Running a small business can be a big job, and finding the best website designers for small businesses can be too confusing. Let’s go over all the details you need to understand, what you need to use, and how to figure out what’s best for your small business.
The best website designers for small business are usually cheaper, online programs called website builders that include SiteNimble, WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. These are cheaper and more cost-effective than actually hiring a website design professional.
There are many more details that are important to understand, however. From the average cost of website design for small business to important tips on finding affordable websites for your business, this is your complete guide to finding a website designer or builder that fits your needs.
Average Cost of Website Design for Small Business
So how much does a website actually cost? The average cost of website design for a small business can vary, but it’s usually much more expensive than business owners would expect. In fact, according to Forbes, the average web design cost for a small business website is anywhere between $2,000 to $2,900 depending on how many pages and what features you’re looking for.
Despite this, the pricing can range much higher and lower, and depending on if you use your own website builder or pay for a budget builder, you can get a much better deal for your small business.
How to Tell if a Website Designer Is Good
The easiest way to tell if a website designer or website builder is actually good is to look up online reviews and look at the results of their design. This is usually a good indicator of whether or not the website designer will actually be consistent, and the quality of their websites.
It’s also important to compare the finished designs to websites you would commonly see online or visit. Most of the websites used on a daily basis by thousands of customers have a successful, streamlined design and modern interface.
By comparing the designs made by the potential website designer or builder you’re choosing with popular websites, it’s much easier to determine if these designs are actually effective.
Statistics & Analytics
Another important factor to consider is the analytics these website designers are able to provide. If a website designer or builder can provide you with relevant statistics of not only the SEO success but also the user experience of their websites, you can use this information to figure out how good this designer is.
Some good information and key metrics to ask for are the average session duration, the bounce rate, and the views per session. These statistics can help you determine whether or not the website designer you want to work with is good.
Benefits Offered
Of course, that’s not the only relevant information to consider. Another big thing to take into consideration is how many benefits you’ll get by going with the website designer of your choice. Are they offering hosting, or will this be an additional price you need to consider? People spend thousands of dollars per year on website upkeep, which is something that will add to the price of your design.
If your website designer offers these services for the price as well, that can be extremely cost-effective in the long term. Instead of having to pay for these services separately, you can buy an all-in-one package that comes with everything.
Best Website Builders for Small Business
So what are the best website builders for small businesses? There are several important considerations you need to make before choosing the website builder that works for you.
Website builders are traditionally online tools that either build the website for you or offer a simple and easy-to-use service that allows you to build your own website.
SiteNimble
Easily one of the best website builders available today is SiteNimble. SiteNimble offers a perfect solution to people who want a hand-designed website made by experts, and those who don’t want to pay the insane price tag that most of these website designers offer.
Instead of having to pay thousands of dollars for your website design and then thousands more for website upkeep, SiteNimble offers all of these services at a heavily discounted rate, hiring experts to do the work for you. For an extremely low upfront cost, SiteNimble offers affordable websites for small businesses, along with logo design, blog articles, SEO services, and customer support.
Pros
- Extremely easy to use
- The most cost-effective website-building service
- Custom-built website by professionals
- SEO articles written & published on your website
- Professional customer support
Cons
- You can’t build the website yourself
- Not as much customization as an Open Source site builder
WordPress
WordPress is one of the most well-known and beloved website builders available. It’s Open Source, which means that it’ll be free forever. That actually ends up being one of the major, and only, downsides to using WordPress.
Because it’s free, WordPress itself doesn’t offer any website design services, hosting services, or website builder services. To build a website with WordPress, a small business owner will most likely have to design the website from scratch themselves, using Themes, Plugins, and other features that WordPress makes difficult to learn.
Pros
- Extremely customizable
- Easy to expand using plugins and themes
- Trusted
- Completely free & Open Source
Cons
- Needs expensive hosting
- Requires a steep learning curve
- Might be vulnerable to security exploits
- Requires some technical experience
Wix
Similar to WordPress, Wix is an extremely trusted website builder. Unlike WordPress, it actually does offer inbuilt website hosting, just not website design.
Wix offers powerful design features that are fairly easy to pick up but are also on the expensive side for a service that forces you to design the website yourself and also has somewhat of a learning curve.
If you’re able to watch tutorials to learn how to use Wix, however, it can easily be a great service that can help any small business owner design their own website.
Pros
- Relatively easy to use
- Built-in hosting
- Powerful design features
Cons
- Relatively expensive for the features
- Doesn’t offer custom-built sites
- You have to DIY your website
- Horrible GUI
Squarespace
Squarespace is one of the more modern website builders available to small business owners, and undoubtedly one of the best. Unfortunately, this also comes with a higher price tag on average.
The largest benefits of Squarespace are its easily usable GUI and easy-to-figure-out website-building process, but this also means that it’s not as customizable as it would be if you were to hire a website expert to make a custom website design or learn the entire process of a program like WordPress.
It also means that you’re once again in charge of designing your own website when compared to something like SiteNimble, which does it for you.
Pros
- Easy to use and learn
- Streamlined & great GUI
- Perfect for beginners
Cons
- Expensive for small businesses
- Hard to customize
- Not many addons or features
Hiring vs Using an Online Website Builder
If you haven’t found a website builder that you want to go with or are simply considering all your options, you may be wondering what the benefits of hiring a website design professional are compared to using a program or a website builder.
There are several benefits to hiring a website design professional, such as the extremely high level of customizability, communication, and easy revisions. The benefits of using an online website builder include being much cheaper, faster, more streamlined, and offering easy-to-implement features.
Of course, some business owners may find it more beneficial to go with a website design professional, and other small business owners will find it easier to just use a website builder.
Benefits of Hiring
When it comes to hiring a web design professional, expect to pay a lot out of pocket. But if you can set aside thousands of dollars for a quality website, it might be worth it.
Web design professionals usually have a lot of work experience, and this means that they know how to build a good website. This includes either custom-coding a website or using a website builder that they’ve learned how to use, like WordPress or Squarespace.
Of course, a custom-coded website is going to cost much more than hiring a professional to design a website with a CMS like WordPress, but both methods are going to cost much more than using a program.
With that extra cost, you usually get the comfort of knowing that you’re working with a professional who has done it before.
This also means that you should run into fewer issues during the process, and the design that you are looking for should be yours rather quickly.
Benefits of Using a Builder
Using an online website builder might be cheaper than hiring, but this means you’ll have to do more of the process yourself. Rather than just hiring someone to build your website for you, you’ll most likely have to learn the entire website design process.
Of course, there are several other options like SiteNimble that offer the best of both worlds, but generally speaking, this means the process will be more reliant on your skills.
In turn, this can also make the efforts more rewarding. You’re able to customize your website and revise it without worrying about the price tag going up with every revision.
Additionally, your website will be completely owned by you, and you won’t have to worry about communicating with some third party.
There’s also the obvious benefit of the price. Compared to the thousands of dollars you have to spend hiring a web design professional, the much lower price of using a website builder is far more cost-effective for small business owners.
How Much Will It Cost?
The price for website builders can vary, but generally, these builders can range from free to several hundred dollars. Along with this, you’ll also pay for the price of a domain name, which costs around $15 per year, and website hosting.
The cost of website hosting can range from $5 per month to upwards of $200 per month, but for a small business owner, it’ll likely be on the lower end.
How to Hire a Website Designer for Small Business
If you end up deciding to go with a professional website designer, how should you hire one? The hiring process itself is complicated because it’s important to vet the web designer you pick and the quality of your websites.
Additionally, it’s important to avoid scams, which means knowing where to search for a web design professional to hire, and how to find the best price for your small business website.
Searching Locally
Although searching locally will mean that you have fewer options, and most likely will have to settle with a website designer with less experience, it can also mean that you’re less likely to be scammed.
The best way to find local website designers is to search local Facebook groups by making a post and asking for advice, searching the local Yellow Pages, and searching via Google.
When using Google to find a website designer for your small business, make sure to include the name of your city and state in the search, and avoid any listings that don’t seem to be local.
It’s also a good idea when searching locally to try to contact the potential website designer via phone to verify that they do actually live or service near the area of your business.
Searching Online
When looking for website designers online, finding ones who have good reviews and a good reputation is the most important thing. It’s crucial to remember that because so many people can offer a web design service, it’s much easier to get scammed when looking online than it is when looking locally.
Because of this, be sure to vet the brands and designers you are considering, check for reviews, and ask questions about refund policies before buying.
Website designers should also make clear what they use in order to design your website, whether or not they’re using pre-built website templates, and how much experience they have designing websites.
AI Website Builders
If you’ve ever heard of AI website builders, you might be considering using one of these services for your website.
As a small business owner, however, it is heavily recommended that you do not use an AI website designer for your business. While AI website builders are much faster and cheaper than other services, they also come with several severe downsides that can make these websites much less effective in the long run.
Are AI Site Builders Worth It for Small Businesses?
In general, AI website builders are not good for small businesses. While these website builders offer claims of reduced prices and little to no upfront work, they also offer a highly reduced quality of website design along with several other issues.
AI website designers might become better eventually, but at the moment, these services offer much more trouble than they are worth.
Pros & Cons of AI Site Builders
The benefits of AI website builders are that they are cheap, and you can most likely set up a website in one day. Despite these benefits, there are many issues with the actual end result websites that make it a deal-breaker for small business owners.
Most importantly, many search engines are now starting to review content in order to determine whether or not it is written by an AI. Because of this, it’s possible that your website will be marked as AI-generated by the search engine, which could possibly hurt your SEO rankings in engines like Google or DuckDuckGo.
Another con of AI website builders is that the customizability of these websites will most likely be extremely low unless you’re using an AI plugin with some already built CMS system like WordPress.
Even if you are using an already pre-built CMS, the learning curve for actually editing the generated website would be just as difficult as without using the AI website builder.
Figuring Out Your Website
For entrepreneurs, the best website designers for small businesses are typically online website builders that keep it cost-effective while also allowing ease of use and customizability.
While hiring a website professional can be ideal, it also costs far more than most small businesses are willing to invest in their website.
Whether you pick SiteNimble, WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace, these are the best options for most small business owners.
Leave a Reply