You lost money on a cheap website — the real cost of cutting corners

You lost money on a cheap website — the real cost of cutting corners

I lose quotes to people who charge a fraction of my price for a website.

It happens regularly. The client has a quote from me and a much lower one from someone else. The choice seems obvious. Why pay several times more for "the same thing"?

Some months later, the client calls me.

The story repeats itself

The story is almost always the same. And that is what makes it frustrating, because it does not have to happen.

Here is the typical sequence of events:

The total price ends up higher than doing it right from the start, because the client pays for the site twice.

The four problems that always recur

1. The site is slow

A well-built website should load in a couple of seconds. The cheap sites I have taken over are often far slower. This is usually caused by:

• Unoptimised images, often several megabytes each
• A bloated theme with features that are never used
• No caching or performance optimisation
• Cheap shared hosting with no attention to speed

Google takes page experience into account. Your visitors leave slow sites. You lose customers without knowing it.

Want to know if your site is too slow? Read my guide on why your WordPress site is slow.

2. The mobile experience is terrible

"It's responsive" is the most misused promise in web development. The fact that a theme technically adapts to the screen size does not mean it works well on mobile.

The typical problems:

• Text that is too small to read
• Buttons that are impossible to tap with a finger
• Menus that do not work properly
• Images that break the layout

A large share of your visitors come from their phones. If your site does not work properly on a phone, you are losing customers you never hear about.

3. No SEO setup

A website without SEO is like a shop without a sign. It exists, but nobody can find it.

The cheap solutions typically lack:

• Meta titles and descriptions
• Correct heading structure (H1, H2, H3)
• XML sitemap
• Schema markup
• Optimised URL structures
• Alt text on images

Setting this up properly takes time. Time costs money. And that is the core of the problem.

4. The developer has vanished

The most frustrating problem of all. You need a change, an update or a bug fix, and nobody answers.

A low price only adds up if the developer takes on a lot of clients and spends little time on each. That leaves little room for support, maintenance or a long-term relationship.

What you are actually paying for

When you choose a properly built site over the cheapest quote, you are not paying "more for the same thing". You are paying for fundamentally different things:

The difference is not cosmetic. It is the difference between a tool that works for your business and an expense that holds it back.

Three questions to ask any web developer

Whether you choose an expensive or a cheap option, ask these three questions:

1. "Can I see the load time on your recent projects?" If the answer is vague or evasive, that is a red flag.
2. "What happens after launch?" A professional developer has a plan for maintenance and support.
3. "Who owns the code and domain?" You should always own your own website.

If you want to learn more about what to look for, I have written a comparison of website prices that gives a good overview.

The bottom line

I completely understand the temptation of a cheap website. The difference in price is significant for a small business.

But the maths does not add up. Not when you factor in lost traffic, lost customers, the time you spend fighting with a site that does not work, and the final price of having it redone.

The clients who called me after a few months ended up paying more than if they had chosen a solid solution from the start. Not because I charged more, but because cleanup work is always more expensive than building it right the first time.

Invest in your website for what it is: your most important marketing tool.