Determining Your Website’s Needs

Narrowing down your proposed website’s needs before trying to contact a web design company can actually save you some money. While many professional web designers offer consulting services, they are not generally free, and sometimes they can run several hundred dollars per hour. Now, it is always advisable to seek out direction from a competent professional, but knowing what you want before you contact a website designer for a quote can help speed up the process.

What goals do you have for your website?

To help you, and your web design company, determine what type of website will work best for your needs, you should have an idea on what you want your website to do. If we were to sum up the three most common types of websites online today, these types would be as follows:

1. A basic information-sharing website - These types of websites are generally template-based, run three to six pages and are simplistic in nature. They may include your company’s logo and text, but beyond that – they bear the name “cookie-cutter” websites for a reason. These are generally the least expensive types of websites.
2. A showcase website – These types of websites often highlight your products, services or company and tend to be “flashy”. Whether they are actually flash-based websites or they are heavy on graphics, their goal is to display what your company has to offer. These websites may or may not be template based, but they are oftentimes highly customized to match your needs and company’s style.
3. An ecommerce website – These types of websites are highly dynamic, allow inventory control, consumer purchases and management of your products. Even if ecommerce-type websites are template based, they generally require a great deal of customization and their overall costs are much higher than the two aforementioned types.

What do you want your website to look like?

Web designers are not mind readers, even though some of them appear to be because they have a knack for knowing what you want even before you are one-hundred percent sure about what you are looking for. However, this doesn’t mean that you should contact a website design company with a blank slate; pick out a few websites that represent what you like and try to narrow-down color schemes for the designer, this really can help you avoid any unexpected, and unpleasant, surprises when it’s time to review the first draft.