Maintaining Quality in Your Business While Cutting Costs is very hard but you need to have a website for your business if you plan on being competitive in the modern business world. But like all investments in your company, a website is going to cost you money. This can be an issue if you’re working with a skimpy budget and are short on time—as is the case with most small businesses. But even if you have a bit of capital behind you, there’s no reason to spend more money than necessary.
In the business world, executives are constantly struggling to strike a balance between price and quality. Paying too much won’t be financially feasible. At the same time, you can’t cut too many corners without there being a noticeable detraction from the end result. This isn’t acceptable for your corporate website. In fact, consumers typically consider design to be more important than the content of a website when rating trustworthiness. Let’s face it, you probably aren’t capable of making a visually appealing custom design unless you’re a professional designer. So how can you find a balance of maintaining quality while cutting costs?
Find the Right Web Host
A lot of people think that building a website requires hiring someone to construct the entire thing from start to finish. It’s also often assumed that you need to hire someone to be the webmaster and administrator of your site. These are certainly options available to business owners; and they can streamline operations. However, not everyone—especially small organizations—can afford to have a dedicated web team. For people who need to do things on their own, it’s imperative to find the correct web hosting solution.
There are a variety of web hosting options out there—all of them have slightly different pros and cons. For companies on a budget, there are a few top features that are necessary for a web host:
- Customizable Themes and Templates: Just because you‘re working on a budget doesn’t mean you should sacrifice visual appeal. As already stated, consumers put high value in the aesthetic design of a site—even more so than the content. If your web hosting service offers a variety of themes and templates, you’ll be able to easily create a low-cost, attractive webpage.
- Automatic Backup: You don’t want to think about all the things that can go wrong with your website once it’s up and running. Failing to do this, however, will lead to some heartache down the road. You need to have a backup for your website, or else you risk losing everything if something goes wrong. Some web hosts will offer automatic backups so your data can always be restored in little time.
- Mobile Compatibility: In your daily routine, you probably don’t consider the importance of website mobile compatibility. Regardless, this is a necessary feature for your website. About 60 percent of searches are done on mobile devices. If your site doesn’t function perfectly on a smartphone, a lot of people are going to abandon your page.
Streamline Your Site
Have you heard the saying that less is more? This is often the case when it comes to website design. People want to engage with something that looks good and works well. A minimalist approach to website design is the easiest way to simultaneously hit both of these targets. There’s another major benefit to streamlining your website. The less there is, the less you’ll have to maintain. Creating more content and features takes a lot of time. You have to come up with ideas, execute them, and then continually check them to make sure updates haven’t altered the display. Make use of tools that monitor website changes. If things are kept simple, you have less to do. And if you’re spending less time adding things to your website, you’ll be spending less money.
Intent-based searching
Today, the importance of intent-based searches has increased mainly after Google’s BERT update in 2021. Google is more interested in showing people what they exactly search for. What does this mean? This means that Google can understand the intent behind each search, and if your website has content that matches the intent of the users, then your website will have an impressive ranking. So, the bottom line is ‘intent’ holds more value than a specific keyword.
So, you will see long-tail keywords are being used more often which provides a precise answer to a user’s specific question. Once you understand how to make SEO intent-driven you will gain organic traffic, which is important for any business or even if you are a blogger.
No matter who you are, you can always save a bit of money. Your business relies on the fact that you can leverage these money-saving ideas. Consider these options when trying to save money on your website without sacrificing on quality.
Ingrid Maldine is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Ingrid’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Ingrid has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Ingrid has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
