
What will cost a good business website?
Posted on November 20, 2014
Understand the pricing factors for a good business website
The ever growing prominence of online marketing and advertisements, has evolved to the extent where website designing has emerged as a more meaningful mode of reaching out and appealing to a bigger pool of customers and buyers. For business owners, it's important to find a qualified and website designing professional who has appropriate idea about the modern trends in website designing. There are a considerable number of web design professionals who are gradually taking to working on a freelance basis, firstly for the love of the technology and secondly to strengthen and add to their success portfolio. This profiling, however, doesn't indicate sound business understanding.
As a business owner you must have a clear understanding about the latest trends in pricing and since, there are a lot of small companies that find it tough to create a fixed price structure for their work.
You can either opt for the agencies that charge $50 per page and produce countless general websites round the year. These companies are appropriate for you if you are a new company with limited resources. You don't have to spend much on website designing. They just want to qualify for the status slab of the companies that have a website. However, you must know that these basic websites wouldn't do anything to revolutionize your business or attract new buyers and clients. Again this is totally for you to understand whether you need a powerful advertising platform to publicize about your company, its products and services.
On the other hand, there are the pricier web designing professionals and IT consultants who charge almost $3,000 and more. You might hire specific agencies that will get your work done through freelancers and the profit will be shared accordingly. Hiring freelance workers is a better option that most entrepreneurs opt for regarding website designing.
Understand the concept of website designing
It's totally understood that you have a business to run and online marketing is one of the cheapest modes of advertising but you mustn't consider websites to be some kind of product that have to come with specific number of pages and a certain amount of money has to be paid. You have to understand that this is not a product, it's a service that is designed while focusing on a number of factors that are implemented to produce desired results.
For instance, if you visit a used-car dealership outlet and ask for the price of a car, the first thing that the dealer will do is ask you a series of questions pertaining to the model you prefer, your requirements, number of people using it and the space that will be best suited for you. Budget is definitely an important aspect, whether it's a car or a website.
Dos and Don'ts While Hiring a Website Designing Professional
No one will understand your budget better than you. So it's time, you must do some homework about the website designing industry and how the prices are fixed. The prices of a, car varies by model and the same applies for the website designs. If you go for cheap web designing service then the chances are that it wouldn't benefit your business much. On the contrary, deploying costly web design services would ensure positive results for sure. In short if you want quality service you must be ready to spend substantially.
Web design projects done intricately are highly complex and are completely client requirement oriented. So you have to be very particular about your requirements and have to explain the same to your website designer to get the best results every time.
If you just want to propagate your business locally then a small time freelance website designer providing you with the basic platform to attract the local crowd will be good enough. However, if you intend to attract a global customer pool then you must hire an expert and be ready to spend a hefty amount for a full fledged website designing service with enhanced features to create the much needed easy browsing and comfortable navigation experience. Your website, in short, should be your asset and should be maintained with regular redesign works.
If you are highly budget conscious then the fixed price contracts are best option for you. You get an initial idea about the project from the designer and pay an initial amount and pay the rest at completion of the project. This way you know exactly how much you are paying and the quality of work that you will receive. This is the apt model for smaller companies and attempts to identify and address all vital elements in website fabrication. But if you are attempting to make it big at the global platform, then this is not the option for you.
You must assess your requirements and hire a developer who can handle your project with appropriate skills and proficiency. Hiring a small time developer for a big project is simply waste of time and money, since, in such cases the developers have greater chances of messing up things. Being a professional and good client you must know and assess what you want from your project. Only after you have a clear idea, you can explain your requirements to your developer.
Designing a website is definitely not a piece of cake. You have to look into including proper SEO, well balanced coding, presentable and informative content, compatibility with browsers, responsive web designing and only a highly enterprising web designing company can provide you with a comprehensive solution package. Getting your own application developed and created, is the latest trend and this helps you reach out to a bigger customer group and provide them with an advanced and enhanced browsing or online shopping experience. However, to get better results with your web development strategies, you must decide on a fixed contingency price and the variable expenses as well. While hiring a developer, make sure that they are professionals with a stable mind set and clear agenda about how to materialize and complete a project with greater perfection.
Instead if you are stuck with a confused and fickle minded developer, then the chances are that you will be left with an incomplete and useless project that wouldn't even fetch you a single traffic or sales lead at the first place. You must get your requirements and agenda documented in the very beginning. This will eliminate all scopes of any kind of misconception and confusion with your developer.
Like other clients you must not rate cost over quality. Most clients think hiring a cheap service provider will help them save on their resources and finances. But to think of the quality, it's a total compromise and this is bound to have a major negative impact on your business and the profit you intend to make by opting for online marketing and web development. While hiring a freelancer it's better to go for a direct contract and not through a contractor who will invariably try to raise the payment bar in order to draw their profit from your project.
If you are a small business owner then this will put you in financial constraint. Neither will the freelancer earn as much as he deserves. In short, the contractor or the sub contractor will be the prime beneficiary. Delivering a website isn't the end of the developer's work. You must hire a professional who will look into the redesigning and website remodelling works as well. This might mean more payment but for doing better business through your website you have to spend considerably on its improvement and betterment.
You must guarantee a stable payment option to your developer to boost their performance; after all they are working for money and not charity. If you want better results from your ecommerce site then you should rope in a qualified professional for a long lasting relationship and a clearly focused contract is the stepping stone to establishing a long standing business relationship with your web development service provider. For smaller companies, the fixed price system is a very feasible solution that helps you maintain your profit margin and invest in web designing and development projects as well.