It seemed last year many of our readers had the same questions about web development that kept coming up. So for convenience’s sake, we’ve compiled them neatly right here. Take a look and see if one of your questions topped our list of FAQs:
1. Why Does Web Development Cost So Much?
This most frequently asked question opens the golden gate of opportunity for us to explain precisely what the value of your website is. In a previous article on the cost of a website, I likened your website to an employee for your business. Your company’s website is working for you 24/7, without ever needing a break. It sells for you while you’re sleeping, and it’s a constant advertisement/promoter/educator for your products and services.
So if you paid $20,000 for your website, that means after 2 years you have paid your website “employee” $10,000 per year. That’s an hourly wage of $1.14! Whatever the cost of your company website (and you should expect it to be at least $15k if working with an agency), you can be sure that it will quickly pay for itself and its value greatly outweighs the initial cost.
Want further insight on what other agencies charge? Let a global digital agency expert, Karl Sakas, give you his weigh-in.
2. Can’t You Just Build on the Website I Already Have?
Do I Need to Start From Scratch? I hate this question because no matter how thoroughly we explain why a prospect’s current website isn’t usable, many clients still come away feeling slighted as if dealing with sleazy auto mechanics pushing to sell them a manual clutch for their automatic car. I addressed this issue in Before You Hire a Web Developer as a caution to clients.
Just like you need the keys and title to a car before you can make any changes to it, your web agency also requires a few things in order to touch your website:
- FTP / SFTP Access
- Admin Log in Credentials
- Proof Of Domain Ownership
If you rent or lease your site, we do not have the legal right to make changes to it and therefore need to build a new website from the ground, up. Also, if it’s been coded in a custom framework such as a privately licensed shopping cart, it’s on lock down. Try translating Japanese into English after only taking a year’s worth of education in that foreign language. That’s why we use and recommend open source code (like WordPress).
3. Why Should I Switch to WordPress?
Our favorite reason? No monthly on going maintenance fee to install and run it on your website. WordPress has become the world’s most popular content management system (CMS), with over 24% of websites powered by it. That means naturally there are more themes, plug-ins and tech support than any other CMS out there.
It’s also the most user friendly. More and more entrepreneurs want to learn how to maintain their own website, and there’s no better platform than WordPress. It’s intuitive, simple and many features require little to no coding. We could go on and on, but I suggest you read the following article on how your business can use WordPress.
4. Isn’t There a Plug-in for That?
As easy as that would make our job, the answer is not always, “Yes.” Even with thousands of plug-in options that exist for WordPress, a lot of times a client needs a custom function that an already existing plug-in won’t solve.
Also be careful of installing too many plug-ins as they increase the load time of your website and often cause bugs because one plug-in is not compatible with another. They don’t always play nice together.
5. Can You Teach Me How to Maintain My Own Website?
We sure can. We believe basic website maintenance is becoming the norm of the future, so when we hand over your finished site, we also equip you with the knowledge of how to keep it up to date (unless of course you don’t want to learn, in which case we will maintain it for you. We’re fine with that, too.) With us, training comes standard.
6. Why Do I Need an Advanced SEO Package?
Though we build your website around keywords from the very beginning and optimize it for local search and quick page load time, that is no replacement for a strategic search engine marketing plan. We work with an SEO specialist who lives, breathes and sleeps SEO the way we obsess over the strategy, design and development of your website.
Once the design of your site both wows and funnels users into sales and conversion, the next step of attack is to be found first above your competitors and in front of your audience. This involves investing some marketing dollars, but with SEO as the future of business marketing, you can’t afford not to. A good SEO specialist will gain you quality links, mobile search optimization, and integration with social media among many, many other factors. Don’t just take our word for it. Read for yourself.
7. Does It Really Matter Where I Host My Website?
Yes! There are free and cheap web hosts that lead to banner ads and downtime on your site as well as slow load times. You can also use your own virtual private server (VPS) if you know what you’re doing, but if your website goes down (think 404 error), you are responsible for fixing it. Quality hosts, on the other hand, guarantee website up time by managing the server, fixing bugs, and security for you. And as your website sees spikes in traffic, a quality host will manage the changes for you automatically. You can read more here about the differences in web hosting.
Got a question for us we didn’t answer? Feel free to email us or leave a comment in the section below.