There is a huge amount of truth in the saying, “you get what you pay for.” There is no place that this is more obvious than in website design and marketing. Well, maybe it’s not so obvious, at least until you get around to changing something.
We get this a lot.
Prospects come to us looking to help improve their web presence and ask for a quote. After a quick review, we realize that starting any web marketing will be fruitless until the structural site issues are fixed. How bad those structural issues are usually has a direct relation to how much the business “saved” on website development.
Websites developed on the cheap can get you the result you want. Unless of course that result is increased business. If you’re just looking for a pretty place holder on the web, then go cheap. But if you ever want a site that does more than that, you need to think of the long-term ramifications of going with the lowest website development quote. More times than not, the cost of fixing that cheap site is going to greatly outpace the cost of the site itself.
And this is where we hear the “gasp!” from prospects.
Here they thought they were getting a great deal on a website, only to find out that in order to actually generate business from it, it’s not such a great deal after all.
That’s not to say that web marketing doesn’t cost anything. It’s just that the more work that has to be done fixing the website, the less time your team can spend marketing it. Ultimately, that can set you back many months just get to a place where your website can be properly marketed.
At this point you have two options: A) Fix the problems or B) Burn the site down and start over. Unfortunately, it’ll cost money just to know what option is best. Web marketers can spend a good deal of time trying to fix things only to later realize that the site is just too messed up. They’ll come back with the recommendation for option B, but only after having invested some time to be able to come to that conclusion.
If it can be fixed, the web developers should work toward that goal. But once the conclusion is drawn that it’ll cost way too much, it’s best to start over.
Of course, there is always option C) Don’t buy a cheap website. That will save you a lot of money, problems and headache down the road.