How to limit the cost of your new website design
When embarking on a new website design and development, most clients ask the same questions; how much does a website cost? How long does it take? And what is the ongoing price of a website?
The price of a website is the design time involved
From a web design agencies point of view, this question is very hard to answer before knowing all the requirements. The main cost involved in website design and development is the number of hours going into the project. This can range from three to six weeks and sometimes go beyond if the web development is a large enterprise website. Another main cost involved in a project is the content of the website. In some cases clients require special info-graphics drawn, animations, video production, photography and a copywriter. All these extra services can add up and increase the cost of a website dramatically. Other ongoing costs include the price of the desired domain name and the hosting of the website. Although these costs are relatively low, they do add to the overall price.
Identify a web design agency
The first thing to do is shop around for the right website design agency. Try searching common terms like “web design agency” or “web design service” in your local area. This should bring up a number of options. One of the first things you will find is a massive discrepancy in prices, some web design companies offering cheap websites for as little as €500 (the problem is they are exactly that, cheap websites). Always have in the back of your mind, you get what you pay for and this is so true when it comes to website design and development. Most professional web design agencies will charge anywhere between €2,000 and €8,000 for a website and the price is completely down to the amount of hours put into the project. Now look at the companies offering websites for €500, how many hours do you think they are putting into a website design and development? So the first thing is to choose a web design agency that offers a fair price for the number of hours that is going into the project. This is how to get real value out of a project.
Limit the price of website design
After choosing the web agency you want to work with, consider getting as much of the content you can, produced and fine-tuned. This involves looking at the main areas of your business you want to focus on. Identify your business sectors and the individual services you offer in each sector. Sketch out on paper or on PowerPoint a rough draft of what you think your website development structure should be. Focus on the menu bar, main buttons or icons on the home page etc. Take your time and write an introduction about your business. Try focus on exactly what you do and the value you will bring to potential customers reading your website. Then write a few paragraphs about each sector and the services you provide. Take a number of photographs in high resolution of the team, the office environment, the work you provide and get a good visual representation of your business. After spending some time on this you will begin to get a real understanding of your website and added to this it will help you focus on your business structure in a way that you have probably never done before. When you have done all this, try to collate it into a meaningful structure. Read over your structure and polish, polish and polish again.
Discuss your structure and content with the web design agency
When you present this work to a digital agency, they breathe a sigh of relief as one of the most time consuming elements of any website design is chasing content from the client. This insures the time spent on the project is all about real design and development and not spent on the phone chasing content. Our web design agency will always look favorably on a project like this and the price will drop dramatically. The moral of the story is to get your ducks in a row and this will dramatically reduce the price web design agencies will charge for a new website design and development.