If you just have started a venture or thinking about doing one, getting a website is one of the most crucial business need in this age.
So, you have taken the first step and reading an article on how to get an affordable website design.
That’s quite appreciable. Taking the first step matters, and this is what takes you to the destination. Well, let’s get back to our topic: Affordable Web Design.
What you probably have been thinking is designing, building, and creating a website is a one-time thing where you submit the website requirements and get the desired outcome in the given time.
You pay for it and start making money out of it. Well, this is not the case, most of the time. A web design process is detailed, complex, and time-taking that requires your effort.
It is not as simple as using the internet or social media sites. You want your website to be user-friendly, intuitive, easy-to-use, and modern. You can see competitive examples of Manchester web design company.
Moreover, you want your business website to be able to appear on Google Search results. You want your website to accomplish the basic purpose behind creating it.
That is converting your visitors into clients. This is such a big accomplishment, and it cant be done overnight. It requires your attention, time, energy, and efforts.
So, how do you do it? And, especially, you want it to do it right; result-driving. Here’s is a guide to help you understand all the necessary steps in designing a website.
You can go through the blog to get a strong grasp on understanding the design and development process.
Let’s start with the website design requirements.
1. Determine your Website Requirement
The first step towards getting an affordable web design service is determining your website requirements.
The requirements include the selection of your website domain name, registration of your domain name, deciding on website functionalities, a list of pages to get designed, a plan or structure for custom content you would want to add to your website, and any other requirements that you want to be added in your website.
At this stage, you should ideally think about website structure and start gathering the content (images & web copy) for the website. You cannot expect your web designer or developer to arrange a web copy for the website.
Neither are they going to collect photos of your products. All they would do is add dummy images and content where ever there is a need. So, you must provide all of the content to them along with a general structure of the website.
Website Structure
For your website structure, you should develop a set of necessary pages that combine to make a perfect website for your business. Some common website pages include the following:
- Homepage
- About us page
- Blog
- Products/Services page
- contact page
- Terms and conditions
- Landing pages for marketing and promotions
Each of these pages will need to be structured and designed with the right content on it.
You are not required to finalize content at this stage, but you should have an idea of the content you will add to your site.
The content of the website should be devised before the development. A professional web designer might not negotiate on this.
You should start planning on how and where you are getting the web copy and product photography done.
Are you going to write the copy yourself, or would you hire a content specialist who could do the job for you? Will you be hiring a photographer or prefer doing it yourself?
Besides these things, you will have to provide your business logo and workspace or team group photo(if required).
Be ready to provide these materials to the design team whenever they ask for them. On the other hand, you could also ask your web designer to help you source stock imagery.
An experienced web designer may help you with some really useful content and structure ideas. It would be worth discussing with the design team in the initial phases of the design process.
Once you come up with your website’s basic requirements, you can move on to the next step of getting an affordable web design service.
2. Hire a Web Designer
Now, you need to hire a designer or consult with a low-budget website design company, keeping in mind that you are looking for an affordable website design service.
To get the best on a relatively lower budget, you can go through portfolios of several web design companies that offer affordable services.
Going through those portfolios will enable you to get an insightful eye to assess their design.
Now, you can determine what kind of design you are looking for. Before hiring a web designer, you should know who a web designer is.
Who is a web designer?
Web designers are simply designers who work on digital designing software or tools to design a website.
They take your ideas and turn them into a good-looking structured design known as a mockup.
A mockup shows what your website will look like. Popular software and tools used for web designing are Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, and InDesign.
Select a few designers who could adeptly understand your design requirement and design your website as per your brand voice and tone.
For instance, if your brand targets youngsters and is more about fun and playfulness, make sure the designers got some experience or have the potential to work in your industry.
Similarly, if you own a fresh food store, look for a designer who has experience working in a similar capacity. It would help you design a professional website in a reasonably lesser amount of time.
3. Start with Wireframes
To have an off-road trip, you would need to have map access. In the same way, you would need wireframes before you start designing your website.
Wireframes work as blueprints that allow you to get an idea of the final design. You will get to know where you would set images and add CTA buttons to direct your visitor to the contact page.
Starting your design with the wireframes will help you get a grasp on the final design at the initial stage. You will get a better workflow of your design. It will simplify the entire design process.
With wireframes enables you to discuss the structure of your website design and make changes where you want. It’s definitely easy to make changes in line drawings instead of replacing intricate Photoshop mockups.
This saves your money and the designer’s time. It would be best if you worked on wireframes for all of your website’s major pages, including homepage, product listings, contact page, and blog.
In fact, if you are working to improve the design of your existing website template, it’s suggestible to use wireframes. It helps ensure that your designer understands the integral components in the template.
4. Design the Experience
Your website is an online representation of your brand. Therefore, every element in your web design should reflect your brand identity.
From colors to font and other design preferences, everything needs to be for a purpose. A consistent style and choice of design element will make your brand stand out.
And so, you should provide the designer with your brand logo, color palette, list of fonts you want to use, other design requests like “colorful” or ” luxurious,” depending on your brand’s needs.
As a small business web design and an enterprise web design has different requirements and goals, the design needs to be relevant.
It would be best if you pick a few carefully chosen websites as design examples that you like.
Write a word of explanation that why you like a particular design or what specifically you like in the design. With this information, a designer will get a grasp of your requirements.
Ask your designer to prepare the first draft and give your feedback. But while giving feedback, make sure it’s clear, specific, and profitable for your website.
Moreover, it depends on your agreement with the web design company or designer that how many rounds of changes can be done to get a final look at your design.
The time and effort you invest in achieving your website’s design will pay off in the form of a seamless online experience for your website visitors.
5. Create Templates for All Pages
Once you are done with the home page design, go for the design of other important pages of your website, including services pages, contact page, about us, and others.
If you have already finalized wireframes for all these pages, you will find it easy to get them designed quickly. There might be a few things that would need fixing and adjustments, but at this point, you and the designer are hopefully on the same page.
When you finalized your design, ask your designer to provide you design files that you can provide to the developer, assuming your designer and developers do not belong to the same company.
However, keeping the design files with you can also help you make any further changes in the future. Most designers provide Adobe Photoshop files, but these days, Sketch is also becoming very common.
6. Hire a Developer to Code your design
At this point, you need to hire a developer who could turn your design into a functional website.
If you are hiring the design and development services from the same web app development company, it would be easier for you and the service providers to easily understand what needs to be developed.
However, if you are availing the service from two different people, make sure you clearly convey your development requirements to the developer.
Also, they should be able to explain things in clear language that you can understand, not being a web developer.
If you are working on CMS, discuss with your developer what platform would work best for your website requirement.
Make sure the developer asks you different questions at every step to make sure everything is up to the mark and as per your requirements.
If your developer asks you many questions, it signifies that they are thinking through the different steps involved in the process.
After your discussion with the developer, they will provide you with a prototype. Go through the prototype.
If you think there is a need for tweaking in any area, get your changes done and move to the next step of adding content to your website.
7. Add the Content
While designing your website design, the designers must have stuffed all of it with the Lorem ipsum placeholder text. You need to replace those words with meaningful and result-driven content.
From About us and homepage headlines to every product description and body copy, add content that speaks for the purpose.
Make sure the textual content resonates with the design of your website. Use a language that sets the right tone to convert visitors into leads.
If your website is simple and straightforward, the copy you add to your website must be in line with the design. Similarly, if your website has a hint of pop in its design, make sure the copy you add to your website is modern and catchy.
Depending on your business requirement, you may need to hire a content specialist who has a sound knowledge of SEO. Adding SEO-optimized content to your website’s copy is integral to your website’s success.
If you want your website ranks top in the SERP, make sure the content is SEO optimized. It’s recommended to get all services from a one-stop-shop so that you don’t need to explain everything again and again.
You can look at some affordable web design companies that offer everything in one place.
8. Do user Testing
After you add the copy to your website, it’s almost complete. Now you are left with User Testing. Before officially launching your website for your audience, get as many people as possible to use your website and give their feedback.
It’s better if you involve your core audience in user testing. They are the right people to tell you about the flaws and loopholes in your website.
This is a crucial step of your website journey, especially if you seek an affordable web design for small businesses.
Give attention to what they say and give feedback. You can also ask different questions that help you understand the impact of your web design and development progress among people. So, how do you conclude users’ opinions and feedback?
This is a general rule of thumb; if a majority complains about something, there must be something to worry about. Infect, if a small group of people mentions something, then you should be reevaluating that area and make changes where necessary.
After you go through the whole website after user testing, do the necessary changes and launch your website.
Final Thoughts
Now, you are ready to make a business from the perfect website for your business. But always keep in mind that your website is still under the development phase since it is in the beginning. Besides flaws, you can come up with a lot of new things that can improve your web design and functionality.
Also, a website is not a one-time-only thing. You can make small tweaks and improvements whenever you want. This is because you certainly don’t want to be left behind in the competition. Therefore, you can make improvements and evolve your website regularly.
Especially if you are starting with a template site as you are at the beginning of your online business journey, you would hopefully expand your system in a couple of years.
And, that would be a perfect situation; good for your business. You can find a bunch of affordable web design services ready to serve your website design requirements.
There could be plenty of other reasons that lead you to think about customizing your website design. For instance, your customer base can grow, requiring you to rebrand.
Or, you might realize that you can improve with better technologies. Just like today, mobile evolution has made it mandatory for all websites to be mobile-responsive and friendly.
If you are low on budget, you can hire a cheap website design company but keep telling them your requirement at every step of the process. Now venture out and enjoy the intricate process of an amazing website design!
I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.