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Welcome to Part 3Β of our 6-lesson crash course onΒ What to Know for a Successful Website Design!
In Part 1 you learned that the one big mistake almost everyone makes is…your website is NOT for you; it’s for your customers! Thus, your website must appeal to them so that they will do whatever action you want them to do.
In Part 2Β you learned what the six main steps were to designing or redesigning your website.
You can get our checklists on either of those two posts.
In this post, we’re going to dive into one of those six main steps:
Your Budget.
Just like when planning to build a house, this is one of the first things you must consider. Because it will cost you money.
And this is your most important decision! Because your budget will dictate the level of professional quality and experience you get.
Choosing Uncle Fred to build your house might work out OK and cost you less, but there will be some drawbacks along the way. Just be aware of those, and we discuss those in the next section.
You can search online for what a site will really cost, but you must allocate money for:
- design (normally a one-time cost)
- domain name registration, email, hosting, maintenance, backups, and security (normally a monthly cost)
A good website design company knows the best hosts on the market and may provide private servers optimized for their environment and clients. They will also provide a solution that ensures your site is maintained properly. Note that even Microsoft and Apple have operating system updates that you must keep up with to remain stable and secure, and your website will be no different.
More on that in later lessons.
Additionally, the limitations you impose on your budget will be the limitations you impose on the customization available for your website.
But please consider this really important fact:
Your website is your communication portal to over 4 BILLION PEOPLE!
In fact, according to this article, in 2000 there wereΒ 738 million in 2000, 3.2 billion in 2015, and now the latest internet stats, as of December 2017, show 4.1 billion users!
Therefore, consider this: if you go cheap on your website, you go cheap on your business.
We can spend $20K and up on a car, but we balk at spending a few thousand on something that’s our 365/24/7 salesperson that takes zero breaks and can be seen by billions of people.
- Think about the value increaseΒ to your business if just ONE new person per month sees your website and wants to hire you for your services or purchase your product.
However, we at Wordflirt understand economic realities, and thatβs why we have two options:
- If youβre starting out, it may be sufficient to have a basic website that has contact forms and a way for you to tell people about you. We at Wordflirt provide an option that is very affordable and lets you use your time to build your business instead of your website. We have more information on that here: https://wordflirt.com/business-website-portfolio/
- A custom site based on the most popular Content Management System (CMS), WordPress. It powers over 30% of all websites and is easy for our clients to use to post new content. We have more information on that here: https://wordflirt.com/wordpress-portfolio/
If itβs hard for you to choose, you can look at our portfolio, or go here to see what might be best for you: https://wordflirt.com/choosing-your-website-platform/
So you can see that before you engage with any design company, you should figure out what your budget will be. It will dictate so many things.
In part 4, we’re going to discuss the importance of what you really should and should NOT be working on.