If you are reading this, chances are you are on the lookout for a website design on a budget. This article will discuss what you should ask yourself when you are after a cheap website design, specifically the three major factors you should consider. These are whether or not the website is built with a CMS (Content Management System), whether the cheap website designer is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) savvy, or if the designer custom creates the designs for you from scratch, or uses templates.

The first question to ask yourself is, do you create your cheap website design with a CMS (Content Management System)?

The benefits of a content management system are:

You don’t need to pay the designer a mint every time you wish to make little changes. You are able to log in from any computer and edit text, images, audio video etc.

You are able to add unlimited content. This is great for SEO, as search engines love content. The more content you add to your website, the more the search engine spiders will love you, and the more they will visit your website. Your website will gain trust in Google by being the go-to place for your visitors.  Google knows how long visitors stay on your site, and the longer they read your material, the more trustworthy Google deems you to be. If visitors leave immediately they arrive, you mustn’t be a credible source of information. Google takes this information into account.

Is my cheap website designer SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) savvy?

Search Engine Optimisation (in a nutshell) is when you optimise your website for the searches you wish to be found for, so when a potential client types that phrase into Google, you appear somewhere near the top of the listings. If your website designer knows nothing about SEO, you stand to lose a lot of time, money and effort getting visitors to your website.

If your website is not well optimised, you end up with a pretty sign, akin to a massive, expensive billboard, in the middle of the desert. You will need to spend a lot of time getting traffic through other sources. The quickest way to get traffic is to pay for it through PPC (pay per click) advertising. Unfortunately PPC  can be very expensive. There are third party traffic sources, like directory listings, video uploads etc, but your main source of traffic should be search engines. Without good SEO, you have a long, slow, expensive battle uphill to get traffic to your website.

Does my designer custom create the cheap website design or do they use templates?

There’s actually not anything wrong with either, but there is one major consideration in both instances, and that is how much am I going to pay for it?

Starting from a template is going to be much cheaper. And with the billions of web pages that are available on the Internet,  there’s little chance of your visitor ever seeing that same theme twice. Also depending on the skill of the designer and the offer they are providing, it’s likely they will edit each theme so you would never know they are a template.

Custom design will be more expensive, but if it is important to you to have bespoke design, then it may be worth it to pay a little extra. However most websites follow a specific format, header, sidebar, content area, so if you are a small to medium business on a budget, having your designer edit a theme may be more suitable to your budget.

So as you can see, it’s a personal choice as to whether or not you get a custom design from scratch, or start from a template. I hope this has helped you with what you need to ask yourself before getting a cheap website design.