10 Things to Think About When Building a New Website

1. What is the actual purpose of your website?

The most obvious answer to this question is to drive more sales to my business. However, how do you expect to do this? Simply having a website is no longer enough. You need to target your website to the customers searching for your industry. This may mean you need an eCommerce website, a newsletter, a blog, a login to manage customer data, and many other features. When building a new website you need to think about the features that will be involved that will target your customer based, whether that be high end visual appeal or an advanced back end system to manage customer requests and data.

2. Will you need a new logo?

If your logo looks old, then your business is going to look old and outdated. Invest properly in your logo and have variations for different places your logo may appear online such as social media or on a website header. If your logo does not look high end but you want a high end website, then you will have to make the jump to a new logo because a poor logo can ruin a nice website. Don’t be cheap; invest in your logo until you have something that is right for your business both aesthetically and its message to your client base. The logo is the face of your company, so it should not be something taken lightly.

3. Will you need a CMS and if so what CMS that will be.

I cannot tell you how many times I have come across a business owner who has no idea how their site was built and if they even own the site! This is completely unacceptable if you want to be a successful business owner moving through the second decade of the 21st century. If you are building a new website or rebuilding your site you need to figure out if you need a CMS. If you have a top notch web development team or individual that can handle a framework without a CMS then go for it. However, if you feel that you will need to make easy changes that do not require advanced technical expertise than you will need a CMS to do so.

There are 3 major CMS platforms out there right now for non-eCommerce websites, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. I could spend five pages writing about these platforms but for purposes of this article here is the quick break down. WordPress is easy to use, good for beginners and blogging. Joomla may be ideal for a website requiring high end visual appeal and is slightly more complex than wordpress, but less so than Drupal. Drupal is the most advanced CMS which is good if you need a login feature or something more complex than what WordPress and Joomla can provide.

4. Will you need eCommerce?

If you will need eCommerce now or in the future than the CMS or way your website is built is incredibly important. Magento is great for a highly customized eCommerce website, but has a high learning curve and development costs. If you need something very simple you may be ok with just a Woocommerce extension to your WordPress website. Figure out what kind of features you will need for your eCommerce website, and then with that you should be able to determine which CMS or platform has those features built in.

5. How many pages will you need?

Figure out how many pages you will need before you build your website. If you are not exactly sure, and are off by one or two pages that is ok. However, if you have no idea, then you may want to think about this a little more before engaging with a web designer or web design company because this will greatly influence the price of the website.

6. Will you need dynamic features?

Do you want things to move around when users click on aspects of your website, need a dynamic slideshow, have advanced customer requests fields, or a database to manage customers? If so figure out how in depth these features will need to be because they can become extremely time consuming for a web developer especially if they were not thought out well before hand. Figuring out the details beforehand can save you tons of money down the road.

7. Do you have your own graphics and pictures?

Building high end graphics is not easy. Some people seem to think that photoshop is something that can be mastered in a few months. WRONG! I would consider myself proficient at photoshop and illustrator, but when I watch our graphics expert Stephen Bennet work, I feel like I am five years old watching Lebron James play basketball in awe. To create life like images on the web is not easy, and if you are going to need high end graphics this could get expensive so make sure you know what you need before going into a redesign or new website project.

Photography can also make or break a website. If you do not have photography for your website than you have three options, buy stock photos online, try and take the photos yourself, or hire a professional photographer. Weigh your options accordingly, because bad photos can ruin your entire website investment.

8. Do you need help with content?

Possibly the most frustrating thing for a web design company is to work with a client who cannot produce content but does not want to pay for someone to write it. We seem to have an infinite amount of people who think that content is built into all of our prices. We are web designers and developers not experts on writing about your business. Yes, we can find ways to write content about your business, but this takes time research which equals money!

9. Will you need a blog?

If you think you will need a blog then you will most likely need a CMS, unless you want to take the challenge of building a custom blog. WordPress is the easiest way to incorporate a blog whether it is building your site on it or adding it to your site through a sub domain. I suggest finding out if your CMS offers a blog first, and if not, figure out how the best way to add one in such as using WordPress as a subdomain.

10. What is your max budget?

After you have answered all of these questions it’s time to ask yourself how much can I spend? You may realize that everything you want is a 10k website, but you only have 4k. This means you are going to have to make some compromises or find an extra 6k. Be realistic with your budget, and what you will get for it, because the last thing you want is to start a web project underfunded and end up with half a website. Custom websites generally start at a few thousand dollars and can go as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more depending on the complexity.