Have you always wanted to create your personal or business website? Have you wondered what is the right method to craft the website of your dreams? If your answer is yes, then you have probably heard some of the buzzwords going around in the web development sphere: WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, CMS, web design, HTML, domain name, hosting, etc. but you probably don't what these terms really mean and how they fit together to help you create the website of your dreams.
In this article, we will offer a clear, concise way you can begin your web development journey and get your first website up and running — no complex terminologies, no buzzwords, we will explain everything as we go along!
The 3 Considerations For Web Design
1. Why Create A Website?
Before getting excited about this web project, you have to determine precisely why you are creating a website. By defining this at the beginning and even writing it down, you are setting your sights on a definitive goal, and this allows you to make the right choices later: without knowing the purpose of your website, you will have a hard time making the right choices about the design style, the type of pages, the functionalities to include, the budget to spend, etc.
Here are some common reasons why people create websites — if you are reading this, one of the bullet points below probably describes your web design needs:
● You Are Creating A Website To Provide Information About Your Company
In these cases, you probably want to display the company’s main activities, services or products offered, its history, address and opening hours on the homepage. These websites act more like a glorified business card and are usually 1 page sites.
● You Are Creating A Website To Make Your Company Visible
The business world is very competitive, and many business owners want to create a website to build their brand and gain visibility. The web can be your portal to a wide range of new customers, and this is why you need to have a web presence (this is likely on top of your social media presence).
● You Are Creating A Website To Generate Sales
Your website (e-commerce or not), is a real commercial tool that you can leverage to improve your sales and expand into new markets. You can collect prospects’ contact information, attract traffic from relevant demographics, generate online sales, etc. An online website is a very potent tool so you want to build the best website for strong selling performance.
2. How Much Does It Cost To Create A Professional Website?
Once you have clearly defined your objectives, next up you need to create a more concrete plan for your website to estimate how much it would cost. It is good to have a price range, a scope, and approximate size and complexity of the website in mind. Depending on the scope of the project, the cost, time and complexity of a website development project can quickly vary. Generally, the price for a website build will change according to the following criteria:
● Who Will Create The Website
Are you yourself going to create the website? Or are you going to task a lone freelance website developer with the task? What about letting an agency (with offices, multiple in-house skills, in development, design, SEO, etc.) take care of it? The cost varies based on who the web designer will be.
● Which Platform To Create Your Website
You have a multitude of options here: online software like Wix (monthly subscription), Open Source CMS like WordPress, or Prestashop, Magento (no license fees but more complex setup), or you can start from scratch and develop the website purely using HTML, CSS, and JS. These all have different costs per month or year.
● The Number Of Pages To Create
What is the scope of your project? If your website contains 5 pages, the price will change greatly from a website that plans to add 200 pages of products, services, or blog posts.
● The Content To Be Produced
Visual and written content are the two primary types of content on most websites, and depending on their quality, they both can cost quite a bit. You can opt-in for professional photo services or you can just use public domain images. You can use professional writers or you can write the content yourself. Audio content is also getting more popular for many online users.
3. Which Website Builder Should You Use?
After you come up with a reasonably detailed plan, next up is the most important decision you are going to make: which tools and platforms to use to create your website? There are many out there, but of course, not all of them are suitable for your needs. And once you have chosen one, it is not very easy to go back afterwards, because you would have to redo everything from scratch (thus wasting time and money). If you go through an agency or a freelance developer to create your website, you can probably rely on them to choose the most suitable platform for your project — just make sure you state your needs clearly and communicate the scope of your project vividly.
● Paid Tools And Services
These usually come in the form of website editors that allow you to get up and running extremely quickly with almost no technical knowledge. These solutions are generally only for very small businesses with a very limited budget. This is because they are extremely limited in what they can do, and you won’t be able to fully leverage them for your projects. But, nevertheless, thanks to solutions like Wix, Webnode, and Weebly, you only have to pay a small monthly subscription to have a relatively functioning website.
● Open Source Tools And Frameworks
These make up the majority of popular web development resources out there, with the most famous being WordPress, which is the content management system used to create 60% of websites on the internet. It is generally the number one option when you want to create a professional website or blog. There are also Drupal, Joomla, Woocommerce and Prestashop for e-commerce projects.
● Coding From Scratch
This solution is rarely recommended if you want to create a professional website. It is very costly, requires very high technical knowledge, and generally doesn’t have a good ROI unless you yourself are a coding whiz with time to spare.
Web Design That Works
As you can see, web design isn't always straight forward and there are different website solutions for different companies. Keep these website design tips in mind when building or revamping your own business site.
