Web design costs can be reduced by thinking through the project from start to finish and preparing as much as possible in advance. This cuts web design costs and speeds up the web design process.
1. The wedding planner
We know what a wedding planner looks like, right. Never without clipboard – or App – unflappable, in control, and just thoroughly well organised. Being organised will help to reduce web design costs. Start with a basic site map (a list of links to all your website’s pages) with a Homepage, About Us and Contact Us, and then list all the products or services you offer. Place them on your sitemap in a logical order, grouping like sections together. Think about how your clients or customers will travel through your website, and crucially where you want them to end up – usually a purchase or point of contact. A good web design agency will bring lots of ideas to the table for ways you can show content. That’s their job. But it’s your job to understand your customers or clients and impart that information clearly to the web design agency at the outset.
2. Picture this: a designer spending hours looking for pictures
That’s going to cost in studio time, right? Studio time can be expensive, so we all need to use it wisely. Images are frequently the largest barrier to finishing a website on time. Get all the images you want to use up front and supply them to the web design agency in a single file, clearly marked, and ideally listed in an Excel sheet or Word document so everybody has the same record. Original, unique images are usually the best option, however some brilliant images can be obtained through stock image and video libraries like iStock and Shutterstock. So start researching as early as possible and give the web design agency a good idea of your media library before they start the design process.
3. Who da boss?
Approvals processes are absolutely critical to completing a web design project on time. Many projects get thrown off their axis when unaccounted for opinions suddenly have to be… accounted for! We’ve all been in this situation, so it’s important to get everybody’s approval as early as possible. Major design changes and upsets will frequently add cost to the overall web design project.
4. Bust stress!
When do you want it? Yesterday, right. But seriously, what’s pushing the deadline so hard. Putting an agency under pressure may cause you pressure. If you push but can’t deliver on your end, you may have to pay the agency to do work you intended to do yourself. Don’t forget holidays, known busy periods, internal targets or external events which could take you away. This is a two way thing. A good agency will flag possible bottlenecks, not just say ‘Yes’ to everything and fail to deliver.
5. It’s about the whole fruit basket
Everybody loves a fresh design. So you’re a business in Brighton, Sussex, Surrey or Crawley, and you’ve got your heart set on a modern new web design. But what about your existing image – logo, signage, brochures, catalogues and other marketing tools. All the fruit in the basket should be fresh – not just that shiny new apple. When planning a web design project, take into account your other marketing tools otherwise you may incur additional costs.
6. Where’s Wally?
Wally is hard to find. And so are errors. Like Wally, they’re in their somewhere (did you spot that one?). Take care of errors before passing them on to your web design firm, because once they’re mixed in with headlines, images, quotes, testimonials, comments, authors and social media feeds, they’re tricky – and time consuming – to route out. You’ll benefit from cheaper web design costs in the long term by beginning with error-free text.
7. When you look into the mirror, what do you see?
Everybody’s idea of perfection is different. Of course you want your web design to be snazzy, slick, modern, stylish, fun, engaging, intuitive – but chasing your idea of perfection will cost you on the bottom line. Objective targets are easier to hit and measure.