In today’s modern world, no business is complete without a robust and comprehensive online presence. With the advent of social media, developing and maintaining an online presence becomes a seemingly straightforward process. However, one of the best ways to carve out a place for your brand in the online world is by creating and hosting your own website. 

Instead of solely relying on social media, having a website that your audience can visit and interact with will help your brand seem more legitimate and make for a more intimate user experience for potential customers or clients.

When it comes to creating a website for your business, there are probably a few questions that come to mind, like: 

• Which options for creating a website will work best for my business?
• How much does a website typically cost?
• Should I build a website myself or hire a web designer?

Upon further review, these questions appear to be causally linked, since the cost of your website and the method you’ll use to create your website will primarily depend on the kind of website your business will require.

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DIY Vs. Professional Web Design

If you’re willing to put the time and sweat equity into learning how to design and build a unique, compelling, and functional website that ranks competitively in various search engine results, then it’s possible to keep the total price tag for a DIY project under $1,000. 

However, that figure likely won’t account for the learning curve that’s required for most business owners to master the various elements of web development and SEO necessary to ensure that your site meets all of those needs. The additional hours of training and troubleshooting can add up to a lot more lost revenue than you bargained for, and could represent a net negative when weighed against the option of hiring a digital marketing agency to design and develop your business’s website. 

Hiring an agency to create and develop your website might be the more expensive option on paper, with prices ranging anywhere from $2,000-$75,000, but it’s also the option that boasts the highest return on your investment—a website is an investment, after all. 

With a greater online presence, more appealing and distinctive layout, and the functionality to benefit your customer-base, an agency-built website will be able to convert visitors into customers much faster than a run-of-the-mill template website.

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Benefits of Hiring a Web Design Team

Hiring an agency to create and design your website relieves you of the burden of doing all the hard work yourself. Instead, through regular meetings, an agency’s web design team will guide you through the development process as they turn your brand’s vision into a website that meets the demands of your business, represents your brand according to its mission and values, and stands apart from the competition.

Furthermore, with a nuanced understanding gained through building websites professionally, an agency’s web design team also possesses the experience and technical wisdom required to ensure that your business’s website will be a success.

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What Does a Website Need to Succeed?

A website’s overall success depends on a few important factors:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Digital Marketing Content and Strategy
• User Experience (UX) and Web Design

‍Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, involves optimizing your website so that it will rank higher in search engine results, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. There are many different pieces to SEO like using popular keywords in your website’s content, regularly adding new content to your site, and linking to quality content on other websites. The better optimized your website is for search engines, the more likely traffic on your website will increase as it is shown in more search results.

However, before you can optimize your website for search engines, there needs to be something on your website to optimize. 

‍Digital Marketing Content refers to the actual content on your website and any off-page content that leads back to your site. Your digital content is going to be the avenue your site uses to communicate your brand and its services to new and returning visitors. Images, videos, blog posts, email newsletters, and ads are all going to be ways in which you can entice visitors to your site to become customers. 

Actively contributing to and updating your website’s marketing content is going to be key to increasing awareness of your brand and new visits to your brand’s website. Without a combination of SEO and a digital marketing strategy, your website will likely remain dead in the water, no matter how great the services or products your brand offers are.

When it comes to hiring an agency, you can certainly opt to produce and deliver your own content for your website, but the trade-off is that it takes time and commitment to develop and deploy an aggressive online marketing strategy. 

By hiring an agency, you’re hiring a team that is dedicated to monitoring your website’s analytics and devising strategies for increasing conversion rates so that you can see your website’s return on investment sooner rather than later. That way, you can focus on your business while the agency team focuses on constantly improving your site’s performance.

Yet content marketing isn’t the only way that an agency can help your website stand out from the rest.

Many website building platforms possess themes and templates that are user-intuitive and visually appealing, but the issue arises when these sites are compared side-by-side. 

After a while, they all start to look the same, and users will be able to notice the difference between a uniquely built site and a website that possesses the same navigation structure, layout, and theme as every other site built on that platform. Additionally, you’ll run into limitations in functionality much faster with a website builder since you’ll be limited to plug-ins and add-ons compatible with their platform. Many turnkey website solutions approach design and functionality from a one-size-fits-all mentality. There are even some companies that build their entire business plan on providing one boilerplate website for specific industries where every site is exactly the same. But if your business truly stands out among your competitors, shouldn’t your website do the same?

By hiring an agency with a web design team, you’ll receive a website that is built specifically for your brand and business. The website’s design and navigation will be tailored to your vision for your brand, instead of trying to conform your brand to a generic template. Your site will be much more flexible when it comes to creating the ideal experience for your customers and generating leads. Whether you need a standard ecommerce cart, or a bespoke onboarding experience for leads, an experienced web team can help build the right solution for your business.

The bottom line is this: almost anyone can start a website for free, and almost anyone can promote content for that website online that potentially drives traffic to their online business.

However, you really do get what you pay for when it comes to digital marketing.

If you want a website that’s a cut above the rest, possesses a unique design that will attract new customers, ranks highly in search engine results, and fits the individual needs of your business, then you’ll want to consider hiring an agency.

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So How Much Should I Spend on My Website?

Cost will depend entirely on the industry and unique demands of your business, but the average cost of a high quality website are as follows:

• Small businesses will pay an average of $2,000 to $10,000.
• Large corporations typically spend anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000.
• E-commerce businesses could spend $5,000 to $55,000.

Keep in mind that web design projects include a wide range of tasks, from content modeling to SEO to UX and visual design. So, when you pay for a website, you’re not just paying for a web domain and hosting service—you’re hiring a team that is dedicated to producing a fully functional website with all of the prerequisites needed to convert visitors into customers.

If you’re a business owner and you’re interested in seeing how we can improve your brand with a comprehensive and state-of-the-art website, contact us today and let our award-winning team make it possible.

Still curious about what we can do? Check out our website at anntoine.com!