Wednesday 27 July 2011

Cheap websites, do you only get what you pay for?

These days, it is very easy to get a quick, cheap website set up for anything. Whether you are looking to set up a cheap website for business, charity or home use, many companies are offering websites at a very cheap price. This is all good and well, but do you only get what you pay for? Do you just get a quick website with poorly constructed code, bad graphics or too much flash? Will it actually do your business or purpose more harm than good?


All business world wide would love to have their website up and running promoting their services as soon as next day. It would be ideal! Hell, I'd love that. But in doing this, is quality being sacrificed in order for the rushed turnaround. We need to ensure that the company or developer handling the job, is fully qualified and able to do a professional and complete job.

How do we ensure that we know the developer or company are able to do an efficient and professional or even "proper" job? You need to look at their portfolio, request to see as much of their previous work as you can. Once you have evidence of their previous work, go through it, visit the sites. Are they easy to navigate around, are the pictures pix-elated? Is the layout messy, are you confused where to look due to colours, contrast or bad use of font?

Any web address you can get, run them through the following website. It may be a good idea to check out the current sites and see how the information relates to your current site. Maybe you can do more to improve your current site?

  • World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - http://www.w3.org/
  • Valid Style Sheet - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
  • Web Standards - http://www.w3.org/standards/
  • Search Engine Simulator - http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
The last link is particularly useful if you want to check what the search engines can see on your website.

Not many companies design and develop sites with all of the standards in mind, also taking into consideration accessibility to content. The Coder Guy has all of these services included with designs of websites, at highly competitive rates.

What have your experiences been like with cheap web designs? Has your site or rankings suffered over time? Let me know.