It’s important to realize that building a custom website is much like building a new storefront for your business. Both require blueprints, proofs, well thought out plans and money. Below are a few points to help address many of the common misconceptions we come across when building custom sites.

My website shouldn’t cost that much – besides I have a nephew who said he’ll do it for free.

Everyone has a nephew. Unfortunately not every nephew is well equipped to handle your custom web design. Don’t think that free is effective. Effective web design will cost you money, and it is well worth that investment. Below are two different examples of websites. One was designed by a “nephew” so to speak, and the other was someone who actually knew what they were doing. I’ll let the examples do the rest of the talking for me.

Updates to my website should be free – besides I paid you a lot to develop it.

Investing in a good, effective website can definitely cost some well invested money. There is no denying that. However, it is not the job of your web developer to make updates for free. Let’s go back to our original example of building your own storefront. Once your building is complete and you’ve paid all your costs you decide that the color of paint used isn’t what you want. Whose responsibility is to update the paint color? It is your responsibility, of course. The same is true for upkeep on a website.

Once the website is built and handed off to you it is now in your care to make sure that banner images, sidebar images, videos and text are all up to date and are communicating your message. When you decide to change those things expect there to be a cost. Not because someone is trying to nickel and dime you, but because time and resources are being used to make updates to your website. All website owners must do this so their website can stay current.

Because we build most of our websites in WordPress, this would allow you to login and make most of the changes yourself. This is a great thing, but you still might need us for more major changes (or if you just get to busy with the business).

Other exciting opportunities can result in your website needing major updates such as:

• a new service or product line comes out so your homepage needs redesigned to showcase it.
• a rebranding of the company to more effectively communicate its message.
• new copywriting that is more SEO friendly to increase search results.
• simply needing to change it up and bring some freshness to the website.

Summary

I hope this helps explain the importance of your website as it relates to your brand.

Bryce Eldridge

Designer