Why is web design so expensive?

Because a website that performs is not just “pretty pages.” You are paying for strategy (positioning and intent), UX (structure that converts), visual design (a system, not random screens), engineering (responsive, accessible, fast), and QA (bugs, mobile edge cases, forms, tracking). The expensive part is reducing risk: avoiding a launch that looks good but does not rank, does not convert, or breaks on real devices. Cheap builds often skip fundamentals and cost more later in fixes, redesigns, or lost leads.