Great post. I too feel that the website for any business should be designed in a right way and if we have to spend a little more also we should not worry about it the final result should be good and appealing to the customers.

I always tell my clients: “If you don’t have a presence online, how can you be found? If you can’t be found, how can you be called? If you are not called, how can someone spend money with you?”. In other words, you need to become a part of their buying equation in order to have a shot.

Also, something to convey to your clients is the fact that just because you build a website for them, traffic will not automatically start pouring in. This isn’t ‘Field of Dreams’: “If you build it, they will come.” does not apply!

Creating the website is the first step in gaining an online presence, while exerting an effort to get people to that website is step two.

Taking the time to explain these things to your clients definitely goes a long way!

That’s why I built Clearly Local. Most local businesses don’t need a big fancy website. All they need is 1 professional looking page with their information on it. And that simplicity scales the price down quite a bit.

Often after I give a quote or statement of work a client comes back and suggests a lower price, usually saying that they have a family member or neighbor (usually a kid, mind you) that can do the site for cheap. They undervalue quality work and specialization. There is a lot of time and effort put into it. And, in the end, you should get what you pay for. Seems like half of a web designer / developer’s job is educating the client.

There’s a reason why we charge money for web design. We do it for a living and we’ve spent thousands of hours studying, learning, comparing and optimzing.