We've recently noticed a deluge of Singapore companies offering 'cheap' or 'lowest price' web design for SGD $99. Don't be fooled by these companies in Singapore offering 'cheap' web design.
Carefully consider this quote:
There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey.
It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot — it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.
— John Ruskin
After years of working closely with clients and fine-tuning our business model, we think we've done a pretty decent job of striking a balance between paying too much and paying too little.
Our feature-packed, fixed price web design pricing package can sometimes give potential clients the impression that we are a 'budget' or 'cheap' web design company. This assumption is completely wrong. The negative connotations usually associated with 'budget' and 'cheap' do not apply to us at all.
Our business is built on value, not price.
Read about the Hypermagix Difference
So how do these Singapore companies offer such cheap web design?
Cheap web design usually entails cutting corners to keep prices rock bottom.
Here are a few ways:
Outsourced Work
- These cheap web companies outsource partially (and sometimes fully) to other South-East Asian countries where developers churn out multiple sites a day with little or no quality control.
- After sales support must be considered if the work is not being done locally.
Built on FREE, Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Open source CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal are FREE to download and install.
- Many websites use these frameworks worldwide, making them potentially easier to hack, and serious security issues can crop up if the CMS is not constantly updated to fix threats and breaches. An estimated 90% of hacked sites online are running WordPress. Not an achievement to be proud of.
- WordPress specifically has a library of predefined web page designs to choose from. There's literally a whole industry centred around churning out thousands of off-the-shelf themes/templates to download for free or to buy, meaning that your website is shoehorned into a generic design.
- These CMS require a learning curve to manage and utilise all features. Most of the time users give up trying to manage the site and revert to the web company to make updates for them.
Template Based Design
- Cheap web companies in Singapore often use themes downloaded for free.
- They use the same themes over and over again with minor customisations.
- No completely custom design because pages are based on templates, which are basically someone else's design.
- Unappealing selection of themes, not modern or compatible with modern browsers.
- Hackers often target websites using popular themes or plugins as they know they can affect the maximum number of websites with minimal effort.
Basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is neglected
- They don't take the time to research your business and the competition.
- No proper browser titles, meta descriptions and page-specific keywords are not added.
- No submission of pages and sitemap to search engines like Google and Bing.
- No proper mobile/responsive testing on a wide variety of devices.
- Simply no time to get the job done right.
These are some points to consider when hiring a cheap web design company in Singapore. And remember — hiring a professional does not guarantee professionalism.
