Episode 17: Affordable Website Design Brisbane

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[00:00:00]  Saul: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Web Design Brisbane Podcast. This is episode number 17. And today's episode is entitled Affordable Website Design Brisbane. My name is Saul Edmonds, and as usual, I'm joined by the lovely Gillian Smith.

[00:00:13]  Gillian: Good morning, Saul. Hello, everybody.

[00:00:17]  Saul: Hello, we are the co-founders and creative directors of Roundhouse, the creative agency, a local business with a passion for helping clients grow. Over to you, Gill. 

[00:00:25]  Gillian: Okay, well, in today's episode, we will cover all you need to know about affordable website design. As usual, our goal is to help small business owners and entrepreneurs who live in Brisbane, Australia. Now, if you have a set budget, and you need a new website, you may be checking out affordable options when it comes to your website design. So how much does an affordable website cost? How can you save money on your next custom website? And what are some things that you need to look out for when seeking out the more affordable options to close get started? Well, okay, so from your experience, what can you say about pricing and expectations about pricing for an affordable, small business website in Brisbane? 2019. 

[00:01:12]  Saul: Okay, so the digital landscape has of course changed quite a lot at the beginning of when websites first came into being, websites were generally very expensive. Not that certain websites, or all depending on the scope of your project. That isn't the case. But once again, that comes back down before you're even starting to look at price on what your expectations are of what you're going to get to match expectations with cost. So if you're talking about affordable, that to some extent depends on what somebody views as an affordable. But,  if you were going to say, if there's a question that I get all the time, which is what is a an average website, when someone says, I want the price for an average website, and  for us might be that we built for people might be 46 pages, it's a purely informational site 46 pages, and depending on any extra scope, that can range,  sort of a starting price is around two and a half to 3000. And then up from there, because sometimes small sites will also have particular features in them that make that price a lot more boring, but starting price is sort of around there and up.

[00:02:54]  Gillian: Okay, so what are some ways that people can save money on a custom website design? 

[00:02:59]  Saul: Save money. Well, they can save money, not, I mean, we would consider most of the time if we're doing that sort of site that we just spoke about, like a 46-page site that doesn't include any additional copywriting from our part. So that there's an assumption there and this is, is spoken about with the client, that they'll be providing that information for the website with that sort of pricing.

[00:03:37]  Gillian: You can save money with your copywriting,

[00:03:41]  Saul: Yeah, you can save money with your own copywriting. This is also a part of that is that they would provide all that we can arrange to have professional photography, and videography done for people, of course, but if they're going to provide their own photography, that's assume part of that sort of website as well.

[00:04:08]  Gillian: What about the idea of starting small, I keep your website small and adding on to it over time?

[00:04:13] Saul: Yeah, that's right. I mean, having  if your budget and spending, especially if you're a start-up, and you don't have a great deal of funding initially, to be able to do particular things, having core things in place is important, like a smaller website, at least having a website, it's better to have a website up that's smaller, that still has the most important information there, then no website, because then at least your site can start to be indexed by Google, people can start to see it, and you've got some profile that still looks great and does a great job, and you can spend expand on it over time. 

[00:04:59]  Gillian: And what about DIY solutions such as weeks? Is that a good solution for an affordable small business website?

[00:05:05]  Saul: Yeah, well, you've got wicks, Squarespace, Shopify, and a whole host of other solutions out there. And certainly,  we would always consider having a professionally designed website is the best option you can have because you have people, you have a support team there, too. And you have the right amount of thought in it, and energy put into your project for ultimately, the benefit of your brand. Yeah, and experience there too. And working with somebody that has done this many times before. But ultimately, people know their business best as well. So that's where the partnership comes into play. But it's not necessarily a bad thing for people if they really have to do it themselves. Because I found many times it can be stepping stone, then for people to actually realize that's not what they want anyway, and sometimes people don't know that, and they have to do it themselves. But on the positive side, they get to have it up and running. Yeah, they get up and running. But they also get to have the experience of knowing how to edit a website becoming more familiar with these tools as well. So when they get another version of the site, they're already a bit more experience, which is always helpful. 

[00:06:33]  Gillian: And building your own website is a learning process.

[00:06:35]  Saul: And it certainly is, yeah.  I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that because you build your website, that you're going to feel that you've done a great job. In fact, there are many instances where people have done that and halfway through the process, they realize it's not what they want and then they get one built for them from someone like us, because they've had to go through that process to realize that, but that's okay, if you still want something in the process. 

[00:07:07]  Gillian: Okay, well, what are some watch points and things to look out for, when you're trying to achieve a good result from an affordable website? 

[00:07:15] Saul: Things to when you're trying to save money, I think it's good, regardless of whether you're getting someone to do it for you, or you're doing it yourself, is still always try to keep your eyes and your mind on the prize, which is what you're trying to convey. It's very easy for all of us, really to get involved in the smaller details of that but just so long as you've got a few core things in place that you're thinking about, which might include who your target market is, who this website for what that audience looks like, some level of appeal to them. If you're  thinking about those things, too, and then you come to the realization that you don't really know what the best way to actually achieve that, and to convey that on your side, that's also a watch point, really, to come over and speak to an agency or to speak to people about how best to actually do that as well because, once again, first impressions last so that's probably a very important point for small business,

[00:08:41]  Gillian: What are some tips on optimizing your website for small business search results for SEO?

[00:08:49]  Saul: Okay, so same thing is this can actually be very  simple, is, if you don't have the tools that we use a range of different tools to analyse what search terms are being searched for certain things online, you don't have access to those tools, the simple things you can do is just to search for terms that relate to your business or to your industry, we are service search for them online and just to see who actually shows up, like who's actually showing up on the first page in the organic search results, even in the ads as well, but specifically in the organic search results, then just having a look at their site, and just having some notes or observing what they're actually doing on their, on their site, what sort of content that you can actually see there's things going on in the background in their site that you won't be able to see, but what you can see, you can make some sort of notes around that, and  it's a good idea to kind of analyse and then reverse engineer, to some extent what people have already done that have led them to be where they are, that can work quite well, and that's it for today. Guys, thank you so much for listening to our podcast yet again. Before we go please don't forget to rate review and subscribe to this podcast. We'd love to hear your feedback. Also, if you if you'd like to read the transcript of this episode, please visit our website at roundhouse.cc forward slash web-design. We're on a journey to help local Brisbane businesses grow their opportunities online and exceed their goals. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye

[00:10:42]  Gillian: Bye, guys.