design companies who offer you what amounts to an under $2,500 website (five page website, no customization, and you do all the work) and want to charge you $5,000 for that kind of website; and believe me, they are out there.
I hope this article has been helpful. And remember, Wix (and maybe Weeblly and Squarespace) has come a long way with their do-it-yourself website design platforms. Wix is a lot better about SEO than they used to be, and you can get a really good Wix website built that will allow you to easily edit it yourself, and make updates. So don’t discount those platforms as a small business owner. For $2,500 we can build you a pretty impressive Wix website.
Tim VanDerKamp is co-owner of Stay Wild Digital Marketing – a website design company located in Salt Lake City Utah. If you are interested in website design salt lake city, please contact us today for a free consultation.
