But we don’t offer web design packages at Canny. We never have, and never will.

It’s so uniform, and is doing your brand a disservice considering what other directions you could have taken. Simply put, the last thing you really want is a selection of pre-defined web design packages to choose from.

Web design packages are supposed to make life easier for you and the agency/freelancer carrying out the work.They’re meant to outline exactly what you’re getting, so that there are no surprises, such as additional costs.

But are they really all that they’re cracked up to be?

We don’t think so.

Here’s why:

You are unique, and your business isn’t the same as all the rest.

Settling for less will only limit your potential. You could have the best brand of sweets in the world but no one will buy them if your site isn’t up to snuff. This is especially important for any brand who relies solely on e-commerce sales.

The Web Design Brief Template

The Web Design Brief Template is a free template that will help you get the brief for your web design project right. ...

download now

Web design packages tend to box you into set groups that, often, promote themselves as a one size fits all type deal. But what if you want to stand out against a rallying competitor?

What then?

A web design package is a lot like a crowded shopping list, in that it consists of items that you might never use, or really need.

Again, your business is unique and your recipes are your own. Meaning you deserve a site that displays that perfectly.

To prove just how pointless web design packages are, we’re going to look at three unique packages. Packages that totally exist out in the real world. Deals you might want to think twice about for the sake of a quality website.

Web Design Package: Number One

In this first example we’ll be highlighting one particular business (who shall remain nameless) and the various site packages offered.

We have three unique sites to show with this first example: a starter website, a business website and an e-commerce website.

The Starter Website Package:

The starter website package is the cheapest of the bunch at $1,599 and includes the standard features found in other packages.

It gets the bronze medal in terms of tier.

Custom Design Including One Revision After Delivery

One website revision might seem complimentary, but there could be multiple changes required after the initial design is created.

Also the custom design isn’t explained that well. Is it a full design, or are certain options capped to get you to buy into the better package?

Your guess is as good as ours.

Five Pages (+$75 For Each Additional Page)

A standard set up for most starter websites. However, this doesn’t help websites in need of at least a dozen pages right off the bat.

And what is the quality like of the first five pages? Are they to a set standard to the point where you’d be happy to invest an additional $75 per page.

Responsive Web Design, Optimised For Both Mobile and Tablets

Even templates on Wix come with mobile templates already built into each package. In other words, it’s nothing to really brag about.

It’s expected, if anything.

That being said, some beginners might not realise there’s a difference as this is a starter website package. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

One Email Contact Form (+$75 For Each Additional Form)

A single email contact form? How generous!

It’s almost like they want you to fork out more money for the bigger (more expensive) packages.

Wait…

Homepage Slideshow With 6 Pictures ($150 Extra)

This is very generic and the agency here will probably use a template for this slideshow (as it’s the same in every package).

This means every other business that chooses a package from that agency gets a slideshow with 6 items as well as the potential for the functionality of the slider to be the same (if they use a template).

How would this make your site any different from those your competitors are using? You should want something that is 100% unique to you and you alone.

Photo Gallery With Up To 24 Pictures ($125 Extra)

Agencies know that 24 photos aren’t enough for the most part, meaning you’ll need to pay them more to add more.

This could be an additional $125 or even more depending on how many images you’d like to display on the site.

Selling it as a separate add on to begin with is just taking advantage of business owners who don’t know any better.

Additional Features Upon Request After Consultation

We can all but guarantee that anything you ask them to tact on will require the next package up. Remember, the starter package is often the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality, functionality and design.

The Business Website Package:

Welcome to the business website package, where we take a look at what’s included in this here deal. Let’s look at what’s included in this one before moving onto the e-commerce site package.

Custom Design Including Two Revisions After Delivery

Two revisions are better than one, but again, are there any limitations to the original design? It isn’t stated clearly, which makes it very difficult to read and understand.

Furthermore, do you get anything different with the business website package from a design standpoint, or is it the exact same as the starter deal?

It’s not clear enough and it’s hella confusing.

15 Website Pages

Having 15 pages is better than however many were included in the bronze package, but 15 is a little on the short side for businesses, surely.

This will depend on the business in question, but most will require multiple pages on the site, take sub service pages, for example.

Are you expected to pay more if you have more than a dozen services on top of the site pages you need outright?

Custom CMS

Custom CMS ​​— or content management software — is very important to websites, and a lot of people (or agencies, in this case) don’t know what they’re doing, unfortunately.

One of the ways to ensure that the custom CMS used is quality is by checking out any relevant case studies shown on the site directly. Or better yet, ask them about it directly.

Come up with a series of questions that apply to you and what you hope to achieve with your site. If they can’t answer them straight up, then you’ll know they’re trying to pull a fast one.

Responsive Web Design, Optimised For Both Mobile And Tablets

We’ve already given our thoughts on this.

Every site should be optimised for these platforms as standard.

One Email Contact Form (+$50 For Each Additional Form)

It’s worth noting that the cost of each additional form is $25 cheaper than the starter website pack.

Businesses tend to require more than one email form so it makes sense that the cost is slightly lower. Still, you’d expect the business web design package here to have at least one more email form considering the price increase (it’s $2,899 this one).

Homepage Slideshow With 6 Pictures

Again, already given our thoughts on this.

It’s bad for establishing an original site.

Photo Galleries

One thing the business package has over the starter one is it comes with a photo gallery with no cap on the number of photos you can include on a site.

This again, forces businesses to go with the better option, dispite not needing more of the additional website features mentioned.

Many will buy this web design package because it’s the cheapest one offering unlimited photos. It’s the equivalent of buying a new iPhone and only using three apps on it, you might not need most of it.

Additional Features Upon Request After Consultation

Like the previous web design package, what agencies really mean by this is: why not spend more to get something that should have been agreed upon at the very beginning.

It’s like we said, web design packages are so uniform because they’re so boxed in.

E-Commerce Website Package:

Last but not least, we have the e-commerce website package — the most expensive of the three options available at $8,599 before additions.

E-commerce sites tend to make a boat-load of money, so it’s no surprise that the web design packages associated with them are priced the way they are.

That and all the additional work that’s required on them to keep them running, that is.

You probably have a good idea as to what’s included in this web design package having seen the others, but let’s look anyway.

Custom Design Including Two Revisions After Delivery

Two revisions, the same as the business web package, which is a bit disappointing, but understandable, I suppose.

20 Website Pages

For most e-commerce website, 20 web pages won’t be enough to handle their inventory. If you’re a small fashion outlet, then you’re going to need countless pages dedicated to various products — be it dresses, shoes, accessories, etc.

Will 20 pages be enough? Maybe, depending on how much space you want to dedicate to the products.

How many pages you need will always roll on a case by case basis, we just think that 20 seems a bit low for some.

Custom CMS

Remember what we said about custom CMS the last time? Yeah, the same rules apply here, only the stakes are even higher considering your site is your direct source of income.

Ideally, you should want a CMS platform that can handle the full weight of your business, plus any changes you hope to make on the fly.

For example, you should be able to run sales as and when you want at the push of a few buttons.

Responsive Web Design, Optimised For Both Mobile And Tablets

*Something something* Should be included in the first place *Something something*

One Email Contact Form (+$50 For Each Additional Form)

For one of the premium packages, you’d expect them to throw in an additional contact form given you’re nearly paying $9,000…

Homepage Slideshow With 6 Pictures

Sites will use a standard template for the slideshow, as mentioned. This could leave a really sour taste in the mouth of potential shoppers who want a site that reflects their own originality.

Photo Galleries

Are photo galleries really needed for e-commerce sites? I thought that the images of the products themselves on each product page was enough (insert shrugging arms emoji).

Sure, there are some creative things to be done with a photo gallery, but website packages like these limit your creativity.

Additional Features Upon Request After Consultation

Since this is the tippy top floor of the website packages you would expect them to stop upselling you on the latest features/plug-ins.

But no, if you have something custom in mind that seems like it requires a lot of effort (but is relatively simple to pull off), then you can bet your bottom dollar that these agencies will get you to pay for it — even if you don’t even need it.

Sure, all of these packages are easily digestible in how they’re set out, but is everything relevant to you and the type of site you’re hoping to create and be proud of?

Well, that’s another question entirely.

Web Design Package: Number Two

This agency uses the “build upon list,” where as you move up onto each package, the previous features are loaded onto the next one. Similar to the first web design package example we’ve covered, only a lot more detailed.

It’s cheaper in every department too, and that’s without working out the exchange rate between dollars and pounds.

We’ve decided to pick out a few primary points here, since each list is super extensive and would take a millennia to comb through and analyse.

The Responsive Package:

This package includes a responsive website that is WordPress based that has a drag and drop editor to update the site.

It includes the features you’d expect from a so-called ‘Responsive Website’ in the following:

• Modern looking site
• Mobile friendly responsive design
• WordPress-based
• Drag and drop editor to update yourself
• Free website hosting for 1 year
• Free domain name for 1 year
• Business email addresses
• SEO tools to promote your website
• Contact pages/contact forms

The Superfast Website Package:

This comes with the responsive website package features but with added SSL and optimised code.

Should we find out what is included in a ‘Superfast Website Package” now?

• Next-gen litespeed enabled hosting
• Reduced load time images
• Serve super super webP images to set browsers
• Optimised Javascript/CSS loading
• Superfast page caching
• HTTP/2 enabled servers
• Free SSL certificate for 1 year

Super SEO Website:

With this one, you get an SEO-optimised site, alongside social media sharing and tutorials.

Everything you should ever want and need, right?

Let’s look at what’s included:

• Titles and meta descriptions optimised to help you reach your target market
• Headers and website content targeted to match your market
• Business listed on Google Maps
• Enable Opengraph tags to improve social media sharing of your site
• Facebook/Twitter set up for your business
• Social media advice
• Blogging and website promotional tutorial

Web Design Package: Number Two Discussed

Easily the largest red flag that we can see is that if you want a complete website with all the bells and whistles, well, you best purchase the most expensive package of them all, or get ready to have certain features missing.

Like the ‘Super SEO Website’ package, why is it that SEO is separated into its own category? It should be included as standard — like with complete mobile/tablet optimisation.

It’s clear as day. These website packages push you into a position where you buy the gold standard option, only to access certain features, despite not needing everything else that comes with it.

How does this help you when you’re trying to run a business?

Sure, you might implement some of these features after the fact, but you should always develop your site based on what you need at that moment, not what could be beneficial further down the line.

Ideally, you should establish your base, create a website that fulfils the needs of your current requirements, and then build on top of it when the time is right — or when you can afford to do so (that was aimed at the startups specifically).

In other words, you need to learn how to walk before you can run, and buying the premium ‘Super SEO Package’ right out of the gate is just shoddy for so many reasons.

If you want a generic-looking website, then be our guest. But if you want something that best represents you, then it might be time to entertain some other options.

*Cough* Canny*Cough*

Web Design Package: Number Three

For our third and final web design package, we have Agency C, who have structured their packages quite differently to those we’ve already covered. For the sake of time, we’re going to speed run this package, since there’s not a lot of info to go off of.

You have one of three web design packages to choose from here:

• E-Commerce
• Responsive Design
• Web Development

Upon reading the titles, it may seem like you only get responsive design if choosing that package, and web development if you choose the web development package. The same goes for the e-commerce package.

However, you ultimately get responsive design and development with every project and e-commerce (if needed).

To determine which package is the right one for you, you should be asking yourself the following questions:

1. How many pages do you need?
2. Do you need to have unlimited pages?
3. Do you need the functionality that requires custom code?
4. Does your site need to be responsive?
5. Do you need tutorials on how to use your website?
6. And do you really need social media sharing?

The questions go on and on.

Once you’ve really had a think about what package you like the look of, the next progressive step is to send the agency a request.

The agency will now have an immediate idea of what it is you need, even though you may still have some doubts (have you picked the right package?) amongst some other questions.

Clearing this up with the agency can take up unnecessary time and could cause you to flip flop across each website package before landing on one you think is right.

But what happens if you pick a package, then halfway through the project you realise you need more pages, or you need some extra functionality such as social media sharing or custom code to achieve an advanced design feature?

This is where the limitations and issues of web design packages come in. These affect both you and the agency.

It’s why we don’t offer web design packages at Canny. We understand that every project and every business is different. And settling for a web design package is the quickest way of getting lost in the shuffle in your respective market.

A website is built around what the business (you) is hoping to achieve. Whether that is building an online presence, running an e-commerce store, or showcasing your own blog — we take your wants/needs and craft you a website that showcases everything you stand for and more.

Forget about the generic website packages, they’re a dime a dozen.

Get in touch, let’s design the perfect website.

People Just Want a Simple Website

We’ll give them credit, web design packages, they’re very quick and easy to implement (even if what you’re implementing isn’t the right fit).

People often say to themselves “I want a simple website”. Website packages and “I want a simple website” go hand in hand, at least from a basic standpoint.

Again, this comes down to the ‘settling’ thing we mentioned before. If you come at it from a basic point of view then that’s what your site will be: basic.

People say the same about social media, they choose platforms without much thought in terms of which are the best platforms to promote themselves on.

Creating an account for TikTok, just because it’s popular without a real plan in place is pointless, and a waste of time. You should be looking at your target audience and the channels they typically occupy.

The same principle applies to your website:

• You need the correct features and functionality that benefit you the most
• You need these features and functionality to be tailored around you and your business
• You need your website to be aimed toward your target audience
• Generic packages or choosing the wrong package can seriously hurt you as a business (as you now know)

One last thing.

There is no such thing as a ‘simple’ website. There are many elements that go into crafting a digital space for you and your business.

And getting the structure just right takes hard work and effort.

You Want To Build A Relationship With A Design Agency Rather Than An Off The Shelf Package

So, we’ve covered what web design packages are, the limitations of them and how they can hurt your business. Now it’s time to talk about a very important point.

Your relationship with the agency.

Choosing a web design package means your website and relationship with the agency will be moulded around the web design package.

The conversation between you and an agency will begin once you’ve picked a web design package. This hypothetical agency will want to know what you want in order to begin formulating ideas around your business.

This adds a layer of, “oh right, we have a new client whose picked this package, let’s get it shipped out as quickly as possible so we can move onto the next package.”

It happens so easily as people are, again, looking for those simple web design packages because they’re generally quite cheap.

It’s no wonder that these agencies have such a quick turnover of clients. You can even see the turnaround time for each web design package in some cases, to give you an idea of how repetitive the process is.

The fact that these agencies have included a turnaround time tells us they’re using templates and not creating a bespoke website from scratch.

Advertising how long it’s taken to craft a website, nine times out of ten, is a bad thing. And we’ll prove it.

One website with 5 pages may have simple functionality, but the next could be very complex that need’s custom code to achieve something.

So how does this link up with the relationship between agency and business? Well, the relationship should be considered a partnership of sorts.

The right agency should be discussing every aspect of your business from the ground up, to get an accurate portrayal of what you’re about, what you sell/offer, and where you hope to grow in future.

It establishes trust, and it ensures that the agency is actually listening to you rather than lining up what template to offer you for a fast sale.

Here at Canny, we simply do not use web design packages.

We cater our services around you and your business.

We focus on building healthy long term relationships that last a lifetime, with you.

Website Packages Suck! Here’s Why

In short, web design packages don’t work because they lack the originality needed to match the uniqueness of your brand.

Instead, choose an agency that deals with clients on a case by case basis. This is easily the best way of matching expectations and reality in the wide world of websites.

There’s nothing worse than getting halfway through a project only to realise that most of the features you’ve paid for aren’t what you need. At that point you’ll have already paid for the premium package too, which is essentially money wasted.

What you really want is an agency that has a solid process of building a relationship with you, complete with all the skills/imagination required to craft websites that are tailor-made for success.

Our portfolio page is full of clients we’ve helped set them up with their own website. Check out TLR Global for the perfect example of our work in practice.

One call with Canny could change everything.

Trust us.

We have the case studies to prove it. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get in touch and start building your dream website.

If you work in website development or design, then these are something you definitely would have come across.

But for those who don’t work in these departments, what exactly are they? And what do they do?

The Web Design Brief Template

The Web Design Brief Template is a free template that will help you get the brief for your web design project right. ...

download now

In this blog post we’ll take you through everything you need to know including different types of wireframes and what features they include.

You never know, you might be a wireframes pro by the end of it!

Let’s start with the basics.

What Is a Wireframe?

In its most basic sense, a wireframe is a two dimensional layout of a web page. It is used to map out the features and design of a new website to get an idea of how everything works together.

It provides developers with the chance to evaluate the site’s functionality before diving into design elements such as colour schemes and images.

Features such as menus and buttons are also mapped out to see how the website flows in terms of user experience. This is key to encouraging users to fulfil certain goals, as without a good user experience, they are likely to bounce back off your website.

It needs to be understandable and accessible, and make sense to anyone using it.

A website wireframe is also hugely beneficial to your team as it provides a map of the project so they can see where everything will go. This helps them complete different tasks related to the website as you will have various people working on it such as your design and content team.

Why Is a Wireframe Important?

As we’ve touched on, user experience is crucial to any good website.

If a user can’t comfortably use your site, or find their way around it, they are not going to complete their goals.

Depending on the nature of your company, these goals will differ. Maybe you’re trying to increase conversions or sign ups to a newsletter. Regardless of the end goal, a customer is never going to get there if they can’t use your website.

By taking time to create a wireframe, you can focus on the user experience in its entirety and identify any areas which could be improved. For example, could you change the position of a ‘call to action’ to assist the user better in achieving their goal?

Whilst some people believe this is a time consuming process, planning and preparation are key to ensuring the success of your website. By creating a wireframe in the early design stages, you can identify issues early on and seek to resolve them before you have spent time creating the actual product.

Who Uses Wireframes?

Wireframes satisfy a whole host of requirements.

Professionals who use them include web developers, designers, business analysts, information architects, programmers, and product managers, but lots of other teams will refer to them too.

Developers use wireframes to get a more tangible understanding of the site’s functionality whereas web designers use them to evaluate the user interface process.

User experience designers and information architects use this structure to show navigation paths between different web pages to make sure everything ties cohesively together. In terms of business analysts, they use wireframes to visually support the direction of the business and ensure interactions on the screen fulfill requirements.

Last but not least, business stakeholders review website wireframes to check that certain objectives have been fulfilled through the design.

As you can see, they are used by lots of people in different job roles. Working with wireframes should be a collaborative effort as they bridge the gap between information architecture and design. This is a key combo as websites need to present information clearly and concisely, whilst still being visually appealing.

Get these two things right, and you will increase your chances of conversions.
What Is the Purpose of a Wireframe?

There are 3 key purposes of creating a website wireframe to make sure it fulfills different requirements.

Let’s take a look.

Wireframes Keep the User in Mind

Essentially, wireframes are a communication tool.

They facilitate feedback from the users, instigate conversations with the stakeholders, and generate ideas between the designers about how they can improve the site.

During the early stages, conducting user testing allows the designer to gather honest feedback, and identify key pain points that can be used to enhance the product concept.

Wireframing provides designers with the perfect opportunity to assess how a typical user would interact with the interface. By using devices such as Lorem Ipsum, text that acts as a placeholder for future content, designers can ask users questions such as “what would you expect would be written here?”

These insights are very valuable and enable a designer to work out what feels intuitive for the user, and tailor products to suit.

Wireframes Define Website Features

Website wireframes keep things simple. As they are the bare bones of a website, it is easier for clients to see how things will look.

It’s a common mistake to assume clients understand different technical phrases. You might use the abbreviation ‘CTA’ or ‘UX’ on a daily basis, and talk about where the ‘hero image’ is going to go. However, clients don’t use these terms.

A wireframe helps you communicate your ideas easily, and get everyone on the same page. By mapping out specific features, you can show clients where they’ll sit, what function they have, and what purpose they serve. This helps them build up an overall picture of their new site.

Furthermore, it helps them see how much space needs to be allocated to different features. This is also important for your team, as they need to have a guide when completing different tasks so they know how much space they have to play with.

Seeing the features on a wireframe allows you to visualise how everything comes together and might even cause you to reconsider some elements if they’re not working.

Wireframes Can Be Easy to Create

There are different types of wireframes (which we’ll come onto a little later) and some of them are incredibly easy and cheap to create. In fact some are even free!

You don’t need fancy software, if you have a pen and paper to hand then you can start mapping out a wireframe.

If this hand sketched option isn’t for you, then there are lots of tools available meaning you can build a digital wireframe in next to no time. Again, we’ll cover this in more detail later so keep reading!

Whichever way you choose to create your wireframe, exposing the very core of the page layout, allows you to identify any pain points or improvements early on. The later it gets in the product design process, the more difficult and more expensive it can be to make changes!

What Are the Different Types of Wireframes?

There are lots of different types of wireframe and it depends on the level of detail you want.

It’s about finding a wireframe process that works for you and serves the needs of your project. As long as it communicates the main features of the design and functionality to your clients and your team, you can choose which wireframe you’re most comfortable with.

Sketch

As the name suggests, these wireframes start with a piece of paper and a pencil. This hand drawn method is very simple and outlines the basic concepts before getting stuck into more complex design elements.

They can be fairly rough and don’t require a sense of scale, grid, or pixel accuracy. They omit detail that could cause a distraction and focus on simplistic images, block shapes, and placeholder content.

Detailed Hand Drawn Wireframe

These hand drawn wireframes don’t have to be simple. They include a higher level of detail and aesthetically look a lot neater than a sketch.

As well as using paper and a pencil, you might also choose to use a ruler to be more accurate when planning the layout of different elements.

In terms of producing detailed work, it might be more convenient to use a digital wireframe as this will allow you more flexibility when preparing the design. This would also save a designer time as they could take advantage of a digital tool rather than measuring and plotting things by hand.

Low Fidelity Wireframe

These wireframes are digitally created and use simple content blocks to showcase different design elements.

This transforms a basic concept sketch into something more refined and clear. Low-fidelity wireframes are important when identifying what graphical elements need to be created and what copy needs to be written to populate different webpages.

Low Fidelity Mobile Wireframe

More people are now accessing websites via their mobile devices. Let’s be honest, they’re pretty much glued to our hands!

I’m guilty of this too.

So, when it comes to designing a website and assessing its functionality, web developers need to consider the mobile experience. There are key differences between desktop and mobile wireframes including size and behaviour.

Due to the size differences between mobile and desktop websites, careful consideration has to be taken when planning the layout.

For example due to the bigger screen width on a desktop website, your wireframe might feature a layout that spreads across multiple columns.

In contrast, on a mobile screen, the number of columns is usually restricted to one or two. This means you’ll need to decide whether they see an infinite scroll, or you could decrease the number of items per page to display other content beneath.

The second core difference is the behaviour of the mobile app versus a website. Users navigating a website will use a mouse or trackpad. As well as being able to click on features to reveal new pieces of information, they can also hover over buttons to reveal menus and drop downs.

However, on mobile, users will have to physically tap the screen to open a specific feature. This means thinking more carefully when creating your wireframe to identify ways you can encourage users to tap a specific button to fulfill their goal.

High Fidelity Wireframe

By using digital tools, you can create high fidelity wireframes that show your design in more detail. This gives you a more aesthetic look without spending too much time on design work.

By providing a more realistic visual, it allows both you and your clients to see how the final version will look. Compared to low fidelity frameworks, they can include typography, images, icons, colours, and CTA buttons.

Usually, high fidelity wireframes should be reserved for projects that have been approved by all stakeholders first. They take slightly longer than low fidelity wireframes so more resources are allocated to complete them.

Due to the level of detail required, digital tools make this job much easier.

Below are some free wireframe tools that can be used to benefit your project:

• Pencil Project for macOS, Windows, and Linux
• Mockplus for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android
• Mockplus iDoc for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android
• Fluid UI for web
• Wireframe.cc for web

If you have more budget, then there are also some premium wireframe tools to help you in your website preparation:

• InVision Freehand for web https://www.invisionapp.com/freehand
• Balsamiq for macOS, Windows, and web https://balsamiq.com/
• Figma for macOS, Windows, Linux and web https://www.figma.com/

Low Fidelity Interactive Wireframe

As we know websites aren’t static, so your wireframe shouldn’t be either. A good website is interactive and engages a user to navigate their way through different web pages in a designed and calculated manner, and ultimately fulfilling a goal.

No one wants to look at a flat, boring website as they want to be engaged in the experience and excited to find out more.

There are many interactive wireframe tools available to help you demonstrate your user experience and their journey before committing to your graphics.

What Are the Features of a Wireframe?

The features of a wireframe depends on which type you choose.

However, elements such as logos, search fields, headers, buttons, and placeholder text are typically mapped out when planning a website.

As high-fidelity wireframes are more detailed, they might also include navigation systems, contact information, and footers.

In low fidelity wireframes, typography and imagery should not be included as this just outlines the most basic concepts.

However, designers might choose to play around with the sizing of the text to see how it represents different pieces of information and to ensure it fits with the overall layout of the page. For any good website it’s important there is a careful balance between text and imagery so that the user is not overwhelmed when they scroll through.

Traditionally, wireframes are created in greyscale, meaning designers represent light colours with lighter shades of grey and use dark shading to represent bolder colours.

For some projects, designers might use some colour in high fidelity wireframes such as red to indicate an error message, or blue to represent a link. However it’s important to remember that as wireframes are only two-dimensional, they can’t display interactive features of the interface such as drop-down menus, hover states, or anything that utilises a show-hide functionality.

What Is the Difference Between Wireframes, Prototypes and Mockups?

When designing a website, these terms can be used interchangeably as they happen in quick succession of one another depending on the requirements of the project. In some cases, they can overlap which has led to some people getting confused about the 3 concepts and how they differ.

Whilst they all help you to see how a website will look and are an effective way of communicating your ideas, there are some differences in the level of detail.

Wireframe

We’ll keep this one short, as we’ve already covered it at the beginning of this blog post!

A wireframe communicates your ideas to other people and provides a foundation for how a website will look so people can see and understand the layout.

Think of this as your base.

Mockup

A mockup goes a step further than a wireframe.

This illustrates the expected appearance of your product and gives a client a better idea of how things will visually look.

It not only shows where things will sit, but also introduces shapes, fonts, and occasionally, colour. Essentially, a mock up is a static image of the final product.

If a wireframe has skipped any small details, then a mockup will highlight them. They are also used by designers to work out how much space is needed between different elements and to determine intervals and gaps.

Prototype

Once the mock up is complete, it’s time to create a prototype.

A prototype is an interactive model that shows the results of taking particular actions in an app.

A prototype might not be exactly like the real app; however, it should be very close to the product you’ll present to your customers.

The main difference between a prototype and a real application is that a prototype contains test data on the back end.

Wireframes: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

So, there you have it.

Your complete guide to wireframes. Although they seem basic, and some people are tempted to skip this stage, they are a key part of the development process.

Without a plan of how a website is going to look and how it is going to work, you won’t spot any mistakes until it’s too late. This is so frustrating for all parties involved and can push a project back.

By mapping everything out, it provides designers with the perfect opportunity to iron out these issues at an early stage and find pain points which could hinder the overall user experience. By solving these problems, you can move forward with confidence and create the best possible website.

Wireframes are essential communication tools for both your clients and your team and provide an easy but effective way of presenting your ideas.

Are you developing your own website but need a little guidance? Or do you have a website but feel unsure about the design? Whatever your questions, let’s hear them! Get in touch with a friendly member of our team to see how we can help your project.

The world of hosting is ever developing, and there are a lot of different hosting options available. Shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting… the list goes on!

The Web Design Brief Template

The Web Design Brief Template is a free template that will help you get the brief for your web design project right. ...

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If you’re researching managed and unmanaged hosting and found this page, then you’re probably looking to host or set up your website, right?

If you’re early on in the project, why not take a look at the web design services Canny Creative offer to help you build the most successful and profitable website possible.

In layman’s terms, managed hosting provides a much easier and simpler route into hosting, and you’ll receive a more consistent quality of support if anything was to go wrong with your website.

In a time of not too distant memory, some of the biggest sites in the world experienced outages because of a hosting error by hosting site Fastly. Although the outage only lasted around an hour, when you’re thinking about sites like reddit, Amazon, and the official UK government site, that’s actually a pretty major amount of time (and revenue)!

Sometimes, hosting issues like the Fastly error are pretty much unavoidable.

The core difference between managed and unmanaged hosting in that instance, is that people who were [hypothetically] hosting on Fastly via a managed service knew that the issue would be fixed and they could focus on running all of the other aspects of the business.

People hosting on Fastly via an unmanaged service probably had to focus on the outage, and trying to fix an issue that was essentially unfixable.

One of the core benefits of a managed hosting solution is that, as much as an outage of a website for someone like Amazon would be incredibly costly, if an outage of your website grinds your entire business to a halt and there is nothing anyone can do until it is fixed, and you have to devote all of your time to the technical issues rather than running your business it can be far more damaging.

That is the broad spec overview of the difference between managed and unmanaged hosting, but for more information and specifics keep reading!

If you’d like to discuss your hosting options with Canny Creative, get in touch and we can discuss your hosting options and how we provide support.

An Introduction to Managed vs Unmanaged Hosting

What is a hosting plan?

A hosting plan is one of the first things you’ll look at when you’re deploying a website. Before you have a hosting plan in place, you literally can’t make your website available to the internet.

A hosting plan gives you space on an internet server. These servers then take care of serving all of the information you’ve plugged into your website to anyone visiting the particular website address.

As previously stated, there are a lot of hosting plans available, and each offer various upsides and downsides.

VPS hosting is a more expensive route than some options out there, but you get a little bit more for bang for your buck- usually extra resources, security, and dedicated servers that belong to your site and your site alone.

Shared hosting is a more cost friendly option that utilises one server shared amongst several websites, rather than having a singular dedicated server for just your website. This is usually totally fine, unless something comes along that causes that particular server to crash.

Things that cause this type of crash are normally one of two things:

• A deliberate or malicious attack on your website, a particular website on that server, or the server itself (known as a Ddos attack)
• A sudden influx of traffic to one website due to some sort of value add that has driven real, authentic traffic in such a volume that it overloads the servers (known as a hug of death)

Collectively, these are known as slashdotting, or the slashdot effect.

This can also happen on a dedicated server, but it is less likely due to the increased capacity.

Shared hosting options are typically unmanaged hosting services. This means that whoever you host with will fully manage everything server-side, but you will be in control of the technical management, speed, and security of the website.

Managed hosting services are more involved in the other technicalities, ensuring the security, backup automations, updating, and speed management of your website.

Managed Hosting vs Unmanaged Hosting: Which is Best?

Well…the difficulty in answering that question depends on your business. Here are the most noticeable and important differences between managed vs unmanaged hosting.

Benefits of Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is a fantastic option not just from a technical point of view, but from an entrepreneurial or business minded perspective. Like all services, you essentially end up trading money for time and effort put in- managed hosting takes away all of the responsibility of the hard, technical work from your business, but that comes at a proportional cost.

• Managed hosting takes away a lot of the vital maintenance tasks that you would otherwise HAVE to do and monitor to keep your website functional
• Website security management and website core updates are automated and monitored by tech professionals
• Backups, CDN (content delivery network), and other key technical processes are handled by the host

Cons of Managed Hosting

As previously stated, managed hosting comes at an increased cost, but what are the other negative considerations of managed hosting?

Managed hosting cons may (depending on where the hosting is happening) include:

• A slightly higher recurring cost
• Less flexibility with regard to plugins and software versions
• Limited access to account configuration options

Benefits of Unmanaged Hosting

If you aren’t not particularly technically adept, or not complete au fait with website management on a server level, managed server hosting is probably the best option for you.

If you feel well equipped to start sorting out your own website security and maintenance, and are prepared to commit to doing that long term, the unmanaged shared hosting options without any managed features will be a far more budget friendly option.

• low cost
• Full technical access to cPanel for account level personalisation and adjustment options
• More flexibility for older version software integrations

These comparisons show that budget and level of control are the two main deciding factors for managed vs unmanaged hosting.

If you prefer to go for servers that you won’t be sharing server space on, you’ll probably be looking at dedicated servers or VPS servers.

What is VPS Hosting?

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a combination of shared hosting features and dedicated hosting features. They are ideal for sites that have outgrown the shared hosting environment and require a little bit more dedicated server space.

Although with VPS you do still share a physical server with other sites, each site is partitioned into its own little space depending on how much of the server it requires. This is done digitally using virtualisation technology, which allows the site to run its own operating system, applications, add ons, and features.

In this way, VPS is akin to having a dedicated server without the expense of actually having a dedicated server. You still have to share the actual hardware technologies of the server with other sites, which means you are still likely to experience lag, slow server response times, or even outages if another site on the server experiences a massive spike in traffic.

This is somewhat mitigated by the partitioned virtual space allocating resources from a server, but if every site on a server is running at 95% of its capacity then you will be somewhat limited by the hardware.

The key difference between VPS hosting and shared server hosting is that VPS hosting allows for a much greater level of customisability at a server level. This means you have root level access and have far greater levels of control over your site, without the attached cost that usually comes with dedicated server hosting.

Pros of VPS Hosting

• Greater control and customisation options
• Less security and downtime issues compared to shared server hosting
• Cheaper overhead costs than dedicated servers

Cons of VPS Hosting

• More expensive than shared hosting
• Still reliant on shared hosting to a degree
• Higher barrier to entry unless you go with managed VPS hosting services

Managed vs. Unmanaged VPS Hosting

For VPS hosting, managed hosting tends to be the better option unless you have a lot of experience in website hosting and development. Managed hosting plans for VPS hosting are typically customisable, so that you can choose more features and functionality for your site as it grows and develops.

As customisation is a main feature of VPS hosting, many managed hosting platforms offer tech support and customer service to allow you to really tailor what it is your website requires.

If you decide to go it alone, and go unmanaged, then there may be a steep learning curve to VPS hosting.

Although it is closer to dedicated hosting than shared hosting, it is a hybridisation and as such comes with lots of the benefits, but also carries the frustrations, of both hosting methods.

Experienced website managers should be fine with handling unmanaged hosting options, as they will be relatively familiar with the challenges that managing your own hosting presents.

For everyone else, it’s probably better to go with managed hosting options to save yourself a load of hassle- if it’s within your budget.

Dedicated Hosting

What is Dedicated Hosting?

Dedicated hosting is, if you haven’t already gathered from the above, a hosting option which gives your site a server all to itself.

The simplest hosting service to explain, with dedicated hosting you get full control over your hosting end to end, and all of the wonderful customisability and add ons that comes along with that.

Pros of Dedicated Server Hosting

• Private Server
• Fully Customisable
• Typically the most secure hosting option

Cons of Dedicated Server Hosting

• Expensive

That’s it.

There’s really only one bad thing about dedicated hosting, but it is a major factor in contributing to the decision making process. Managed dedicated hosting is by far the most expensive option for hosting services, and usually way above what any normal b2b website would require.

It is the most secure, and the most customisable, but really unless you are running an incredible amount of traffic through your website, having a dedicated server is typically a nice to have rather than a need to have.

What is the Best Hosting Option For Me?

It honestly depends on how much traffic you get on your site, but for 99.9% of the sites out there shared hosting is more than enough power for your website.

VPS hosting is normally overkill if you’re just focussing on serving your website quickly and to a huge volume of users, but is a good option for those who want a little bit more control over their security and customisation at a server side level. As an out of the gate product, VPS hosting is a strong in between option but can be costly for not much upside when compared to shared hosting.

Dedicated hosting is great, especially managed dedicated hosting, as having a managed service prevents you from going over the top with updates, add-ons and extra bells and whistles. Realistically though, if you’re going with dedicated hosting options you are expecting to have millions of site views or you need high level security at a server level… So unless you’re Jeff Bezos or James Bond, dedicated hosting tends to be a bit over the top.

Dedicated servers tend to be overkill and then some for the majority of websites, and can be a bit of a money pit as once you’re hosting on a dedicated server there will always be an opportunity for ‘upsell’ to the next best version of security, support, updates etc.

With shared hosting, especially managed hosting, you’re still paying for a service but it never feels disproportionately priced considering what you are getting. With a managed service, you manage to avoid all of the common pitfalls of hosting that occur due to inexperience or a lack of established network management knowledge.

It’s also good to have the option to grow your service- if you find that your shared server is running exceptionally slowly, or isn’t fulfilling your needs anymore, you can always upgrade to a VPS server.

Downgrading from a dedicated server or VPS server can be much more difficult!

To discuss your server hosting options further, and to get a little bit of a better understanding of how Canny can help you with your hosting options, get in touch today and see what we can do for you!

Let’s say your business is up and running, and you have the traditional marketing materials like business cards and brochures.

You now face your last start-up hurdle: your website.

Your website, otherwise known as your online storefront and virtual brand, is how you will present yourself the to the world. The entire planet Earth will be introduced to your business via this website. No pressure, right?

So, what should a new business owner do? You want the best site possible, so you need to ask a web designer for help.

Therefore, should you do a quick Google search and hope for the best?

Nope.

There are ten things you should do first before taking that route:

1. Ask Your Network

Instead of that random Google search, it’s time to use your professional network to find a web designer.

Ideally, you want a web designer that comes highly recommended from someone you know, as this gives you confidence that they’re up to the job.

There are millions of web designers worldwide that can help you create a website, but if you are the kind of person that wants to sit down with someone in-person rather than on Skype, your network might help you find them.

If you can’t find someone local, or you don’t mind hiring someone virtually, then you can tap into the online web designer pool to find a good match.

This is where Google can help: simply searching for “web design help” will direct you to freelancing job websites that connect business owners to freelancers looking for work.

Better yet, find a website in your industry that you like, and contact the web designer directly. Most designers leave a little “Designed by” link at the bottom of websites that they’re proud of!

2. Know your website goals and priorities

Before engaging a web designer at all, ask yourself: will your site sell products and/or services, or will it exist to simply provide information?

A web designer can help you answer questions like this one, but they will most likely charge you to have the conversation.

Instead, search online for websites you like and ones that could potentially represent your brand from an image perspective. This is also the time you will begin to draft an outline of what you want your website to accomplish, but we’ll get into that later.

For now, figure out why you want a website in the first place to create a starting point for your project.

3. Create a Vision Board

Vision boards aren’t just for 20-somethings who are unsure what they want to do for the rest of their lives; they also help new business owners decide how to create the best look for their business.

Your board could be a virtual one or an actual board sitting in your office. It should include things like colors you want incorporated into your brand, preferred font choices, slogans or phrases, and graphics you intend to use when marketing your business.

4. Make a Design Wish List

Do you need a designer to build a website from scratch, or do you have a site already that needs updating? Both are entirely two different conversations: one focused on creating and executing a vision while the other focuses on improving an existing one.

If you don’t have a site already, make a list based on your research and vision board including the number of pages, headers, buttons, menus, or any other visual element you plan on including on your website.

Also include any social media buttons or brand icons you will need to promote yourself online. All these digital assets will add up, and creating this list can help a designer give you an estimate regarding the time it will take, and the money it will cost, for them to produce your vision.

5. Budget

Building a website is much like building a house: it always costs more than you anticipate.

Don’t let this scare you; just be prepared! Do your research and find out what the going rate for web design work is in your area before you speak with potential designers.

The best resource to find out this information is to ask other local business owners in the area who they hired to create their website, and the total cost involved.

If you find yourself loving a specific website that isn’t local, reach out to the owner and ask if they would mind sharing the contact information of their designer. They will appreciate the compliment, and most likely would share that information.

Knowing your budget is so important, that’s why we wrote a blog about it: Seriously, We Need to Know Your Budget. Here’s Why.

6. Give Each Page a Purpose

How many pages do you want your website to have? What is the goal of each page? How much copy, or words on each page, do you anticipate?

These are just a few of the questions you need to ask before approaching a web designer who will most likely charge you by the hour to help you answer these questions.

Again, the best approach is to find websites in your industry you admire and try to emulate (not copy) their structure to create something similar.

If you don’t know how many pages you’ll need, start with these five pages that your customers expect to see:

• Home
• About
• FAQ
• Product or Service Details
• Contact

Your website will be a fluid marketing channel for your business, meaning you can update it as time goes on to keep it current, if the structure exists to support it.

Keep in mind that adding pages, changing the format, or making any significant design changes to your website will take additional design work. Meaning, it will cost you more money for a designer to update your site. The goal should be to create a baseline site that you can easily update with information and doesn’t require structural changes.

7. Have Your Copy Ready

You might be surprised to hear this, but you should have the words for each page ready to go before your designer begins work on your website.

These aren’t just ideas; you need the final polished copy for your site. If you have no clue what to say or feel uncomfortable or unable to write it yourself, hire a writer to do it for you.

The goal should be to hand over this final copy to the designer at your first meeting. This way they can design around it. This will save you money since the designer doesn’t have to walk you through copy creation, and it will help speed up the process overall.

8. Establish a Creative Process Before the Meeting

Chances are you already are creating and managing your marketing using tools like Google Docs or Dropbox to manage files. Since easy online collaboration is key when working with a web designer, create a folder online to begin gathering ideas and storing key pieces of information they will need to access for your project.

Here are some of the items you will want to store in this online folder:

Your Copy

A shared file is a great way to create draft copy for multiple people to review simultaneously. By using software to track changes to the document, users can view changes made in real time. This can be a great way to speed up the creative process.

Images, graphics, and pictures

Any image owned by you for your website should go in this shared folder. What does it mean to own an image? We’ll cover that in #9 below. 

Website sitemap

Do you remember in grammar school putting together an outline before writing a story? This is the same approach you need when planning your website. It makes sense since this is your brand’s digital story about who you are and why you matter.

Each subset of this basic planning sitemap should include the page name and give you a sense of the layout of your site.

Web design agreement and contract

When designing your website, it is critical you and your designer are on the same page regarding expectations. Since you hired a designer chances are your knowledge of all things web design isn’t equal to theirs. Accept you may not grasp the time involved in designing a site.

For example:

You may think it should take a few weeks to create a website and get it up and running. However, the reality is, the design process can take several months based on the intricacy of the site.

Before any work begins, sit down with your web designer and create a mutually-beneficial contract that sets the terms of your relationship. This should not only include the budget and timeline, but also expectations of communication.

Would you like progress reports daily, or weekly? How often will you meet? Is email or text the best way to correspond?

Establishing expectations will help ease any administrative stress the project may cause. Keeping the focus on producing an awesome website.

9. Gather Images

You will want images for your website including photos, logos, illustrations, and animated gifs. This is where copyright comes into play. Any image on your site needs to either be created by you or obtained through professional help or purchased outright.

What does this mean? Well, it means you don’t copy and paste pictures from websites and then claim them as your own! There are many other ways to acquire the visual assets you need for your site:

• Take your own pictures or hire a professional to get the quality shots you need
• Purchase stock photos from Shutterstock, iStock or similar services that sell images for commercial use
• Hire a designer to create custom illustrations for your website

Images will tell your story as much as the words on your website. Make sure they look professional, compelling, and brand-specific to have the most impact.

10. Create a Launch Plan

Once your hypothetical website is ready, what’s your plan?

Before you even begin designing your website, you should consider how you will use it to your advantage upon completion. Some owners make an event out of the launch of their website to create some buzz about their brand.

Others line up their best customers to give testimonials on their new site via copy or video content so they, and these customers, have something to say and share on social media.

Once your website is ready for public consumption, remember these three things:

Make sure it is grammatically correct

Check, double check, and then re-check it to make sure there are no spelling or punctuation errors. There is no better way to lose a potential customer than by making a poor first impression over a typo.

Test your links

Do you have an email associated with the site? Make sure it works by having friends and family send you emails through the site. If you can order products directly from your new website, run several test orders through to check your system is working correctly.

View your website on a mobile device

How does it look?

You want visitors to easily scroll through the phone via their mobile devices. Be sure to view your site from multiple devices to see how it looks and test the functionality of the site.

Send your website link to your friends and ask them for their opinion regarding how it appears and works.

Once you have considered these ten points, you’re ready to hire a web designer. They will have the information they need to design and you will get what you want: an outstanding website at an affordable cost.

10 Things You Should Do Before Hiring a Web Designer

Hopefully, after reading the above post you’ll know what to look out for before hiring a web designer.

If you want to get your website right, then you can’t afford not to do your research first. Whilst taking to Google and choosing the first ‘web designer’ that comes up might seem easy, it won’t necessarily produce the best results.

As we’ve covered, your website is your digital shop window, and is the first thing people will search for when they hear about your business. Don’t scrimp and scrape on the end result.

At Canny, we’re the experts in web design and have helped numerous clients across the globe, from London to the US. We know what it takes to build and design fantastic websites that provides a great user experience to enhance your offering.

So before you jump into hiring a web designer, get in touch with our team of experts and find out how we can help!

But is it worth it?

Should you use a cheap website host, or buy a cheap domain name? Does it really matter?

Cost and speed. Two words to consider when choosing web hosting services. In today’s world, paying for web hosting services is just part of doing business.

And you also have a choice between managed and unmanaged website hosting.

So we thought we’d ask: is your website’s hosting a good area to try and save money?

Are all web hosting services the same?

If you want to build a speedy website that stands the test of time, then you need to consider how you are choosing your web hosting service and domain provider.

It’s tempting to go for the cheaper web hosting service (at least at first) and then scale up or switch to another service provider after a few months.

So, we wonder:

“Should we buy a cheap website hosting service and then switch later?” or “Should we invest our money and go for the premium hosting service from the beginning?”

If you think scrimping and saving a few bucks will benefit your business, think again.

Downtime or server outage is the worst thing that could happen when you already have thousands and millions of viewers per day. It is one of the main drawbacks to cheap web hosting services and later we’ll tell you more about it.

Downtimes are unprecedented.

Even Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the USA, was not spared from them. And Amazon also provide their own hosting services. Here’s what happened to Amazon as per the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Amazon.com’s website went down midday Monday for about 40 minutes. The reason for the outage was unclear, although it appeared to have been widespread. The outage could have cost the company an estimated $4.72 million in lost sales, based on an estimate that the company takes in $9,823 every five seconds.

Wow! 40 minutes = almost $4.72 million in lost sales.

You may not be running the largest e-commerce website in the World. But if Amazon – with such robust and high-tech facilities and technologies – experienced it, imagine how much outages can effect mom-and-pop shops and medium-sized companies.

An outage is like a force majeure in the digital world, but prevention is better than not being prepared.

Whether you’re just starting out in business or have purchased a cheap web hosting service due to limited funds, consider these six drawbacks now before you experience the worst case scenario when it comes to hosting your website:

1. Poor Page Performance

According to Hubspot, the ideal page load speed for website’s HTML should be less than 1.5 seconds.

How fast? Think of light that travels for about 1.3 seconds to reach the moon.

If your website loads between 1.5 – 5 seconds or more – you can run a test, analyze it and tweak your code – server response time can be a factor too.

Cheap web hosting service providers usually run shared hosting platforms where resources are, true to their name, shared – CPU, memory, and disk space.

The best analogy for this is a shared apartment. The occupants of the apartment share the available amenities such as the pool, playground, and parking lot.

Which means you cannot tell them “not to use” these facilities because they’re also paying the landlord like you do.

The formula: cheap web hosting + shared web hosting platforms = limited control and use of the resources.

Most of them offer unlimited or free SSD, featured on their pricing plans. But free or unlimited doesn’t necessarily mean you get the perks of exclusive use of the resources.

Think about it, how many serious businesses gives away a great service for free? None.

As the name, itself, shared is still shared. You may have unlimited bandwidth, but once other “occupants” also decide to use the resources, it could affect your server’s performance.

When you run the Google Page Speed test for insights, you will probably see the following:

“Reduce server response time.”

While there are many factors behind it, most web hosting companies would suggest you to “upgrade to VPS or dedicated hosting” to improve the speed.

2. Negative Effects on SEO Efforts and Rankings

Moz explored the website speed and its relation to SEO rankings. Based on the data collected “there is no correlation between page load time (either document complete or fully rendered) and ranking on Google’s search results page.”

But what does this mean?

It’s not the site’s front-end performance that affects the rankings. It’s the back-end where server’s response and performance are crucial in this matter.

Here’s what they found out:

However, our data shows there is a correlation between lower time-to-first-byte (TTFB) metrics and higher search engine rankings. Websites with servers and back-end infrastructure that could quickly deliver web content had a higher search ranking than those that were slower.

The TTFB metrics are affected by these factors: the network latency, web server’s response (if it’s heavily loaded, remember the other occupants are also using the amenities, right?), and how fast the site’s back-end can generate the page content.

There are several ways to improve the performance such as packages for Apache or Source for Nginx or for a more advanced quest, you could look to get started with mod_pagespeed with Apache on a cloud server.

But Moz also gave emphasis that websites rank high because they have invested in high performance, premium servers and deployed CDNs plus optimization of the database layers.

As mentioned in the first point, you can only do so much on shared hosting. Sure it’s cheap and affordable, yet you have limited control over the resources.

The takeaway from Moz is on point:

The back-end performance of a website directly impacts search engine ranking. The back end includes the web servers, their network connections, the use of CDNs, and the back-end application and database servers.

3. Insanely Poor Customer Service

While it’s easy to drop or change website hosting company, out of discretion, it would be best to tell the tale.

Quoting the marketing adage, “You get what you pay for”, let’s discuss what can happen when you choose an inexpensive hosting company and need some customer service.

Here’s a scenario (not mine) of a business that is building a website and has just invested in some prime web development tools to build their website:

Using a drag and drop builder to develop a website, it appears that the shared CPU and RAM can’t accommodate the premium web dev tools we used (a common problem with make-your-own-website builders.)

When said company tries to reach out via live chat, to solve this problem, what do they soon discover? That 45 customers were waiting before we can talk to the agent. Not wanting to wait in line and waste a day of productivity, they try reaching out via email, and lo and behold, the customer service team replied … after five days!

Yes, five days, saying they have investigated the problem and because we only purchased the shared hosting, they advised us to upgrade to their dedicated server package.

An upgrade? Doesn’t that cost more anyway? What we thought we were getting to host our site isn’t quite the package that will meet our needs, so what is the solution? Spend more money anyway.

As we have discussed many times before on the Canny blog, more often than not, the cheap becomes expensive. If you have a sensible budget in place, talk with a web agency that can help you through making your web hosting decision.

The next time your website’s hosting renewal is due, or you’re comparing services, consider this:

If a web hosting provider invests money into several communication channels (e.g, live chat, support ticketing, email, telephone) then they’re going to be a lot easier to reach out to. Therefore, the response time will be lower, meaning the service is better.

Remember, you do get what you pay for.

We recommend reading the fine print, asking questions before you pre-pay for the entire year, and reading online reviews. A professional web hosting company will respond quickly to your questions before you buy.

4. Pack-One-Pack-All on Downtime Server Issues

Every hosting company strives to deliver the best, and if not the best, the most consistent service.

Just like any technology based service, there is no such thing as perfect service. At one time or another, there will be a period where things get a little shaky, whether it’s caused by an internal or external factor.

There are many reasons why downtime occurs – from external factors such as ISP technical problems, to hardware issues of the servers, to random internal situations within the servers where a customer uses a rogue script in one of its websites that could affect a shared hosting platform – remember the shared apartment analogy, right?

Imagine if the pool at the shared apartment on a sweltering summer was closed in need of maintenance for days. Occupants, even if they want to plunge and relax, cannot. Everyone goes back inside and perhaps turns the air-conditioning on.

Or, they go somewhere else entirely.

The same thing happens with cheap hosting.

If there’s a DDoS attack or vulnerability, everyone on a shared server feels the pain.

The worst could be a DDoS attack on shared hosting services. According to a report, the prevalence of DDoS attack adds to downtime issues for 89% of Top 100K websites in Q4, 2016.

5. No Immunity on Security Leaks

There’s no immunity from security leaks and cyber crimes once you’re active online. This is a very serious consideration, especially if you have an ecommerce site. If you haven’t considered the ins and outs of security for your site, you need to consider all the ways that your site may be vulnerable.

For example, this Cloudflare bug that leaked sensitive data from customers’ website such as HTTPS sessions of Uber, 1Password, and FitBit was a hot topic among security gurus and programmers last February. Cloudfare hosts these internet giant’s technology. And for sure, the services that Cloudflare offer are not cheap or rip-offs.

And recently, it was reported that Wonga, the payday lender in the UK, had 270,000 of their customers’ records compromised.

What if we opt for cheaper finds? Or free hosting?

Either free or cheap – our advice is to stay far away from these words when it comes to web hosting – unless you want to be one of the 13 million customers’ whose passwords have leaked from this free web hosting provider.

And security breaches and hacking incidents will not stop anytime soon. The more we build our businesses online, the higher chances our digital assets are exposed to these incidents. As Wired put it, “The hacks aren’t set to stop in 2017.”

6. Limited Features and Control Over Software and Applications

As for cheap hosting services that run on shared platforms, you simply don’t have the choice on what software or applications you want to deploy.

The software on the cPanel may have limited options. They’re easy to use but not recommended for a company running a huge e-commerce website. If you are not sure what the requirements will be for your e-commerce site, give us a shout. Our expert web development team will be able to help you find the most suitable web hosting options that will last as you grow your business.

Remember that everyone is sharing the same CPU, memory, and server space; installing or running applications may cause your site to slow down and overload the server.

Some hosting providers have a security policy where they only provide limited ports and connections to the customer.

Our Final Takeaway

Cheap website hosting isn’t always cheap. It’s usually more expensive in the long run, especially when you experience the hassle and stress that will also affect your brand’s reputation.

So, the next time you see the steep price of hosting services, we hope you will be liberated from the “Scrooge mindset” and choose the right service to suit your needs. Premium website hosting will free you from the nightmares associated with cheap hosting providers.

If you are not sure if your web hosting service is meeting your needs, or want to learn more about your options as you build your business online, we’d love to talk to you.

There might be some alternatives we can suggest that you’ve never considered!

What experiences have you had with website hosting and cheap website hosting providers?