We hear it all the time – “I’m really not happy with my current website but I’m stuck in a contract”, or “I bought a package deal that included SEO and marketing with my site, but my website looks awful and I’m getting no leads”.
There should never be a need to go into a contract when you want a website created. The only things that require a yearly or monthly fee would be your domain name, website hosting and possibly any purchasable plugins that need renewing.
Other areas, like web maintenance (keeping the site updated), website updates (ongoing changes), marketing to the site; such as SEO or paid ads would require an on-going contract of some sort but should be done as and when you need it and not just bundled into the full website cost.
Your website is the foundation of your online presence so we always recommend getting this right first and then work from there.
If an agency is trying to bundle everything in from the start we’d advise to avoid them – once they have you tied in they will most likely do a poor job on your site to start with, then any marketing efforts they even try are going to suffer because of this, as conversions won’t work.
Most agencies are not experts in every field too. I know it sounds lovely to have everything under one roof, but more often then not an SEO agency won’t be able to create you a nice site, and a web agency will probably struggle to get you ranking. Use agencies specifically for what you need, you want an expert in each area rather than a “jack of all trades”.
Contracts are usually there to benefit the agency and not the customer, to get you to tie into a package that you don’t need or won’t use, or worse yet that the agency will fabricate on what work they are even doing for you.
Ongoing web maintenance and updates are useful to keep your site secure and if you might require regular changes each month, but be sure you can cancel anytime you need and also keep an eye on what work is being done. For instance, if your site only has a handful of plugins then is it something you could easily do yourself?
Another problem these packages often have is that you won’t actually own the files of the website itself and so you can’t easily move to another host or use another developer if needs be, making them not future proof. There are many web companies and web builders, such as Wix and Shopify that have their own environments that you won’t be able to move away from if you ever needed or wanted to. This is another thing that is best avoided for complete flexibility.
Marketing your site with SEO or paid ads is also a great strategy, but just be sure not to get tied into a long term contract. Any decent agency should work on a monthly rolling basis for online marketing, allowing you to test the water and also allow them to prove their worth. If your in a one, three or even five year contract the agency are going to be less likely to be proactive as they already have you committed.
Finally, web packages or tiers are also a massive concern, when you hear – “Basic £600 website” | “Professional £1,000 website (recommended)” | “Advanced £1,500 website”. This is often a marketing tool to get you to buy an £1,000 website. The site will most likely be a template that will be a clone of 100 other sites they have done before and won’t ever stand out online and will struggle to ever convert. You’ll be frustrated and bored of your site in no time.
Another thing to remember is that tiers don’t really make any sense for a website, it will usually be something like 5 – 10 page site, or 10 – 20 page site, or 20+ page site tiers for pricing. But it needs to be quoted around the types of pages not the number. For instance, it could be 20 service pages with all the same layout and so won’t take long to create as only needs one design and setup. However, what if it was 10 unique pages – home, about, contact, services, case studies, blog, gallery etc etc. These would all need unique layouts and so would take longer to setup, and any good web designer should know this.
The takeaway to this article is don’t just buy a website because you think “I need a website”, think more strategically as to why you need one and what purpose you want it to achieve, then get a custom site tailored to that vision. Once created you can then look at packages for maintenance specific to your site and short term packages around marketing, if needed.
