What are all the components of good website design? Most people think of just visuals, which requires a lot of work to get right. Behind the scenes, hosting, ongoing maintenance, and SEO are the backbone of any modern digital initiative, ensuring your customers have a consistent user experience.
As a Columbus marketing agency, we’ve seen the true cost of bad web design and have helped businesses recover from poor web hosting providers, broken websites, and neglected SEO. Here’s what you need to know about bad web design choices and the costs to fix them:
How Do I Know if My Website is Poorly Designed?
Look for these key indicators:
- Outdated Design: A site that looks like it was built in the early two thousands suggests to users that your business is dated. And if you’re out of touch digitally, why should they trust you with their business?
- Long Loading Times: If it takes more than 2 seconds for your site to load, it’s time to optimize your site for performance. That usually means better hosting services.
- Website Bugs: Layout issues, broken functionality, and 500 errors will destroy your digital brand. Someone needs to maintain your website.
- Traffic Signals:
- Low Click-Through Rate (CTR): Poor meta titles, descriptions, or content, as well as a suboptimal user experience, can significantly impact your CTR and negatively affect your search rankings. Make sure your content catches your customers’ attention on SERPs and when it’s shared through social media.
- Short Engagement Time: If users land on your site and leave quickly, your content and design aren’t meeting digital expectations, which can penalize your overall SEO. Remove any obstacles between your users and what they are looking for.
On a related note, after we completely redesigned a website for a local business in Columbus (whose site hadn’t been touched in 5+ years), we observed a 15% increase in leads from organic traffic in just 12 months. As you can see, good web design generates revenue.
How Does Bad Website Hosting Hurt My Business?
Hosting is the backbone of any stable website.
It provides customers with a consistent experience with your website, stores your files and contact details, connects your domain with your website server, and facilitates key integrations, including CRM tools, booking platforms, and social media feeds.
That’s why when your website hosting is bad:
- Your website can go down
- Your domain may not work in a browser
- Critical services tied to your site (CRM, email, etc.) may stop functioning
- Business opportunities may be lost
Additionally, poor hosting choices can incur hundreds of dollars in unnecessary monthly costs. For instance, using an expensive server when a much cheaper one could have been used. And if your server fails or is held hostage by your hosting provider, you may be forced to rebuild your website from scratch. This can easily cost you $3,000 or more before factoring in lost revenue from the downtime, so make sure to choose a reliable hosting provider for your website.
What’s the Cost of Poor Website Maintenance?
Your website must undergo periodic updates to keep up with changes in your business, industry, competitors, and audience.
If you neglect website maintenance like many small business owners do:
- Your web design and content become dated
- Your website experiences more and more bugs
- Your website security becomes vulnerable and may crash permanently
- You lose relevance with younger, digital-native customers
And here’s the kicker: fixing a neglected site is costly and can lead to the following:
- Fixing a broken website: $1,500+
- Rebuilding a broken website: $4,500+
Generally speaking, the longer it has been since your website’s launch, the more it will cost to fix and/or revive it. If you haven’t serviced your website in months or even years, reach out to a web design agency to start a website maintenance program today.
What Happens If You Ignore SEO?
Search engines will rank you lower and may even remove you from their results pages.
Think about it this way: if all your current and new competitors prioritize SEO, chances are you’ll start losing to them. At some point, your site may disappear from search results completely (even for your branded searches), and your prospects and customers won’t be able to find you. This is why SEO is never a one-time thing.
Don’t just sit on your website because fixing it later might require an aggressive SEO strategy that can cost $2,500+ per month.
Total Cost of a Bad Website
Recapping the above, take a look at the costs behind bad web design:
Issue |
Estimated Cost |
| Poor website performance | 15% in loss revenue |
| Poor website hosting provider | 50% to100%+ of the original build |
| Website rebuild | $4,500+ |
| Neglected SEO | $2,500+ per month |
The Bottom Line
Bad web design is never just a visual problem. It quietly drains your resources through lost traffic, broken functionality, weak hosting, and neglected SEO. While cutting corners may feel cost-effective upfront, the long-term price of fixing or rebuilding a poorly maintained website is far higher. Investing early in strong design, reliable hosting, ongoing maintenance, and SEO protects your digital brand, supports growth, and keeps your business competitive in an increasingly digital-first market.
That’s why partnering with a top web design agency ensures you get web design right the first time.
Ready to fix what’s broken?
Contact Uplancer Agency for a free website audit and SEO consultation. And if you’re working with an agency that’s not hitting the mark, learn how to fire your web agency to get your business back on the right digital track today!
