In today’s high-tech information age, it has become a virtual necessity to maintain a web site for your business. Your business website allows potential clients to find your business as well as allowing for present and future clients to communicate with your business directly. Your website will often be the first impression a potential client may receive, so you want it to be as professional and informational as possible. In order to provide the best possible website for your business you will need to set a budget for designing, implementing and maintaining it.
What kind of site will you need?
Before you even begin to think about how much your site will cost, you will need to decide what you want your website to do. If all you want is a simple website describing your business and allowing for contact information, you might be able to do it yourself, avoiding the cost of a professional web designer. However, if you want your business to really stand out as well as offering interactive features and such, you will probably want to hire a professional web designer (or design team) in order to maximize function and effectiveness.
Content and SEO
You should keep in mind whether or not you will be writing all the content for your website. If you are only going to be having a couple of pages on your site, you could probably get by writing the content yourself. If you plan on having more content-driven pages however, you would probably be better off hiring one or more content writers. One reason you would want to have several pages is for search engine optimization. Each page would be written around a set of key words that potential clients would possibly search for, leading them to your business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows search engines such as Google and Bing to find your site when a user searches for products or services similar to the ones you offer. There are many talented writers who specialize in these types of articles, and unless you are familiar with how search engines work and how to optimize key word pages for search engines, you would be much better off finding and hiring a professional writer to do the work for you.
Creating a Responsive Website
When designing your website, especially if you have any kind of interactive content, another thing you should consider is either creating a responsive website (which is able to deliver content to both personal computers as well as mobile users) or to design a separate site for mobile users. A responsive website is one that is designed in such a way that it can automatically deliver content based on the platform it is running on, or is designed in such a way that it will display equally well on several different platforms. This is something you will definitely want to hire out for, as building a responsive website takes much planning and understanding of how each platform displays and handles content.
Images and photos
If you want your website to really stand out, you’ll also want to consider adding a graphic designer into your budget. You could, possibly, buy stock photos and designs for your website, but these stock images will not be unique and may not really do your business justice. A professional graphic artist will work with your business to come up with eye-catching images, logos and pictures based on your website’s content that will create a more professional and lasting impression of your business. You will have to shop around to find a good graphic artist, but keep in mind that just this one aspect can really make or break you, as many potential clients might just skim through sites, and a good balance of images and content often decides whether or not they actually stop at your site, to see what you offer or go on to the next site that looks more professional.
Multilingual
Another thing to keep in mind while planning your website budget is if you want it to be multilingual, such as in Spanish and English. You will need to hire a talented multilingual writer who will be able to rewrite content from one language to the other. It’s not enough to just translate this content, as often a simple translation will drastically change the emotional content and end up sounding forced and unprofessional. Each page of your website should flow easily and be readable by the client, regardless of the language, as well as being professional and informational.
Maintenance
You will also need to budget for ongoing maintenance to your site. As your business grows and changes, your website should also grow and change. Depending on your business this could involve changing what products and services you offer, fluctuations in prices, additional locations, etc. Not only will you need to maintain your site to mirror your business growth, but you will also need to stay up with the ever-changing technology behind the browsers that your site may run on. Sometimes new technology allows for greater interaction between your client and business and sometimes browsers change the way they handle existing markups (special web coding) that may completely change the overall look of your site. In order to maximize your website’s effectiveness, you will need to factor a monthly maintenance charge into your budget.
Factoring Other Costs and Future Enhancements
There are several other costs you may or may not need to factor into your budget, such as future enhancements, email newsletters and correspondence, videos and tutorials, etc. These may come up after you have already established your website, as you see the need based on the responses to your site. While you can plan on many things before you begin your website, there are many things you simply can’t foresee and therefore may not have factored into your budget. Therefore, after you have planned and budgeted all of the above aspects and any other added features, you should add “future enhancements” to your budget to allow some room for those future updates.
Once you have done all the research as to what your website will need and the cost to accomplish the different aspects and created a preliminary budget for all of the above, plus future possible features or additions, you will be in a better position to create your business’s website with the knowledge that your investment will see a return by giving your business more exposure, thereby garnering more clients and customers.
