Website DesignerS in Richmond, VA

There are some hidden costs in having your website rebuilt by a website designer.

Make sure you understand the pitfalls of choosing the wrong one.

See our list of things to consider when building a new website, and our list of trusted design agencies below.

Looking for a Website Designer in Richmond, VA?

We work with dozens of website designers and interactive agencies in the Richmond area and across the country. We know what most of their capabilities are and can help you find a web design agency that’s right for your project.

Call us if you need help finding a trustworthy designer for you next website. We’re glad to help.

SEE OUR TOP RECOMMENDED WEBSITE

DESIGNER LIST BELOW!!!

WordPress is a common website design platform. Custom WordPress websites can range from $2,000 to $20,000 for a small business. WordPress claims 34% of all websites are built on their platform. Please note that these websites typically require premium hosting to keep page load times reasonable.

What to Consider When Hiring a Website Designer

When researching web design, you should be aware of a few of the tasks that affect the price of the project and the time it takes to complete the project:

Do you really need a custom website, or will an existing theme work? Making small adjustments to a pre-built theme is much less expensive and no one will know the differnce.
Who will write the copy / content? You can save money if you do it yourself. Checkout our favorite AI copywriter.
Who will provide the images? Photography can add a significant expense, but images of your business instill more confidence than "stock" images.
Will you need logo design or other branding elements? Then make sure you find a website designer with exceptional graphic arts capabilities.
How many pages will you need? Figure this out before you start looking for a website designer. It will impact the cost of the project and some website designers may not want to work on a project with too many or too few pages.
Do you need a new website or can you just “re-theme” your current site? See the section on re-theming below to save money and time.
What will happen to your organic page rankings on Google? If you don't keep your SEO elements and re-install them on your new site, you will lose organic rankings and potential business.
How fast will my new website load on mobile devices? (see Google's PageSpeed Insights)

The biggest expenses are typically related to the content, images and branding elements like logo design. If you’re starting from scratch and need your website to be well-branded, then expect to get quotes in the $5,000 to $10,000 range from most agencies. Those projects will often take 2 to 4 months to complete. That’s if you don’t need a custom theme written.

If you do need a custom theme, then add another $5000 to $10000 to the cost and another 2 to 4 months for additional development and programming.

Side note – being without a good website for several months has a hidden cost – lost opportunity for sales and SEO rankings.

If you already have the content written for all your pages, and you have a library of images, and you have a strong logo and branding, then you can find a website designer that can transfer your content into an existing theme for around $1500 to $4000. The time to complete a project like that can take as little as 1 week, but will most likely will take about a month. We like to call this much less expensive option "re-theming" your website.

New Website Design vs. “Re-Theme”

If you already have a website with great content and an overall design that you're happy with, then consider a simple “re-theme”.

Website "re-theming" is a word we coined, and it means "to keep your website's existing content and the general look and feel, but modernize or replace your website’s theme and platform for better SEO and User Experience (UX)." Since there's no content development or graphic design involved, the cost is typically much less and the time it takes to complete the project is much faster.

Why chose a website "re-theme" instead of a complete "rebuild"? A few reasons:

Many website designers do not include Search Engine Optimization in the project, so a new website rebuild can actually COST YOU MORE MONEY in the long run. You could lose all your current organic search engine traffic. Re-themes usually retain all the content, including the SEO elements.
You spent a lot of time and money on your current content. If it's relevant, then why pay to re-create your website from scratch?
A good re-theme can simply improve page load times, mobile responsiveness design and the overall user experience means more leads from the website traffic you're already getting.
Improving your Call to Action will also get you more leads.
Complete website rebuilds can take 3 to 9 months, or longer. A re-theme can be completed in just a few weeks. That's a lot of lost opportunities if your current website isn't converting traffic or indexing on Google.

New Website - What is the Biggest Threat To Your Business?

We get calls from people all the time saying something like “I just paid a website designer all this money for a new website and my phone stopped ringing. Why?” Well, 90% of the time, that caller did not pay to have their new website re-optimized for the search engines. Since the old website typically no longer exists, there’s nothing they can do at that point and the business suffers for months or years trying to get back onto page one of Google. That website designer probably created all new page URLs and didn’t copy over all the vital SEO elements from the old website because that takes significant time and costs more money.

If you get a quote from a website designer and it does not include language about "retaining the SEO elements already in place" and "retain the URLs or redirect the old URLs", then get a new quote. It can take months to repair lost SEO, so if you're currently getting leads from Google, make sure you retain your SEO or you risk losing months of free leads.

If you have any questions about keeping your search engine rankings after launching a new website, please call us. We would rather spend 30 minutes helping you keep your business than 6 months trying to save your business. Our phone number is 804-638-9866. We’re open Monday to Friday 9:00 to 5:00 ET.

Website Designers in Richmond, VA that Third Marble Trusts

This is a short list of the website designers in Richmond and central Virginia that we recommend to small businesses looking for a new website. Most of them can work with businesses anywhere in the USA, so feel free to click on the links below and give them a call. Hopefully, you'll find a website designer that you like.

River City Consulting – Branding, marketing planning and website design. Good for medium to large businesses needing a re-brand. Richmond, VA.
Garza Web Design – Website design. Can work on small projects or large corporate sites. Richmond, VA.
Strategy Cafe – Websites with custom database solutions and content management systems. Richmond, VA.
Digital Moxie – Internet marketing, social media and web design. Small to medium sized businesses. Richmond, VA.

Axim Solutions – App development, website design, hosting. Can develop simple sites, or complex sites with custom data integration. Very good at building fast-loading websites. Midlothian, VA.
Jonas Marketing – Website design. From small websites to e-commerce. Richmond, VA.
ReDoSites – Simple "re-platforming" service for existing websites to a more modern platform with optimized hosting for fast page loads. ReDo will not create new websites, and they are not really website "designers". Best for entrepreneurs that like their current website's design, but need better conversion rates. ReDoSites are built for outstanding SEO, good UX, fast page-loads and high conversion rates. Starting at $750. Richmond, VA.

If you are a website designer and would like to be added to our list, call us and tell us a little about your business.

(Our Google Ads Management and SEO clients are always asking us to refer them to a good website design agency.)

Website Design and Mobile Page Load Speeds

When considering a website design project or hiring a website designer, it is very important to have a fast loading website on mobile devices. Often, a new Wordpress website will load slowly on mobile devices because the complicated content management, often un-optimized image formats and heavy lifting required by jquery.

A slow loading website hurts your business in three ways:

Poor User Experience - No one wants to wait more than 10 seconds for a page to load. A website visitor that has to stare at a blank white screen may not think too highly of your company.
Increased Bounce Rates and Lower Conversion Rates - We live in a world of instant gratification. It's easier for most people to hit the back button and go to a different website than it is for them to wait for your page to load.
Poor Page Ranking on Google - That's right, Google will penalize your slow loading website in their Search Engine Results. Basically, Google wants the Google User to have a good experience when they click on Google Search Results. We rarely see pages in the top half of page 1 with 10+ second page load times on mobile.

Website design with fast page loads gets you more business.

Before You Hire a Website Designer!!!

Before you even talk to a website design, perform one simple test. Get the URL of their website and enter it into Google's PageSpeed Insights tool https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Run the report and look at the mobile results (Google ignores the Desktop results). If they can't even get their own website to load quickly, what do you think the chances are of your website loading quickly. Your website needs to be an ASSET. Not a LIABILITY. You can also ask for a few of the websites that they have built recently. Run a PageSpeed Insights report on those sites as well to make sure.

Typically, any score over 50/100 is OK for a small business, but you'll need to be in the 70's or better if you want to outrank websites like Yelp, Angie's List and other directory websites.

Which One Of These Website Design Agencies Would You Hire?

Worst website design agency in richmond va.

Website design agency in Richmond, VA with good page load times.

A Few Website Design Notes About

Wix, Weebly, Website Builder and SquareSpace...

A few years ago, several companies made website design accessible to just about anyone. These "build your own website overnight" designs are great if you're building your FIRST WEBSITE. However, while these websites are cheap and very affordable, the true cost of these platforms is in the LOST OPPORTUNITY.

These website platforms rarely appear on page one of Google, which means fewer people will be able to find your business, so you could potentially lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue simply because you picked a cheap website platform.

These websites also tend to load slowly on mobile, so higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.

If you Google something like "SEO and Wix websites", you'll probably find dozens of articles that say the opposite of what we're saying. That's because these platforms have "affiliate marketing" programs. They pay the person that wrote the article a commission if someone clicks on a link in their article and buys a website. So there are hundreds of people getting paid to give you bad advice and steer your website design decisions in the wrong direction for their own personal gains. Please be careful.

As we mentioned, these platforms are great for allowing you to build your first website. It's a great way to start developing your own content, gather images and learn about the website design process. If you don't have a website yet, these platforms are great for helping you get organized and can save you a bunch of time and effort when you go to hire a website design agency to build your second website.

We just wouldn't recommend you use one of these website platforms for very long.