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Web Design Prices and Costs – How to Get A Fair Web Design Quote
If you’re looking at commissioning a web designer to build you a website, one of the first things that you will need to know, is the monetary cost. This article will explain to you why there is such a huge variance between web designers and their quotes and will give you some advice as to how much you can expect to pay to contract a competent web designer in the UK.
First of all you have to have a rough idea of what it is that you want from your website. You have to have thought of what you want to achieve with the website. What are its objectives? You will then need to have thought of a basic structure for your website. There are many website examples out there for you to have a look at; the important thing is to have an idea about what structure you want for the site – meaning a rough outline of the numbers of pages and the content (text and images) that will make up each page.
Once you have your project objectives in mind and a rough idea of your websites structure you are in a position to start contacting suppliers. There are multitudes of web design companies everywhere and in our particular area of the UK – Doncaster there are lots of web design companies to choose from. The key thing to remember is that everyone wants your business. The web design marketplace is completely saturated so you as the buyer have the upper hand!
As in all other industries there are people who provide excellent service, there are people who provide an average service and there are also cowboys (people who sell web design services without the necessary knowledge and experience to do so).
What you have to think to yourself is this: If a person promises me the earth for £1 does that mean to say that they can deliver it? The best advice I can give is to be realistic. There are lots of really good city based web design companies throughout the UK that provide excellent services. They are always there to take your calls and you even get your own personal account manager to handle your requests and hold your hand through the entire web design process. The services of such companies are wonderful but this obviously comes at a price. City based offices, account managers and admin staff are large overheads and the prices charged by large city based web design companies reflect this. If you have a modestly sized website, which needs to be under content management system control, don’t be surprised if the web design quote runs into tens of thousands of pounds from a major city based web design company. If you are looking for a top quality 100% inclusive, comprehensive service and your company can afford this kind of bill then I would suggest using a big city company every time.
Then there are the smaller companies that are made up of just a few individuals. These types of companies have much lower overheads and frequently have very knowledgeable and capable staff. The service level can be much lower than that of major city based web design companies but you can get some excellent work done by such companies at a fraction of cost of the large city based companies.
A much overlooked group of web designers that can produce some excellent web designs are the wide community of freelance web designers. Freelance web designers are private, self employed individuals who work from small offices (they frequently work from home). Freelancers have very low (mostly non existent) overheads. As such they can provide quality web design work for much lower costs than larger web design companies. If you are looking for good quality web design for less money then it definitely work looking at using a quality freelance web designer.
The people that you really need to avoid are the web design cowboys. As stated above cowboys are people who sell web design services without the necessary knowledge and experience to do so. If you are unfortunate enough to have contracted someone like this in the past you will be aware of the low quality work that they produce and the lack of significant results that they achieve. Cowboys invariable promise you the earth for a £1. Use your common sense and if someone is quoting you £100 for something that 5 other companies are charging around £4000 for, you know that something is not quite right. Remember the old adage – buy cheap, buy twice!
Conclusion:
You will find a great deal of variance between web design quotes depending on what level of web designer you choose to contract and what level of service you require. Always make sure to get as many quotes and talk to as many people as you can so a) see what’s available on the market and b) get an unbiased idea of the likely costs involved. There are lots of good web designers out there but there are also a lot of lesser skilled web designers and even some of the proverbial cowboys. Make sure to use good common sense and get a feel for the web designer’s skills and experience when you meet them. No matter how charming a person is, experience is very hard to fake. Ask to see examples of their work and where they have done similar work to your proposed project. Remember – you have the upper hand!
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How To Identify Fake Web Designers — And Choose A Real One
Like going on a blind date, choosing the right web designer can be an adventure fraught with false hope.
Unlike a big corporation, a small business generally has a tight budget–especially when it comes to advertising and promotion–to engage a big web design agency to serve their online marketing needs.
With the understanding that a cheap-looking website is not the best way to represent your business–or that you do not have unlimited funds to throw at web designers on the off-chance that you’ll get something that resembles what you want–there exist good small design studios and professional freelance web designers with reasonable rates, fortunately.
Here are some tips on how to choose the right one to meet your small business needs.
Identify the Fake Web Designers
Check out their portfolio!
Do they look professional? Is the style of the designer something you would like to have on your own site? Are they logical, easy to use, and provide what’s needed to help customers achieve their (and the clients’) goals? That means that a lot of business development has gone into them.
Web Designers vs Web Programmers
There are many web designers who are actually programmers who know little, if at all, about design. They use templates that are created by other professional designers. Unfortunately, templates aren’t customized to your unique business.
Moreover, with advances in software applications, it is easier than ever to create and build a website. These software can help anyone build a website without knowing a thing. However, there is a distinct difference between creating and designing one.
Design, be it web or print, is about communication. Without the necessary design knowledge how could the programmers do an effective job communicating with your prospective customers?
How Can Good Design Help Your Business
Design is about you–what you know, what you see, and what you have to say. Behind every design is a vision, a purpose, a reason to be. Web design is not about decoration but communication; about making your words and vision visible, giving it form and body for all the world to see.
While the sales copy of your website remains vital for the effective selling of your products or services, the use of typography, color, graphics and layout help lead your prospects read and navigate your website.
This makes your page a pleasure to read and increases their overall user-experience.
A professional, well-designed website has been proven to increase sales!
Web Design Process
The web design process is also a matter of planning, what to include and what to exclude, good design, appealing text, how to sell, what business plan to follow, and more.
Like any other marketing medium, it requires a lot of work by individuals who understand what visitors and the search engines like to see: properly organized text. Combining a nice layout with SEO isn’t easy, make sure the designer understands both the human and search components.
The result is pages that perform well for visitors and rank high for specific keywords.
No doubt, there are many who can turn out professional websites, but few who will volunteer to spend dozens of hours consulting with a client, designing a clear and unconfusing website, and sweating over ad copy, pictures and all the major and minor details — in essence, creating a online marketing vehicle.
Online Marketing
The number one mistake that most first time web site owners make is that they don’t know what to do with their site after it’s designed. It is very possible to have a beautiful site designed for you and no one ever sees it.
A website is merely another means of marketing your products or services. With hundreds, if not thousands, of websites sprouting out everyday, competition is fierce. Having a “web presence” for your business has virtually become an understatement.
A good designer will not only help you create a professional looking site, they will also ensure that your site gets a good ranking with the search engines so that your site can be easily found online. Make sure that your designer will optimize your site for the search engines and submit it to the major search engines. Your website need to rank reasonably well in search engines.
Moreover, small business should seriously look into harnessing the power of the social media and sound web marketing design to increase the exposure of your services and products to extend your reach.
Is a Website Just a website
In the online world, traffic and targeted prospects is the life blood for you website. A pretty website becomes a white elephant if no customer visits it.
Does the web designer practice what he preaches? How much traffic is his website receiving?
To get an estimation of the amount of traffic, go to http://www.alexa.com, enter his URL to get the traffic details. You’ll see the Traffic Rank for his website. As a general rule of thumb, if the traffic ranking isn’t within the 1st Million globally (e.g. Yahoo ranks no. 1), then his online marketing effort certainly has much room for improvement, even for his own business website.
Offline Marketing
Small businesses exist in numbers far larger than big corporations.
It is ever more important for your business to stand out from your competition with a professional, consistent image–your corporate identity, namely from your web design, company logo, to the offline marketing collateral such as business card and flyer designs etc.
Having the same company to design both your online and offline marketing collateral have significant advantages of consistency and cost.
Word of Mouth and Testimonials
Word of mouth is a good indication of someone who knows his stuff.
If he comes strongly recommended by trusted friends or family members, chances are he’s created design solutions that work for their business quite well. Ask them whether it was a good experience or not.
Most designers will have testimonials from previous clients on their website. It’s a good idea to see what his customers are saying about his services. Follow the web links and try contacting some of them. You should have a feel after talking to one or two. This also ensures the testimonials are not fake ones that were simply “made up”.
Chemistry is Key
You are going to have to share aspects of your business, from visions to operations to preferences to competition, with this person.
So it’s important that you feel comfortable enough with him to be honest about your business details and goals, as well as ask as many questions about his advise as you need to. Does the designer seem friendly and are they willing to answer all of your questions? Does he respond promptly to your emails and/or phone calls?
A good designer will keep in touch with you every few days, at least. You don’t want to get down to the final days of creating the site only to find out you don’t like it!
Look out for his modus operandi during the first meeting. He should be asking you extensive, detailed questions about your requirements and goals, in order to analyze your needs.
Someone who is more interested in telling you the different design packages he can offer you is probably more concerned about making a quick buck.
Website Maintenance
A common issue with most small business is a lack of technical skills. What happens if you want to update the content after the project has been completed? Can you update it yourself without any HTML knowledge?
Content Management System
Would your website be built on a content management platform such as WordPress or Joomla? This will allow you to update, edit and add pages on your own without going back to the web designer. Thus saving time and cost.
Engage your Customers via Blogs
If you are marketing your business on the web and you don’t have a blog, you will always be beaten down by your competition.
A Blog platform allows you to do things no one else in your market can do with static websites. This means you don’t just have a web site, you have a search engine magnet and an interactive community builder that will drive targeted, willing-to-buy visitors to your site.
Price
This is an important factor for any small business to consider.
Although there is no clear-cut rule as to what an “average” price for web design is. In most cases, you get what you pay for. You are paying for this his expertise, time and experience.
Be realistic about your budget. You may not have all the bells and whistles such as animation and special effects.
It is more important to create a successful website that has a good position in the search engine and one that you are very happy with the look and function of than to save a couple of bucks. If you get a good site, your site will be able to grow with your company and, hopefully, that’s for a very long time!
The savvy, experienced web designer can implement your ideas and enhance them, spotting possible pitfalls and making recommendations along the way–and he’ll help you to understand the procedure and give you the benefit of his experience and understanding of the Web, so that you come away not only with a website, but with an enhanced understanding of the Web and online business. In short, he’ll work with you and be effective.
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Web Design After Sales Service
Providing after sales service once a web design project is completed is an essential part of the web design business. Your web design client expects support once the web site is online and running. A successful online web design solution is more likely to fetch good business and growth if the web site is looked after and continuously improved. Most of your web design clients have neither the knowledge nor the time to tweak a web design. So one way or the other you need to provide a form of support, either to fix bugs or add to the web design content once it is up and running. Whilst any respectable web design company can price a web design project up and complete the assignment within budget, it can be tricky to plan and price an after sales support. How much do you charge? Is it a per hour cost or is it a periodic service agreement? What are the risks, both financial and commercial? Who does the aftersales within the organisation.
Although there is no absolute answers and figures, we can address some of the issues and factors that can guide your pricing and delivery policy for after sales web design service. The complexity of the web design project, the relationship you have with your web design client, the state of your business, the cost of your web design services are factors that will influence your web design after sales pricing policy.
The more complex a web design project, the more likely there will be a demand for tweaking, debugging and improvement after the web design project is handed over to the client. Likewise, your web design support needs to be robust and well organised to handle complex after sales processes. So you will need to have a well planned support structure in place to provide after sales. More than likely, the main web developer who has worked on the initial web design project will move on to new projects. In practice you want the same developer who has designed the original web site to intervene on after sales interventions. However, this is not always possible. In this case, you need to get a back up team to familiarise with the web design coding for an adequate intervention in case of problems.
The nature of your relationship with the web design client is an important factor that will influence your after sales. The better your business relationship with your web design client, the easier you can plan and intervene. Always talk to your client and leave a clear and open communication channel. The Internet and online structure is still a volatile environment. Whilst you should take every precaution to ensure security and reliability, things do go wrong and you have to be prepared to intervene and work with your web design client. A web design project is never over as soon as you publish online, so do not cut the communication channels with your client once the web site is online.
Pricing is tricky. Do you charge the same rate for after sales as you do for the initial web design work? It depends on the type of intervention and how often you are likely to intervene. Although there are very few bugs once you publish online, you will be expected to intervene under warranty for a limited period of time if technical problems occur like corrupt files. For additional work and amendments requested by the web design client, you will have to charge a rate per hour. For small web design projects where you expect very little intervention you may keep the same rate as the cost of after sales are likely to be low. However, for larger projects where the changes could take time, the client will find it hard to fork out large expenses after spending an already big budget on the initial web design. So here, you might need to factor down your rate to accommodate to keep the after sales web design business.
Whichever way you look at it, whatever your client’s needs and size, there is no getting out of a good after sales web design service. So, make provisions for it in terms of time, money and human resources…it’s the only way to build a strong web design company with repeat business and a sound reputation.