Unlike many agencies or website designers, Beyond Your Brand offer a pay monthly web design service without any upfront costs. We call this ‘Website as a Service’. If you are considering investing in a new website or you’re not completely happy with your current website, then a pay monthly model could be for you. Here are some of the key benefits.
1. NO UPFRONT COSTS
Whichever model you prefer, a website should be considered an investment. After all, it is your shop window to the world. A good alternative to the standard model, where a web designer or an agency would quote an upfront cost for designing and building your site, is a pay monthly model. This can free up valuable cashflow, especially important if you are a young business finding your feet. When everything is wrapped up in a monthly fee, similar to a mobile phone contract where you get the phone, calls, texts and data, you can easily plan and stay within your budgets.
2. ONGOING SERVICE
A key benefit of a pay monthly option is the fact that it ensures an ongoing service. Unfortunately, many companies fall into a trap of paying upfront for a website and then having to negotiate a price for support when they encounter a problem or when they need to get their site updated. A pay monthly service model means that it is in the interests of your website hosting company to provide ongoing support and advice so that you do not consider leaving. It puts the onus on the service and not just the ‘product’.
3. CONTINUED SUPPORT
Support is a vital part of any web hosting. What happens if your web-site goes down? What protection to you have from online hackers? How is your website backed up? If you had to restore an old version of your site, how far back would you have to go? These are all important considerations. When you invest in a pay monthly websites, ongoing support should be part of the agreement. If you choose a web hosting company with excellent support, not only do you get their expertise, you buy yourself peace of mind.
4. INCREASED VISIBILITY AND RANKINGS
A common mistake that some businesses make is to invest a lot of money in a shiny new website and expect it to perform from day one. Unfortunately, many web-designers only care about the look and feel of the sites they build, and once it is handed over and paid for, they are not incentivised to help the site reach larger audiences. Ongoing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a long term investment, but there are some fundamental elements when building a new website, that should be considered and can make a real difference to online visibility. How is the site structured? How do you provide a user with easy navigation to the pages that they want to look at? How do you let the likes of Google and other search engines know what your pages are about, so that they can match your pages with the searches that people are making?
Another key element of improving your rankings is to regularly update your site with fresh new content, such as blogs, videos, case studies and testimonials. If you find a web-design agency who offers a pay monthly option, then ensure that they allow you an easy way to update your site, or better still, find an agency that will do it for you as part of the monthly service.
5. KEEP ON TOP OF LATEST TRENDS AND DESIGNS
It is a good idea to keep your website fresh, vibrant and on-trend. Just like a high-street fashion store that will change their window on a regular basis to attract new visitors, your website should also keep up with latest trends so that it can attract the customers that you want. So, make sure that if you agree to a pay monthly service provider that they allow you to completely refresh your site from time to time.