Cheap or great website designs?

The planning process.

As a director of sales for the website agency Marketing Media, I receive a lot quote requests in a given day. The number one question I need to answer is how much does it cost for a website?

That is a very vague question and it is almost impossible to answer since I have absolutely no clue about your requirements. The other answer could be: from $1500 to $1 million dollars and it would be an accurate answer. How much does it cost to build a house? Same answer.

One fact remains: Result oriented websites, take time and expertise to build. If someone promises to build your next website for $1,500, you can assume that he will take many shortcuts. No team of experts will accept to work for a Third World salary and time is not free. Hence, what can you expect for $1,500? You may get 150 hours of work from a novice “jack of all trades” type guy working at $10 per hour or 15 hours from an experienced design team in a design agency. Obviously, 15 hours will not get you far.

Just like when building a house, you need a plan.

These are crucial steps before the designer can even get started and they are not free but, by taking the time to go through them and analyze, it will drive results.

Planning and Researching

As a business, your main goal is to sell more of your product and services or being closer to your customer. How could that be done effectively without a prior understanding of whom we are building the site for? That’s where we start coming up with a concept for your online store.

Competitive Research

At this point, we need to start thinking outside the box and pinpoint what your competitors are doing. We can achieve good results by optimizing a website but more than often, we will succeed by doing things better than your competitors. Helps you stay ahead of the pack.

Wireframes

What is it? It is a visual representation of where the content on your site will be placed. Just like a house plan. Now we are ready to start the visual design.

Ask your potential professional web designer or design firm about their processes, it’s a crucial step into identifying which web agency will deliver for you and your business.