Make sure you and your web designer have the same understanding of what you want your website to be now; and where you want it to be over the next 2 to 3 years. Why I say 2 to 3 years is because you will most likely need to refresh or update your website within that time period due to the rapid nature of technology and the speed in which the internet is evolving.
With any website design project, your future expectations, goals and intentions need to be carefully considerd so your website can evolve as your budget and needs evolve, otherwise the new website may not meet your requirements in 12 months time, and you will have to pay to get a new website built again, or you could have a website in 12 months which does not do what you would like it to do.
We have recently built two new websites for clients who have already paid for websites 12 months ago but these websites no longer meet the clients online requirements and like any web designer, we do not want to inherit previous problems so we had to build brand new websites for our new clients.
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Needless to say the problem here was that there was no clear communication with the client and the clients future expectations were never considered, and this could have been partly from the client not articulating thier needs, however, we feel that it is really up to the web design team to ask the right questions, after all…the web designer is the expert!
Here are some helpful tips to make sure you do not end up paying for a the same website twice!.
Look at other websites you like the look and feel of and how they work and copy thier links and take thier names.
Write down what is it you would like to do? for example, sell online, support existing customers, showcase your products (and not sell), provide advice etc.
Make sure you already have your logo an brand details available because you would not believe how many clients come to us with an existing business and no logo, colours etc and we end up creating that for them too! (that’s great for us but really slows down the web design schedule).
Understand who it is you are trying to reach for example x generation, y generation, baby boomers? etc
Have some form of budget in mind. It is human nature to want something for nothing, however, this is not realistic because the commercial nature of every business is to create a profit, so be realistic (being cheap is not realistic) about how much you are prepared to invest into your new website; you must remember that your new website is like having a 24/7 concierge so have a good website and be prepared to pay a fair price to get a good website.
So to summarise, make sure you know what you want and make sure your web designer asks you these questions and if you are not sure, get a second quote and talk to another web design team, in other words get a second opinion and not from a friend (unless of course your friend is a web designer).
BIG Plans Web is a web design and development business also providing hosted services to small to medium businesses and organisations. We have a passion to help people use IT to grow their business and ultimately their bottom line profit.
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