Planning is an important part of any website design and development process, especially when the initial development is done before the site is created. You should make several things clear before giving any proper instruction to web designers based on which web design you want to have. With careful planning, you can have less revisions that and saves you time and resources.
When you have three important resources to be saved: time, money and effort, you must have the different aspects related to various technical and designing aspects decided before beginning with the designing part. Some basic information goes while planning a website that has to be cleared and precise. This information has to be passed on to the website designer for smooth production and site creation.
The first thing to do when you want to build your first business website is to make a clear understanding about what you want for your website and locating your target audience. A proper understanding about e-commerce website, company website, blog and others are important before deciding the contents you want for your site. And by knowing you audience, you will know how your website's contents should be addressed and how to sell your product/service. These two pieces of information is important when web designers do the decision making for your website's elements.
After you have the raw sketch of what you want for your website and have a logo that represents your business on the internet, the next thing you need is an appropriate domain name for your website that suits your business and company.
The next step is to have a web hosting company to fulfill your hosting requirements. The requirement for your website depends heavily on how much traffic you're expecting, how long you want your website to be hosted, how you want to have control of your server, and last but not least, the cost you are willing to pay.
You can also ask your web design company to do this work for you to bring a better result by providing all the necessary information about your goals and your competitors.
For getting a clear idea about the planning of the website, you can sketch a flowchart that shows which web pages are to be included. You can show the sub-pages to be included with the main pages so that the designers get the idea about the amount of designing work to be done. By having a flowchart, you can organize which page will be your website's main interest and create all other necessary links to that page so your website's visitors will have an easy access to the page.
If your site is going to have a registration form where visitors can become a member, sketch another flowchart to know what they can see and do as a benefit of becoming a member to your site. This can include and not limited to: access to which contents or part of the website that are limited to members, ability to post comments, ability to have discounts, ability to do certain task in your web application, having limited offers that are forwarded to their email address, newsletters, and so forth.
If the time for having your website designed and developed is a major concern to you, you can further provide the contents you want for your website to your web designers so your contents can be available as soon as your website is launched. The contents to your website can include and not limited to: articles, images, videos, scripts, API for other services, etc..
And If you have some design image in your mind or have seen some type of web design somewhere and want a similar one for you, you can tell this information to the web designer. This would help the designers to gain vision about how the final designing product looks like.
Everything you need for your website includes the components that come with it. Regardless what type your website is going to be, these components are a must for every website on the internet.
Overall charges are different from one web designers to another. Usually the cost is affected by the number of pages, the system you want to use, how sophisticated the design you want, the scripts you want to include, search engine optimization, additional features and so forth.
As a client, you need to work closely with web designers to ensure a flawless flow. You should also understand the phases of your website's lifecycle to make sure that you can effectively adopt each and every aspect of your website creation to to ensure successful results for your business and company.
These steps can decrease the amount of time and cost taken for your website design and development, minimizing the effort for you, and your website designer, to have your website ready and online. Website designers charge can charge you more fees for any revisions or modifications to the website after it's online and running, so it's advised that you tell them any information you have concerning it beforehand.