It really doesn’t matter what the size of your business is, we all want to get the best products or services for our business without blowing the budget. Nothing is truer than when developing your brand, launching or redesigning your business website.
Whether you are launching a basic 4 page business website or are looking to develop a custom marketplace website you must make sure you don’t blow the budget before the business has had a chance to hit the ground running.
So, how do you effectively budget for your website? One of the biggest mistakes people make when developing a website is thinking if they launch their website with all the dream features that none or hardly any of their competitors have on their site, that they will instantly dominate the market and be no 1. Whilst this sounds great in theory it is rarely the case.
Anyone serious about business knows that true business success does not come overnight. It is a mixture of research, planning, time, effort, skills and continued investment.
When you launch your business website you want to launch with the must have’s, the essentials for the website that your clients will expect. You need to allow time to launch your website and reap a return on investment. If you come out with all guns blazing and launch the most impressive website on the market, it could take a long time before you see a solid return and this could in turn affect your business funding and growth.
By starting small with a great custom designed website with some functionality it means you can gain your return back in a much quicker period of time, resulting in increased profit margins in a shorter period of time and a quicker time frame to go back and re invest in the bells and whistles and added website features.
Working out what features you need and which can be added later. Once you have come to the conclusion that you don’t want to break the bank on the first phase of your website development, how do you really determine which features can be added later without affecting the way your clients interact with your business online?
This really depends on the type of website you are having developed. For example, if you are developing a marketplace website there are many, many, features your site could have but not all of them would be necessary from day 1. For example if you are considering having a voting/rating system this will only be useful once you have built up the community/ have a large amount of members, so this would be something you could add down the track. Perhaps you are looking to integrate an events/ticketing system, again without a large audience/traffic coming to the site, who is going to know about these events? This again could be a feature that is added down the track.
Essentially, establish the critical elements for the website to function, and make a list of features that would be on the wish list. Remember too it’s more engaging for your clients if they slowly see new features being added to the site over time. It shows them you are a solid business that is continuing to invest in your business.
Don’t lose money in the planning. When you are planning a website, quotes will vary and some web design agencies will quote you for wireframes and some will just quote for the design and development.
Investing money in a professional scope and having wireframes developed will save you money on your project in the long run. Wireframes are like a blue print or prototype for your website, without these the web developer is essentially going on the information a client supplies on a brief, in most cases however the client looks to the developer for guidance. By having wireframes developed this allows for great communication and clarification of the project, it allows technical questions to be answered before any work on design or development begins and ensures a site is correctly quoted for – meaning no surprises when you get the bill!
If you would like to understand how you can take your business ideas and launch them online, without blowing the budget – call us today on 1300 858 495 for a free consultation!
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