The wrong web partner results in guests leaving the website within 3 seconds because of the bad impression it gives of your business. Are you confident your website isn’t causing your customers to walk?
THINK OF YOUR WEBSITE AS A DIGITAL STOREFRONT
Imagine what your customers experience when they enter your shop for the first time. The layout, cleanliness, messaging and overall aesthetic of your facility and employees play a major part in how consumers judge your brand.
If your marquee sign is missing letters, your entrance is cluttered and employees aren’t up to date on sales, a customer will immediately think that your business is of a lower quality. Is that the message you want to send to your audience? Similar to your physical storefront, your website is a digital representation of your business – and it’s often the first interaction a client will have with your brand. That said, your website is just as, if not more, important for keeping consistent revenue coming in.
81% of consumers research a product or business online before purchasing in-store or online.
Your website is the first impression for 4 out of 5 consumers – that’s 80% of your potential client base. Can you afford to cut costs on your website?
All Budgets Are Not Equal
We know that it takes a lot for small businesses to run- resources, people, and capital. While building and maintaining a quality website is vital to your business, your budget may prevent you from building a Fortune 500 level experience. On the other hand, you also don’t want to choose the lowest bidder. It’s important to find the sweet spot for website development.
What Are Your Development Options?
- Option 1: Self-Service Development
- Option 2: Prebuilt Themes
- Option 3: Custom Website Development
- Option 4: Enterprise Website Development
Intuitive design is how we give the user new superpowers.
Jared Spool Co-Founder, Co-CEO of Maker of Awesomeness
OPTION 1: Self-Service Development
- Development Time: 2 – 30 Hours
- Cost: $300 – $1,000
Self-service development websites are those that run on What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) functionality. They give you the tools to build a website without having to delve into any of the code behind the scenes. They often employ drag-and-drop functionality and allow layman users to visually build a site without any back-end knowledge.
What are the benefits of a self-service development platform?
- No coding experience necessary
- Typically very user friendly
- Websites can be built quickly
- Cheaper in the short run
What are the downsides of a self-service development platform?
- Sites are typically clunky and code-heavy leading to slow load time
- Code can be messy leading to broken themes or invalid websites
- Poor or limited SEO structure and capabilities
- Most won’t allow you to switch platforms if you aren’t happy
OPTION 2: Prebuilt Themes
- Development Time: 10 – 40 Hours
- Cost: $300 – $3,000
A prebuilt theme refers to website themes that are essentially “out of the box”. They typically allow you to customize basic elements such as typography, imagery, or color scheme, but will otherwise lay out your site in a uniform manner.
What are the downsides of using a prebuilt theme?
- Prebuilt themes typically depend heavily on plugins, leading to slower load Times
- Themes are available to everyone so a competitor could use the same one
- If the theme is discontinued and loses support, your website could break or become unsecure
Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries
Neville Brody, Renowned Designer and Typographer
What are the benefits of using a prebuilt theme?
- Preloaded design so it’s faster to build than custom
- Can be customized within capabilities of the template
- Typically websites that carry them provide on-going support
OPTION 3: Custom Website Development
- Development Time: 16 – 200 Hours
- Cost: $1,600 – $20,000
Building a custom theme involves coding a theme to your specific requirements. Everything from the design to the backend code is built either from scratch or a boilerplate template. Custom web development projects are typically performed by professional web design companies or bespoke teams. Typically, development teams perform due diligence to learn about your business, its goals and its customer base to ensure quality user experience and succinct user journeys.
What are the benefits of custom website development?
- Your website will be completely unique
- Code is cleaner and more purposeful leading to a fast-loading website
- Scalability
- Dedicated team to manage and optimize over time
- Benefit from an experienced web design team to guide you
To become successful online, you only need to remember the following: Good Heart + Passion + Web Design + SEO + Digital Marketing + Dedication + Positiveness + Patience = Success
– Chris Dayagdag,
– CEO of Marketlink Web Solutions
What are the downsides of custom website development
- Longer build time than self-service or prebuilt themes
- Higher upfront cost
- Will need ongoing support from a development team
OPTION 4: Enterprise Website Development
- Development Time: 200 – 2,000 Hours
- Cost: $20,000 – $250,000 (and more)
An enterprise-level website is a website that involves the development of complex tools, features, or integrations. While it operates as a website, it might also offer features that aid in brand analysis, marketing, UX strategy, and more. These types of websites are typically custom built with the use of a CMS by a full-stack web development agency. They require the design and build of specific, bespoke features. As such, enterprise-level websites aren’t to be tackled without the help of an experienced team.
What are the downsides of enterprise website development?
- Excessive cost for a small business
- Length of build time could be well over 6 months
- Costly on-going maintenance and upgrades
There are three responses to a piece of design yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.
– Milton Glaser, Renowned American
– Graphic Designer
What are the benefits of enterprise website development?
- Fastest page loading speed
- Completely unique website with advanced design elements
- Enhanced user journeys
- Custom built add-on applications such as e-commerce portals and web applications
- Unlimited page count
What Is The Best Option For Small Business Website Design?
Custom Website Development
For the price and flexibility, custom website development provides the best value for a small business. Custom website development gives your business the freedom to create and augment to your exact needs while still maintaining reasonable costs and build time. You will have the benefit of an experienced team to help maintain and optimize the site—a necessity in our fast-paced, consumerfocused world.
Who Is Next Horizon?
Next Horizon is a Central Florida technology company specializing in custom website development for small and mid-size businesses. From increasing customers through quality websites and data-driven digital marketing to improving productivity through IT solutions and application development, we bring award-winning expertise and a people-centered approach to really make it count for our clients. Next Horizon is a recognized leader for IT and digital marketing in Central Florida and we have hundreds of successful web development products to date.
Next Horizon Provides:
- Digital Advertising
- Website Development
- Content Writing
- SEO Optimization
- Social Media Management
- Business Consulting
- Business and Marketing Plan Creation
What do our Clients Say About Our Work?
Working with Next Horizon on our website redesign exceeded all of our expectations. They made the project painless from start to finish. The NH team dug into our business and our brand, researched what was important to our consumers, helped write copy, and sourced images for the site. They became a seamless extension of our marketing department. Since the launch of our new website, we are especially happy with the new look and feel, but more importantly, the increase in web traffic and the resulting increase in work. Next Horizon makes our phone ring!
– Kristy Moist, Accounting, Marketing, HR at Scott’s Heating and Air Conditioning
It is with ease that I offer this letter of recommendation. The Next Horizon team helped guide us from start to finish creating our website. They had a good, organized system in place with a series of checks and balances to keep the production moving, but allowing for approvals and adjustments along the way. The staff was knowledgeable and cooperative and great to work with. The new website represents us very well and has been a big help for potential clients to get to know us. We really appreciate the great experience we had through the design and continued follow-up since the launch. I remain available to anyone that might want to contact me to further discuss my experiences with Next Horizon.
– Alan Fredrickson, Vice President, Walker & Company
