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When you are at the beginning of your entrepreneurial path, every $ counts, so the temptation to save from wherever you can is extremely high. It’s just that, before giving yourself to the cheapest options, it’s good to turn to perspective thinking and ask yourself an essential question: “Will this low price cost me later?” If the investment you are considering is about creating a website, the answer is, “Yes, a cheap site will cost you later.”
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And now let’s think beyond the enticing marketing strategies, sit and judge clearly, like people with their feet on the ground and not their heads in the cloud of enticing offers.
“Good and cheap” is a myth. When you choose to buy cheap, you are actually choosing to give up something. This sometimes has to do with quantity, but most of the time it has to do with quality. And quality, in our case, could translate into appearance, security, performance or technical support.
So, let’s review the risks you are exposed to when choosing your online business to wear the clothes of a cheap site.
The risks of choosing a cheap site
Poor indexing
To get along. Not everyone who offers web design services is an SEO specialist. So, whether you are going to buy a cheap template or leave it to a cheap web designer, do not expect your site to be optimized for search engines. Or, if you’re told it is, don’t expect it to be effective.
Effective SEO requires a lot of time and effort, first to understand its principles, then to implement it properly. This is given that Google is a dynamic search engine, where algorithms change somewhat regularly.
A cheap site therefore means poor indexing on search engines, and poor indexing means that any subsequent investment in your site is a futile investment.
Unattractive design
What is cheap looks cheap.
A cheap site is created based on a template, which means that you do not have customization, and the lack of customization means that you will have a site similar in design to many others on the Internet. And that certainly won’t help you look professional in front of customers or potential customers.
A common design spoils your uniqueness, robbing you of the chance to make yourself noticed and memorable in a www world with over 1.2 billion active sites.
The first impression matters, so you’d better impress your visitors in the first 15 seconds, because that’s all they spend on average on a site.
Also, keep in mind that poorly made sites with similar content are penalized by Google, and once penalized a website can hardly get your head in the online world.
Poor quality hosting
A cheap site comes bundled with poor hosting services.
Just imagine what it means to “drop” the fixed server when you launch a special campaign for your customers. But even worse, imagine what that means when you don’t even get fast and efficient technical support.
Poor quality hosting also means having limited traffic and everything collapses when there is a bigger crowd on the site.
The hosting company holds the online access key to your site. You don’t want to leave this key in anyone’s hands, do you?
You can find more here about hosting.
Minimal functionalities
When you buy a cheap site, you will have access to only minimal functionality, and that translates into few pages and few things that visitors can actually do on your site.
Instead, a good site needs to be interactive, have integrated social accounts, call to action, contact forms, invite clicks to keep visitors on the site and generate interaction.
Lack of updates
Those who offer cheap sites transfer to you the care of making the necessary updates and generally just about any care. Once the site is purchased the responsibility for maintenance falls on your shoulders.
And that means following and updating regularly, either on the platform, on the theme, or on plugins. Otherwise, you can wake up with all kinds of errors, crashes of all beauty or, worse, cyber attacks that will bring you many strands of white hair.
Are you sure you have time and nerves for all these hassles?
Security issues on cheap site
Unfortunately, computer security is not taken very seriously, although the Internet faces dozens of such attacks every day.
A cheap site is also a vulnerable site, with the risk that it will not be secured even to a minimum. With administration passwords like 1234 or 1234abcd you are the safe target of hackers. Likewise, with dubious plugins installed on the site, you are exposed to cyber dangers, from which not even the most skilled specialists in the field can escape.
Impossibility to make changes to the site
Excited about the possibility of having a cheap site, it is very likely that you will not notice that in some cases your site is sold exactly as it is, without the possibility to make changes to it later, to add functionality , e.g. And if you are offered this opportunity, it will cost you dearly.
Operating problems
The operating problems of cheap sites come from the fact that, in many cases, they are created by novice programmers, thus having few functionalities and many vulnerabilities. The risk that it contains weak codes is high, resulting in errors and increased loading time.
Lack of technical support
Did you choose a cheap site? Do it yourself. That would be essentially the logic of web developers offering ready-made sites.
Any problem that arises along the way – and it appears, sooner or later – is your problem and you have to end it yourself. Technical support is not included in the low-cost packages, and if you have any doubts, arm yourself patiently and get ready to rummage online for answers and solutions. And this is not an easy or pleasant task.
High costs
And to return to the question from the beginning, despite the fact that the purchase price of a cheap site is almost irresistible, in the long run your investment will prove much more expensive and, above all, risky.
So, before opting for a cheap website option, make sure that you are informed about all the hidden costs and all the facilities you have. Ask questions about site security, technical support, updates, functionality or hosting, and make sure you own your site’s domain.
