Why Are Designers Charging so Damn Much?

Dear fellow listener, who is on their hustle and grind, have you noticed a phenomenon going on? Left and right people are launching these stunning websites and you want to get a piece of that pie too. So you scroll down to the bottom, wondering who the genius is behind this masterpiece. This is where you encounter the master genius’s price range. Your jaw drops, your eyes closed and you have to brace yourself in the chair you’re sitting in so you can keep from falling.

You’ve probably been doing a lot of research, and secretly stalking designers that you want to work with. But all you can think is, “why are these designers charging so damn much?” For real y’all, it seems like every time a new website designer pops up they are charging an arm and a leg to create a custom website. So today let’s unpack what you’re really getting with those high price websites, and why making the investment may be just what the doctor ordered.

The benefits of investing in a 4 figure website:

Strategy

Most times these website designers are analyzing the patterns that your visitors are making on your page and coming up with a plan to get people excited about your brand. They’re taking your content, condensing, rearranging, and organizing it in an effective way that’s going to create more interaction and intrigue from your audience. There’s a little known fact that the longer a person browses through your website, the more likely they are to interact with other content. You may know this as the know, like trust factor. For example, when I first stumbled across a website called Hello 7 by Coach, I spent time listening to podcast after podcast, which led me to interact with other parts of her site. Now I’m completely hooked, and looking forward to hearing more from her. Think of a time when you went to a website that you thought you would only spend 5 minutes on. Maybe it was Amazon, or Psychology today, or even youtube. The point is, someone strategically designed those websites with you in mind. They thought about what captured your attention, information that would help you, and designed it in a way that would make it easier for you to get more information. So when you think about investing in a high ticket website, the benefit is that you’re paying someone to help you consider these strategies and interactions.

Creative direction

Be 100% honest with yourself, if Target called you up tomorrow to design some content for their next collection, how confident would you be that you’d knock it out of the park? I’m betting most of you are rolling over laughing, like nope! But that’s okay. Not everyone was born to be a gifted designer, which is why we hire designers. And if you want to rub elbows with the creme de la creme of designers (I’m talking about the designers that can make you look like the red carpet runway model you know you are) this is where paying the extra money is well worth it! Usually, with a high-end website, your designer is giving you creative direction not only for your website but for your brand (including photography, marketing material, website aesthetics, etc.). It can be really time-consuming and let’s admit it, even headache-inducing to try to fit in creative direction on top of all of the things that you already do. For example, if you’re married, I want you to think back to your wedding and how much energy it took to plan out every detail. You had to find the perfect flower combination, the perfect meal, outfits that would work just right for everyone in your wedding entourage, and on and on and on. Eventually, you probably got to a point where you threw your hands up and said, I need someone else to figure all this out. This is exactly what you’re paying for when you spend that extra coin on a high-end website designer. The benefit is that you walk away with someone who has enough experience to take your strategy and ideas and oversee the production of everything.

Return of Investment

Here, what I think, is a benefit that will have us all in agreement. Getting your money back over and over again. I once heard Marie Forleo (founder of B-School and Author of Everything is Figuroutable) talk about how she had so much shame over her website. In fact, she was at a retreat with the famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins who had asked about her website, and she almost didn’t want to share. You know what she did? She decided from that day that she was going to put aside money and save up enough to hire a really good web designer who could transform her shameful website into something that she would be proud to share with others. Once she made that investment, she started getting really good traction and conversions that helped to contribute to her multimillion-dollar business. Moral of the story: she got her money back, and then some. Now while everyone may not have a guaranteed fairytale ending like this, there are countless upon countless stories that will mirror these types of results. You see the benefit of putting in a little extra money for a high ticket website is that you are planning for high-end results that will potentially double or 10x your business revenue.

It saves you a whole lot of time.

A lot of what I see when people come to me are brands that have been DIY’d that need an upgrade. Doing a brand yourself is fantastic, especially when you’re just launching because it helps you to 1. Save on overhead cost, and 2. Understand the nuts and bolts of what goes into designing a brand. But at some point, everyone I know who has designed their own brand gets to a point where their business is really building traction. It’s growing, it’s expanding, and all a sudden (no matter how easy these online applications are to design your own graphics are) they simply do not have the time to dedicate to designing stuff for themselves. But they’re also plagued with this idea of handing over the reins to just anybody. And this is why people pay for high ticket websites. You see designers who offer high ticket websites are likely giving you the attention that a low ticket web designer can’t give you. When you can trust that you’re hiring someone who is giving you more of a white-glove service, with a well thought out system or process to match, this helps us as business owners create enough time to just work on other things. Who doesn’t want more time? So the obvious benefit here is that you don’t have to spend another minute scheduling in another website update in your calendar. Your new website will be in shape to last you for a very long time, thus creating so much space for you to create more content, connect with your audience, and of course, make more sales.

The Cons:

These high price websites require commitment. Beyond the money that you’re spending, yes you will have to put in time to make sure you proof your website copy, approve the strategy, create the new content, etc. While your designer will go above and beyond to make sure this is as close as a white glove service as it gets, the fact is they still need things from you in order to get things going. So don’t you dare think about putting your money in if you’re not ready to participate too.

Results are not guaranteed if you don’t have clear goals. The worst thing you can do is pay for a fancy website, an be extremely dissatisfied because you didn’t get the website you wanted. 

Summary

The benefits of paying more money for a website are:

1. You’re going to get some help strategizing how to get people engaged and interactive on your website. This will help you to get people to know you better, like your content, and trust you enough to pay for something you may be offering.
2. You’ll get help with creative direction. This is especially helpful if you’re not the type of person who is great (or likes to ) design graphics. Their professional expertise can help you produce something that you may have never even imagined.
3. You’ll oftentimes get a good return on your investment. If you’re looking to create a 60K, 100K, or 1M+ empire, then investing in a high priced website designer is definitely going to be a no brainer. The high price website designer is going to be able to give you more time, attention and customization than someone who would be willing to do it for cheap.
4. It saves you so much time. Even if you’ve designed your website and all your graphics yourself, the fact is as your business grows you’ll have less and less time to do the work yourself. Paying for a high price website will often mean that you’ll be creating something that will need very minimal maintenance and practically no redesign for years to come. That means more time for you to work on other things.

If you are even remotely curious about why the prices are so high, this could be a good thing. It means that you want to understand the value, and you want to know how all of the value can be soaked into your business. So what’s next? The next step is to reach out and learn more about the process. I cannot stress enough how great it is to gain knowledge, make a connection with the designer, and better understand how they can help take your business to the next level.