Why paying for a premium website is worth it

When building your website, it can be tempting to just go with the cheapest option out there in order to save money. However, what you’ll end up spending more on in the long run are all the additional charges that come from using an inferior product or service. You’ll spend more on marketing because your site isn’t getting as many views and shares as you need it to, you’ll spend more on extra fees from platforms like Facebook or Instagram, and your business will just seem less trustworthy due to the lower quality of your website.

The value of having a good-looking website

More than anything, your site will determine whether or not customers trust you. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a custom design (though it certainly helps), but you do need to make sure that your site looks professional. Pick up some basic software and templates, get someone on Fiverr to clean up photos or images, and just make sure everything looks good before launching. If you can’t pay for a full-fledged redesign, at least save money by outsourcing some of your site’s image design; most high-quality images run $15+ per image on sites like Fiverr . Don’t skimp here!

The trust factor

There’s an immense amount of psychology at play when someone visits your site. While you might think your site looks pretty and functions fine, if people aren’t trusting you, they won’t take action. Trust is one of those things that develops over time, but will instantly impact your conversion rates. Put simply, trust is how much people feel like they can rely on and believe in what you do and say. If someone doesn’t trust you, then they don’t want to work with you or buy from you—regardless of whether or not there are other (cheaper) options available to them.

Increase organic search ranking

In short, search engine optimization (SEO) will help you get more traffic to your site. As more people visit your website, you'll have better chances of winning business through word-of-mouth recommendations and increased SEO rankings, which can ultimately lead to increased profits. SEO is an ongoing process: Every time you publish new content or make changes to existing pages on your site, it's important to check how those changes impact your organic ranking and adjust accordingly. After all, if you don't monitor and maintain organic rankings using SEO best practices, other sites may begin outranking yours.

Improve user experience

Asking your readers to navigate multiple landing pages on your site or struggling to find specific information will frustrate them and hurt conversion rates. If you want more people to subscribe to your newsletter, sign up for an account, or download an ebook, then you need users to stick around. A web designer can help guide decisions about site architecture so that visitors are always able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Make sure your design isn’t going to lead visitors in circles.

Make conversions easy and free up time

It’s tough to believe, but many people—especially small business owners—are still operating without a lead capture form on their websites. But with an easy-to-use, professional landing page that asks users to provide their name and email address in exchange for something of value (like your ebook or white paper), you can start growing your customer list. Since so many websites have abandoned lead capture forms altogether in favor of squeeze pages designed purely to make sales, your signup form will be refreshingly different and will get you noticed in a good way.