Most don’t have unlimited funds, therefore, we need to be smart with what we have available.
It is helpful to have some idea of the stages involved in a new project so that you can plan them into your budget.
What you need to budget for
Let’s look at the stages of a web design project. Typically, a project should consist of some variation of the following.
- Website audit, user experience testing and research (If you currently have an existing site).
- Website planning, goal setting
- Marketing planning/research (SEO, social media, paid ads etc)
- Copywriting
- Wireframe design
- Graphic design
- Website development
- Testing and training
- Website release
- Support maintenance, promotion/SEO, ongoing measuring and future planning
Seems quite a lot right? Let’s break it down.
Planning and research
I have written before about the importance of planning and research when starting a web design project. It is why we offer comprehensive website audits to shed light on how your existing site is performing. Vital to know before we consider how we might want to change it.
So many website redesigns are based on opinions, the boss or the loudest board member. But if you don’t know (and I mean actually know, not just assume) why you are making changes, you are just shooting in the dark. Guesswork at best.
The planning/audit stage would investigate at least some of the following:
- Target audience and key messaging
- Brand review
- User experience/User testing
- Content strategy and brand voice
- SEO and ongoing marketing strategy (including social media)
- Competitor research
- Technology planning - how is the site going to be built. What CMS etc?
Although you will be able to carry out a lot of this work yourself, you will need an expert to help with some of the technical aspects. A good web designer/digital marketer will help walk you through this process and help you to make smart, informed decisions.
Copywriting
If there was a single element that consistently gets underestimated it is copywriting. Good copy is essential to the success of your website. It needs to persuade, inform, inspire and trigger a response. It needs to be concise and consistent. It needs a huge amount of attention.
Good design won’t convert users. It is your persuasive, convincing copy that will.
You will need to decide on who is going to provide the copy. Do you have good copywriters in house who are able to dedicate the time required? Don’t underestimate the time, skill and effort it takes to put together good content. It’s alarmingly common for organisations to think they can write it all over a weekend - We have heard this more than once!
If you realistically can’t produce great content in-house then you will need to consider hiring a freelancer. Even if it’s just to proof-read and polish your draft.
A good copywriter will work with your marketing and web design team to produce really good content - quickly, consistently and professionally.
This will of course have to be factored into your budget but I can’t stress enough how important your copy is to the success of your project.
Don’t cut corners on it. It’s a difficult skill. Get help if you need it.
Design
For small budget websites (and I realise that ‘small’ is relative) you will find that 90-100% of the budget would be in design and development and nearly all the focus would be on the design. Specifically, making it look nice.
Good design is the minimum requirement of any website. It is expected. It is the entry point. It is not what is going to set you apart from other sites.
Don’t misunderstand me here, design is important and needs thought and consideration. But what is important here is we focus on design that’s based on how the visitor will use the site. The function, or to put it another way the user experience.
You are in danger of just designing to ‘look nice’, and ignoring the experience and actions you want your user to carry out. Navigation, accessibility, and your message would never suffer for the aesthetics or visual appearance.
It’s obvious and cliched, but who has ever looked at Amazon.co.uk and been blown away by the visuals, but I guarantee that the user experience has been meticulously analysed and optimised.
Website development
How the website is built and put together, the functionality and connections with 3rd party apis and services will take up a decent chunk of your budget.
Choosing the right technologies is important. You want to be thinking about the life cycle of your site. How long is this site going to last for? The web development space moves really fast so you need to be aware of the technologies you are going to use.
An ideal situation might be that your site will never need a complete re-develop again, instead you can continuously develop and illiterate on the existing site.
Unless you are building a very specific web application it would be very unusual for you to need to budget for a custom built CMS.
There are so many options available on the market from open source solutions to licensed content management systems or cloud based solutions with usage based monthly fees.
Don’t get sucked in thinking open source solutions are necessarily ‘free’. Often there will be support or plugin licences that you will need to pay (often annually). They will also need to be hosted somewhere.
Website development costs can start to increase when you need to add extra functionality to your site. Booking users for events, taking donations, signing up to a mailing list are all examples.
There are many software services available for popular functions that you can hook your site into (via APIs). This means you don’t have to build custom functionality for everything. These 3rd party services might have monthly costs to be aware of, but can save you a lot of development budget.
There is nearly always a 3rd party option for common functionality, your developer can help recommend good services to you.
SEO and marketing
A new website is only going to be of any benefit if people visit it. You need to consider how you are going to promote your site and subsequently allocate budget to it. This might be through SEO, paid advertising, social media, email campaigns or a combination of all four.
Having this planned out at the start of the project will ensure that your copy, design and functionality of your site are all aligned.
The truth is a website is never ‘done’. You will need to keep feeding it with ongoing marketing efforts to make sure it remains relevant and in front of your prospective audience again, this will need to be budgeted.
On-going support and maintenance
No matter what software your site has been built in you will almost always need ongoing support and maintenance. This would typically be on a monthly basis. Updating software, implementing security patches, checking the site over, running server scans etc.
It’s just one of those things. Like a car service, or insurance. We might not like paying for it, but if we ignore it a problem occurs we may well deeply regret we didn’t. In the grand scheme of things a small monthly fee to ensure everything is up to date, safe and working is worth it, and just something you should do.
A summary of costs
We have gone through quite a lot in this post. As a summary, this is what you should be considering when putting together your budget. Obviously you might not need all of these for your project and some of it might be done in house ( for example copywriting) - but that is still time and resource you need to allocate to it.
One-off costs
- Website audit
- Research and consultancy time
- Design and development costs
- Initial copywriting
On-going costs
- Hosting costs including domain names
- Support / Maintenance
- SEO/PPC/Digital marketing
- Software licences
- Any third party service costs
- Potential ongoing content creation costs
Future costs
- Future development
In conclusion
Wherever your budget, you need to plan, promote, measure and look after your site to some extent. Some of this might be delivered in house, but some will need to be outsourced as well but to have a successful project you need to allocate time and resources to it.
Of course, the actual figure you will need to budget for will vary from site to site and everyone's requirements are different, that being said, this guide should hopefully give you a framework to build a budget around.
