The Web Design Process - Handling Your Budget
23 February 2009 at 12:17
When approached by clients who are looking to have a website designed for their business, one of the first questions they ask is, "So, how does this work then?" If you prepare a good website brief for your web designer, then we can give you a very good indication of the costs and timescales involved in building your new website:
- Do you have a logo and branding in place? If you have then it makes the design process much easier because we can see the type of aesthetic feel you are aiming for. We also encourage clients to keep their website branding the same as their existing branding so that visitors become familiar with our client's corporate image.
- Have a very good idea of the kind of website you are looking to have built. This can include a list of websites that you like the look of and any features of existing website that you like or don't like.
- Develop a sitemap on a piece of paper including all of the pages and functionality you would like to see on the website.
- What is your budget? It's possible that your budget may not afford all of the features that you would like on your website. A good web design agency will tell you whether your budget is feasible or not, and also work out a good strategy for getting the most out of your budget.
- Have you considered an ongoing budget to cover things such as your annual hosting fee, search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising?
- What are you aims and objectives for building a website?
- Who is your target audience?
- Do you need a content management system? Quite often we are asked to quote for CMSs which are not always necessary. If you are updating content on a daily or weekly basis then I would recommend a CMS, however if you are not likely to update your web content that often then it may be an unnecessary expense.
- Ask your web design company about their Maintenance Packages. If you are expecting to develop the website regularly over several months, your designer may be able to offer a block of hours monthly at a reduced rate to their standard hourly rate.
Phased approach to Web Design
Having a strong online presence as quickly as possible may actually be more critical to your business. In the long term you may want to develop an online shop for example, but that will take some time to develop and may hold up your launch date. Whereas, taking a phased approach to your web marketing may be more beneficial. Start with a 5 to 10 page brochure style website, which can be online in less than a week, and then as a second phase introduce your online product listing.
Once you have developed a website, that is not it, you can carry on adding features and applications to your website to make it grow. And don't forget, content is key. The more well written copy you have on your website the better. A good web design agency will always take your copy and make suggestions about how best to use it throughout the website to make the most of search engine optimisation and also for the usability of the site.
So, how does this work then?"
After an initial free consultation this is how HostPipe go about designing and building your website:
- We write a full proposal based on the brief you have given us laying out in detail the functionality of your new website. The proposal will also include a break down of the costs involved and our standard terms & conditions.
- When you are happy with the proposal, sign and return it and we are ready to begin the work.
- If required we can begin by designing your logo and branding.
- At this stage we will also register any domains names if required.
- We will then produce a Design Visual of your homepage, based on your existing branding, in JPEG format and return that to you via email. At this stage we welcome all feedback and can amend the design visual as required.
- When you are happy with the design visual, we can then begin building the structure of your website. This happens in a live environment so you can actually see the site being constructed in real-time on our dedicated server.
- We then add content and copy to the new web site and layout the menus in a usable fashion.
- If required the more advanced features of the site are then developed, including a Blog, Content Management System, e-Commerce features etc.
- All the Search Engine Optimisation work is carried out at the end, for example setting up page titles, keywords and page descriptions ready for search engines, as well as tweaking any copy within the page.
- When you are happy with the new website, we can then launch it live on your new domain and set up your email accounts.
- The new website and sitemaps are then submitted to all of the major search engines, and we switch on your statistics package to monitor usage.
- Your website is now officially live, we monitor its usage and adjust content as necessary.
- 6-12 month down the line we then re-evaluate the website and its search engine presence and enhance the search engine optimisation campaign where necessary.
Handling Your Web Design Budget
One key thing to remember is that your budget may not always match up with the number of features you would like to see on your website, and as with everything if the deal seems to good to be true then more than likely it is. If a web design agency doesn't question your budget then the likelihood is the project will overrun in terms of time, or you will end up with a website which doesn't quite meet your expectations.
The simplest question to ask your web designer is, "Is my budget appropriate for the features I am hoping to include on my website?" Ask them how they are going to apportion the budget, whether they are VAT registered and whether the budget will incorporate some ongoing SEO and hosting fees once the site is live.
Posted in General Web Advice | Web Design | No Comments
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