Getting your business website ready for your business can be an exciting experience. However, most small business owners do not have unlimited budgets, so they need to look for cost-effective options while getting their website designed. However, getting a website ready on a budget does not mean that you have to settle for inferior design quality.

We have devoted a lot of time to go through numerous web design case studies to understand what business websites built on a budget often lack. You need to avoid these pitfalls that can make all the difference between a successful and an unprofitable website in 2021. That way, you will be able to ensure that you can maximize your returns on the investment in the coming year.

Not Designed for Your Target Audience

One of the biggest mistakes that web designers on a budget can make is not to ensure that your website and its contents are directed towards your target customers. Indeed, website designers are not mind-readers, so they may not understand what you want your website to look like.

However, they have the means and resources to find out what your target audience would be looking for. Therefore, discuss these things with them when you get a quote for your website design.

The content must have the topics that your potential customers would be looking for on Google or other search engines. That will ensure that your website gets directed towards your target audience. You can help your designers by providing the preliminary data that they must incorporate. Gather the information by interviewing your existing and potential customers through surveys and questionnaires.

It will help you and your web designer to know what features your target audience might be looking for in your products or services through your website. These surveys would also give you an insight into the complaints that your potential customers might have towards the competitor’s products and services so that you can portray how your company can solve their problems.

Not Optimized for Search Engines

If you want to ensure that your website reaches your target audience, the content must contain the relevant keywords. Most of your potential customers would probably find your business website through searches on the internet. Therefore you need to make sure that your business website can feature on the search engine result pages.

For that, your website content must contain the relevant keywords. When you get your website designed on a budget, make sure that you discuss the terms of inclusion of keywords. If none of the web designers are willing to include keyword research in the price, you can conduct your research and ensure that they add them to the content of your website.

Choosing Poor Services

When you are on a budget and in a haste to get your website live, you may end up choosing template-based services like Wiz or Weebly. But even on a budget, choosing one of these services can prove to be counterproductive for your business in 2021. Cheap template-based website builders can present several complications in the future, such as:

• Your pages will have limited functionality and designs without any room to customize in the future.
• You will be locked into their system and won’t be able to export your content. So if you want to change your service provider, you will have to start from scratch.
• They provide limited options for customer service and maintenance.
• It might be difficult for you to get your website’s key performance indicators. You may have to monitor them manually.
• The template-based sites can damage your SEO efforts.

Therefore it is better to choose professional and reliable companies to build your website. Make sure that you read existing reviews on Google and their social media pages before you hire a company.

Poor or Inadequate Content

If you want to maximize your website’s SEOs in 2021, make sure that the content quality is optimal. Google has already started to prioritize the content quality over the placement of keywords.

Even if you are building a website on a budget, make sure that your web designer uses enough good quality content on the website. Your website content is not only essential to ensure search optimization, but it should also be able to connect with the visitors.

Slow-Loading Website

The loading speed of your website will have a lot of importance in 2021. Google has already started penalizing websites that have a slow loading speed, especially the ones for mobile phones. Therefore make sure that your web designer does not use cheap and shared hosting services.

Even if you cannot afford a dedicated hosting server, make sure that your web designer uses a Virtual Private Server (VPS) to host your website. It must also have the provision to upgrade as and when the incoming traffic increases.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, websites have become the new front for any business. Having limited funds to get your website designed is not going to work as an excuse for lack of business in 2021 if you do not ensure its quality. But if you avoid these pitfalls, you can rest assured that limited funds for your web designing will not hinder the amount of business generated by your website.