Your website is an integral piece of your marketing strategy. This article looks to review the factors involved in website redesign and why it is integral to your marketing strategy. It is often the first place that people hear about your business and, when it is well made, can make the difference between your potential customers choosing you versus your competitor.
Due to the importance of your website as a marketing resource, it is crucial that it is informative, aesthetically pleasing, and above all, well made. While it’s always important to get a good deal, web design is not the area that you should skimp on. Before delving into the technicalities of website redesign, we recommend first researching the cost. Because websites are completely customizable, the cost can vary depending on a variety of factors. Here are some of the most prevalent factors that can affect the cost of website redesign:
Who is creating the website?
One of the biggest determining factors as to how well made your website will be is determined by who builds it. As previously mentioned, website redesign is not the area to cut corners in in regards to your marketing strategy. For this reason, we highly recommend hiring a professional web designer who knows what they’re doing and can customize your website to your specifications.
Due to the complexity of website design, less experienced web designers may completely overlook important aspects. Only an experienced, professional web designer will know how to determine the psychological effects that copywriting and images will have on online users. Most importantly, experienced web designers will know how to use these effects to increase traffic to your website.
An important question to ask yourself when researching potential web designers to work with is: What niche do they typically work with? For example, if you are a software company, it would be most logical to hire a web designer that has experience creating websites for software companies. Although finding a specialty web designer can sometimes be an additional expense, it is well worth it to hire someone that understands your industry.
⚠️ FREE Guide: How To Budget for Your Next Website Redesign
How is the website design delivered and the site created?
It is crucial to pick a website designer that is best suited to your needs, but it is equally as important that they have a set procedure that they follow. Knowledge must be coupled with experience in web design. With experience, a web designer is able to determine the best procedure to follow with all of their clients.
It requires more than an introductory meeting to determine how to create a website that caters to a customer’s precise needs. An experienced web designer should have a multi-stage procedure to follow which should include: determining the website’s goals and the best content to meet these goals, discovering the best strategy to implement, UI/UX testing, user testing and much more. Each of these stages will require separate meetings to plan and execute.
Skilled web designers will invest the proper amount of time, energy and brainpower into your project. Though hiring web designers who are the best at their craft will come at an additional cost, it is well worth it to work with someone who truly cares about your company’s marketing success.
What functions will be included in the web design?
As previously mentioned, websites are completely customizable. An expert web designer will know how to make each website they create completely unique and catered to their customer’s needs. An important aspect to consider when hiring someone to design a website for you is what kinds of functions and integrations you will need for your website. These can range from the most basic functions to more complex systems.
For example, if your website requires a user registration system, calendar or forum, these complex functions will come at a higher cost. A useful strategy to implement prior to hiring a web designer would be to create both a list of functions that your website needs and a list of functions that you would like your website to have. This will be useful to the web designer so they can determine an accurate quote for the website’s overall cost.
Furthermore, if you would like your website to integrate CRM, ERP, eCommerce or any other 3rd party system, this will also be an additional expense. Every system is wired differently and interacts with other systems differently; it is easy to get some systems to interact with each other and harder for others. For this reason, the costs of integration can vary.
Who is developing the website’s content?
Content creation is undeniably the most crucial aspect of your website. Your website’s content is comprised of the text, images and videos that you use to attract users and gain support. Successful website copywriting requires a careful balance of getting your message across while also being visually pleasing. Copywriting that is attractive to a website user is inspirational, concise, well-written and incorporates psychological triggers. Website pages that feature more important content usually take anywhere from 2-4 hours to create, including time for revisions. With this estimate, it’s not hard to imagine how long it can take to create high quality content for an entire website.
A successful website is one that features entirely unique content. For this reason, it is ineffective at attracting users to simply use stock pages on your website and recycle textual content. The creation of an effective website oftentimes requires holding separate photo and video shoots with professionals, which means putting in extra time and budgeting for an extra cost.
An easy way to save money in this area is for the company to create their own website content. However, oftentimes they underestimate the amount of time, effort and resources that go into making high quality content. Unfortunately, we have seen this result in either the creation of poor quality content or lengthy delays in the completion of the content.
If you do decide to create your own website content to save the cost of hiring a professional in this area, we have some suggestions. We recommend that you begin creating your content as soon as possible, but that you also get trained to do so. Also be sure that you allow for plenty of time to edit and revise content before expecting to be satisfied with the content.
Additional Factors
The below list is comprised of the major factors that go into determined the cost of website redesign, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. Other factors that can influence price include: the specific tools and platforms used for your website, migrations and specific SEO tasks like URL mapping. However, all of these factors are typically discussed in an initial consultation with a web designer.
Overall Website Redesign Cost
Hopefully this article provided you with a better idea of what exactly influences the final quote from a web designer. The next step would be to contact a web design agency to discuss what exactly you are looking for. Once you have flushed out the specifics of your goals and website needs, you will be able to get the most accurate quote.