Tips for keeping web design short term and long term costs down

Be organised. As a designer if a client isn’t organise and I’m charging by the hour, my estimates for projects will be slightly higher to compensate this and this is probably the same for most designers. Try to be organised as you become the designers library for text, data, images, logos, approvals, feedback, ideas etc.

Write your own text. Believe it or not most designers are not copy writers. It depends on the designers initiative through their professional development as to whether any attention has been paid to this craft at all. It’s a good idea to ask if you are expecting text to magically appear on your web site. Usually the client writes their own text or a professional copy writer is hired for the job with the clients permission.

Check out your competitors web sites and notice what works and what you like. It doesn’t have to be a wowsa shopping cart facility or highly glamorous photos, it could be an elegantly simple concept. On the flip side take note of what annoys you about their web site so you can avoid these pit falls yourself.

Don’t fall for gimmicks. Beware the sales person selling you the “wow” factor when you may not actually need it – such as fancy flash animations. Unless it is serving the purpose of educating your customers about something they will find truly valuable don’t bother. It will just be a distraction on the page which you are paying for. Watch out for hidden extras after the site is created, such as “email spam filters” and unnecessary hosting tools – a lot of this is freely available in your existing email software.

Look at a designers previous work. Check to see it is clean, with uniform fonts, clear images, aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate and making a positive statement about the company it’s representing. Invest in quality or don’t waste your time because the internet is already very saturated. So be smart, realistic and strategic and you can start chipping away at your competitors online presence, bringing their customers over to your business.

Have goals. What is it you want your web site to do? Is it to display products? Should you invest in images? How are people going to get there, is it worth while investing in search engine optimisation? These are all things you will need to seriously contemplate otherwise your web site might only be running at a small percentage of its potential – and one has to ponder the question “why bother” if you are only flirting with the power of being online and then hoping for miracles. It will save you money to do it correctly the first time.

Do it right and don’t deliberately try to skimp on essentials – by this I mean ignore ideas of free hosting, free web sites, template etc etc. It is only good for hobbies and as I mentioned above, people who are only flirting with the idea of being serious. These services have glitches for professional web development (such as showing advertising on your page, restrictions in coding, slow server speeds). Unless you decide to invest in something actually worth the time and efforts it’s going to be a delete and repeat process. Web sites of this caliber reflect shallowness and lack of thought in content and presentation – in essence saying “I don’t really care about helping my customer”.

My last tidbit of information is regarding web re-designs, for example you have an existing site and want to upgrade it and what sort of process you can expect. Generally web designers don’t go in and amend the existing code and build on it, it is actually a lot faster to scrap the lot and start over – especially if the person doing the upgrade isn’t the person who designed the original site. If the layout of the page is changing considerably then the existing code will be trashed – most of it wont be serviceable. Often the time it takes for the designer to get familiar with existing code is the same amount of time it might take to create the job from scratch.

Please visit my web site design page for more information about how I can help you.

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