Grant Diggles

How To Build A Great Website For Less Money

// March 16th, 2010 // Business, Insights, Technology

Recently, we finished our website for The Cummings Group (VIEW IT HERE). My design ideas were clear and I knew what I wanted, but I just needed a very talented designer or design firm to bring my concepts to life. I began the process of gathering referrals from others that I trusted who I felt knew what was hip and current, and I decided on a boutique web design group in Portland, Oregon. I met with the owners, discussed my vision and we were off.

Now it should be said, I was prepared to spend a goodly amount of money to get my company website done. We were unrolling new products and I wanted to deliver a content rich site that bolstered a clean, uncomplicated design for potential clients. Although I was not necessarily interested in saving money for the build of my site, I did learn some very valuable lessons about how to build this site again and save a ton of money in the future. Let me fill you in on how I would’ve done things differently in building a great website for less money.

1. Hire A Talented Designer or Design Firm

Let’s face it, you get what you pay for. When it comes to the design of your site, this is the one place you don’t want to try to skimp or save. If you don’t have a designer in mind, I recommend looking for sites that you like, as typically you can find the logo of the design firm in the footer (bottom) of the page. If you already have a designer, then finding website examples you like will help explain to the designer what you’re looking for.

I know what you’re thinking, “How am I going to save money hiring a high end design firm to craft my site?”. That’s a great question… keep reading.

2. Content, content, content…

The biggest hold up to any great website is the content. What do you want to say? What pictures are going to be included? How will people navigate you site? These are all questions that are entirely dependent on your content. I believe that the content is the most difficult piece of the puzzle because it requires a clear, well thought out strategy that includes who your target audience is, what you want to say to that target audience and how you will use the content to accomplish your goals. The last thing you want to do is decide to create a website and then figure out what your content is going to be afterward. I guarantee that this approach will blow up your budget and possibly ruin relationships with your design firm.

Once you have your design firm create the wire-framing/design and you have your content ready for population…

3. Finish ONLY the basic framework and infrastructure of the site with your spendy design firm.

Once the initial home page and basic content framework (content) page are designed, stop paying your design firm! You pay them to design, not build out basic pages. By allowing design firms to stay in their area of expertise (designing), you avoid spending a boatload of money on basic content population at expensive design firm prices. Adding more pages and populating them with content is very simple and basic and can be done by an experienced web tech at a much cheaper price. I recommend finding those types of people at places like FREELANCER.COM . My personal Web Tech group is Consulnet, based in Pakistan (or some place like that). You can reach my contact person if you’d like, her name is Shamim Rajani and her email is: shamim.rajani@consulnet.net

——–

That’s basically it. Of course there are little nuances that go along with this process. If you find that you are still confused or need a little help, feel free to contact me. If you’re question is simple, I can fire back a quick answer. If its really in-depth, I recommend you check out our company site. For a small fee, we can help you with all of the details.

Hope this was helpful!!!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite