For entrepreneurs and start-up businesses across Wales, sometimes a significant amount of their start-up costs will be spent on digital marketing. Therefore, this does beg the question: How can a business reduce its web design costs, especially when the business might have been cash-strapped right from its inception?

With our extensive experience designing websites for Welsh Businesses, we are well-equipped to provide you with valuable insights on reducing your web design and web development costs.

Understanding exactly what your business needs

Think long and hard about what functionality your website needs when designing a new e-commerce website for your company.
Too often, start-up businesses and entrepreneurs’ hand over the complete web design process to their web designers to manage from start to finish.

Now you might think, but that’s what the web designers are paid to do- they should manage the web design process, right?
Well, to an extent, yes, but if you get a website designed, and you don’t have much input into how you would like it designed, you might suddenly realise that you are missing out on functionality, such as obtaining a responsive website, which your business will need.

For example, if the direct competitor, let’s say, has the functionality of a chat box, this might give them a competitive advantage. The artificial intelligence that runs the chat box might be so sophisticated that it is helps that Welsh business to increase its sales by over 5%.

If your business doesn’t have a chatbot with integrated artificial intelligence, you could miss out on many sales.

So, first things first, think about the functionality that your website needs, such as responsive web design and do competitor research

It’s surprising, but a lot of businesses, prior to hiring a web designer don’t do competitor research.

However, it’s well worth getting a nice cup of tea, sitting down, and scribbling down the parts of a competitor’s website you like, such as perhaps the font they have used, how the main menus designed, how the mobile version of the website has been designed.

For example, think about the following

• How are the pages set out?
• How much content marketing has been written?
• What functionality do they have, for example, a chat box, is the website responsive, do they have a request a callback feature, and integrated contact forms on each page?

Carefully plan how you want your website to look and do create brand guidelines

If you were to contact some web designers, then you might get railroaded into a web design that you later wished, that you had chosen a different design. Therefore, if you have the time, perhaps it’s a wet and windy Sunday afternoon, why not dedicate that time is simply scribbling down a few ideas for a new website in terms of the following:

– What font do you want used?
– How do you want the logo designed?
– How do you want the pages set out

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This will make life easier for your web developers and digital marketing agencies so they know exactly how to start designing your new website. They will have a much clearer understanding of how you want your website designed.

Why not use an open-source platform such as WordPress. Our web designers think that WordPress is amazing

Consider using an open-source platforms like Joomla! Drupal, or WordPress.

These robust content management systems can save you a significant amount of money and time, making your web design process more efficient and cost-effective.

Some businesses might also want to pick a template that can drastically reduce the time it takes to design the website. Therefore, choosing a template design can be a significant cost savings for the business.

Web Development

Talk to your web developers and web designers about using an agile or waterfall methodology web design method. Agile is really flexible, iterative approach that allows for changes and improvements throughout the web development process, while waterfall is a much more structured, sequential approach. Find out which one works best for your business.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Have you heard this expression before: don’t put all your eggs in one basket?

That’s because it’s true, which most definitely applies to digital marketing. Many entrepreneurs and start-up companies make the mistake of spending a lot of time and money on getting a brand-new website designed. They then have a fabulous, well-designed WordPress website that looks amazing and has all the bells and whistles that you would expect.

Then, the company might be cash-strapped, and it might not have anything in the following months after the website has been designed to start promoting it.

This means no marketing budget to promote the website on social media, no money to spend on Google Adwords and also nothing to invest in improving the business’s organic SEO.

It’s a bit like having a hyper car sitting on the drive. It looks fantastic, but there’s no engine in it! That means the car will obviously not go anywhere very fast. And this is the case for a new company website, which has invested in digital marketing such as SEO, the website simply is not going to get any visitors, unless you invest in quality:

– Local SEO
– Organic SEO
– Social Media Advertising
– Google Adwords.

In conclusion

The cost of your website design ultimately boils down to the size of the web design agency you plan to use. Consider whether you wish to hire a web design freelancer or a freelance web developer. If you’re starting a large business, you might need a large digital marketing agency to handle all aspects of your business’s marketing.

Therefore, carefully considering where you want to place your marketing budget. For example, you might want to allocate 75% to designing the website, and 25% to promoting the website over the next six months?

Many businesses, hear in Cardiff, hire us simply because we design quality websites built at competitive prices at our digital marketing agency.

If you would like a no-obligation quotation, why not call us today?