Web Design: Expectations Vs Reality

If you’re not a web designer or have never worked with one, websites can be difficult. It’s especially difficult when you don’t know how your web design expectations align with reality. Most good digital agencies and web designers will help to manage your expectations, by telling you the realities of your situation. Despite this, there are still a number of agencies out there that sell clients a dream and then fail to meet their expectations. In my experience, it is better for the agency to be perfectly honest with the customer at the beginning. This makes it more likely that a good customer relationship and final product will form.

Also on the client-side, some clients simply expect too much. For instance, if you’re paying £500 for a website, you’re not going to get something on the same level as someone who has paid thousands. That’s just common sense, but some people don’t know enough about the industry to understand that. That’s why in this article, I will be going over some common issues of expectations vs reality. This is specific to web design and should not be used as a basis for any other service.

Web Design Budget

This is one of the most contentious issues in web design, the budget. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has been guilty of slashing many marketing budgets. This is why the question of budget is one that should be handled with care by the agency and with realism by the client. The overall consensus in the UK is that web design costs can range from as little as £200 to as much as £10,000 +. So, what can you expect to get from these different prices? Every agency is different but there are some expectations that should be consistent.

Basic Website

• Price: £200-£500
• 1-5 Pages Size
• Contact Page
• Landing Page

Small Business Website

• Price: £500-£1000.
• 5+ Pages.
• Integrated Social Media.
• ‘Google My Business’.
• Google Analytics.

E-commerce Website

• Price: £1,000-£2,500.
• Ecommerce Toolkit.
• Order Fulfillment and Tracking.
• Web Chat.

Database-Centric Website

• Price: £2,500-£10,000+
• Superior Functionality.
• Design From Scratch.
• Integrated Database.

Now that you’ve seen what you would get for an average price, you can make good choices. You should also think about what you’re asking your web designer to do. For example, you shouldn’t be demanding the features of an advanced website if you’re only paying for a basic one.

Web Design Timeframe

This is another one that is incredibly frustrating for both web designers and customers. It’s very difficult to be able to give a customer an exact figure on how long it will take to make a website. It can also be frustrating for the customer, especially when they have different expectations. This is why it is important for web designers to make customers aware of the varied amount of time it will take to complete a project. If you are able to, you should give your customer a rough estimate. Despite this, you still need to make it clear to the customer that the time taken may be less or more depending on the circumstances.

As a customer, you need to understand that your web designer may have other clients. These clients may even be paying significantly more for their services than you are. This means of course, that their projects will be more technical and will require more time. If a web designer has quoted you a certain amount of time for completion, you should be patient and let them work. You shouldn’t be constantly micromanaging them in relation to deadlines. This will only make it more likely that errors are made.

Website Maintenance

This is another thing that a lot of web design customers don’t immediately think about. You might think that a website is a static string of code that doesn’t need upkeep. This couldn’t be further from the truth, unfortunately. Websites, just like food can go out of date as links break and plugins require updating. The process of keeping your website maintained is critical to ensuring that your website is still worth what you paid for it. Website maintenance is not going to be free, so don’t expect your web designer to be doing that. It can take a serious amount of time and the developer deserves the money for the additional effort.

If you’re wondering about how much you should be paying for your website maintenance, don’t worry. That’s a common question to have. Nowadays, businesses can expect to pay anywhere between $35 to $5000 per month for their website maintenance. Of course, this is an extremely estimative figure. The actual cost of your website maintenance will depend on a number of different factors. This can include the complexity of your website and the pricing structure of your digital agency. If you feel you may be getting ripped off, get some comparative quotes. 

Web Design: SEO

This is another aspect of web design that many people simply overlook, or don’t understand. Yes, paying a professional web developer to create your website is going to improve your chances of having great SEO. Despite this, you cannot expect your SEO to improve just by having a website that is well-designed for SEO. If you’re going to improve, you need to be getting traffic, generating backlinks, and updating your website. The most common methods of doing this are blogging on your website and guest posting with a link to your site on other publications. That’s how you will improve.

Knowing this, you should be able to tell that SEO is not necessarily the responsibility of the web designer. Of course, you would expect them to optimize every page for SEO, but they won’t necessarily be able to make the content for you. They definitely won’t do it for free and blogging can take up a lot of time. That’s why there are a number of agencies that you can outsource your copywriting to. They will be able to update your blog for you multiple times per week. This will help you to steadily climb up the rankings.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be seen that it is critical for web designers to be able to effectively manage client expectations. Despite this, clients also have a responsibility to act reasonably and understand the complexity of web design. By both parties acting like this, it is much more likely that the web designer and the customer will have a good working relationship. For instance, customers should be aware of how much they should be paying. Furthermore, clients should be given a rough idea of when the work will be completed, even if it’s not binding. Sticking to this breeds repeat business and happy clients.

Additionally, customers should understand that website maintenance is not going to be free. It’s not even necessarily going to be cheap. The web designer has a responsibility to charge the customer fairly for the amount of work they are doing. This can be made more difficult for the customer due to the varied costs involved from agency to agency. Finally, customers should be aware that they will be handling their own SEO (unless they pay for it.). SEO is not something that blows up overnight and it can take months before any real progress is seen.