There are lots of different types of web designer. In my experience working full time in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) I come across all sorts.

Some web designers are part of massive companies, has many other people to go to for support on items from outside their sphere of expertise. They have all the resources, and can not only create fantastic websites, but whole online business solutions.

However, all these fantastic abilities and resources do have one downfall, they cost a large sum of money and many businesses in the UK don’t have the financial clout or marketing budget to employ these people’s services.

Another type of web designer can work in a smaller company with one or two other designers and a couple of programmers. They may not or may not be able to do the same quality job as the larger company, but they can only handle four or five jobs at a time, and may take a bit longer.

The websites from these designers are still likely to do an extremely good job, there might be a few less fancy features, but this website is still likely to cost several thousand pounds. This may be more obtainable for some smaller companies, and the investment may well be returned if the website is successful.

Despite business owners knowing how important a website is, these large kinds of investments are a risk, and although that risk could provide long term dividends, there are no guarantees of this success, and will first look for more affordable web designers.

Some web designers may have mountains of experience but still come cheap. I have worked with some of these as my SEO clients. However, mountains of experience and cheap probably just means that they are still designing sites made from tables.

Frankly websites made from tables are ugly. I’ve made some myself and I think that CSS is a fantastic thing, separating the style from the content and allowing you to beautify a page far more effectively than HTML could alone. It also creates cleaner code, meaning faster loading times for your visitors and is better for the optimisation of the site.

Some web designers are like me. They have studied different types of internet technology or have just enjoyed tinkering around with them like I did when I used to take computers apart.

We come cheap, have bags of potential, can create visually stunning designs and can borrow from the thousands of scripts that are available on the internet for the bits that we don’t know how to hard code ourselves.

We often have one skill that sets us apart from other contemporaries. For example, one of my friends who is another cheap freelance web designer is a great php programmer, and can do things with that, that I cannot imagine how to implement. However I know Search Engine Optimisation as well as website construction and being a search engine marketer has advantages for created websites that most would have to pay large sums of money for.

I am able to create sites that have all the on-page factors ready to be read by the search engines. By getting a few good quality links on the home page, you enable the site to be indexed quickly and if the content is of good enough quality, before too long you will be getting some traffic.

Having a website built buy one of these cheaper designers can still increase revenues and brand awareness, maybe not to the same degree that the larger outlay would get you, but this can be what gives you a platform to get the site of your dreams built.

At the end of the day, you will normally get what you pay for. Higher fees charged usually indicate that the designers have some ability. But just because a freelancers site is cheap, does not mean that the site that they would build for you would not provide your business or even hobby or charity an extremely vital marketing and revenue source.