Saving Money On Web Design

So this is the situation: You have made a choice of which web design company to use to develop your business web site. The next step is to provide the information, graphics and other items your web developer requires. However, you would like to save some money but still get a quality finish. Is that possible? Yes, it is.

There are ways you can help your designer by doing some of the work yourself and cutting down on the billable hours the web design company may charge you.

To begin with , give your web developer as much information about your business as you can. He or she probably will not use all of the information you supply, but your designer will try their best to make your site unique. The more information you offer, the more unique your site will be.

In many cases, you will be supplying some type of text or written content to your web designer. Maybe it is from your brochure or other advertising material. If all you have is a paper copy, it saves time if you type it up and send it to your web designer in digital format. A scan will not work, it has to be typed and saved in a word or text processing program. Ask your designer ahead of time what format he or she prefers.

If you are providing images to be used on the site, learn how to crop and re-size them. Processing images can be both resource and time-consuming. If you learn how to crop and resize your graphics and then send them to your developer, it could save you some cash. Pictures from your digital camera or other sources usually cannot be put on your web site without re-sizing. Most digital cameras take pictures that are 1600 or more pixels wide. A graphic on a web page will rarely be larger than 500 pixels wide. Before you re-size a graphic, you can often crop out unneeded areas. Focus on the object of your photo and crop out unneeded backgrounds.

You don’t have to spend a small fortune of software such as Photoshop to do these simple tasks. Google offers a free image software program called Picasa that can be used to crop and re-size photos. Picasa can be downloaded here, http://www.picasa.google.com/.

If you are working in a group for the web site project, appoint one person to be the web designer’s contact. The designer should only be given instructions from the appointed contact. Also, the instructions should only be given when all of your group have agreed that it is a final decision, not one of the ideas that are still swirling around the project group. It may be helpful to ask for some feedback from the designer about any ideas you are having difficulty with. However, don’t give him or her instructions until a final decision has been made.

Respond to your web designer’s questions as quickly as possible. The longer you take to answer, the more you may have to end up paying. Any decent web design firm will not bill you if it takes a few days to come back with an answer. But if they are waiting for more than a week or so, they may need to delay other projects they are working on to make up for your late reply. And for that very reason, your lateness may end up costing you extra.

Listen to your web developer. He or she knows the web and what is best for your site. Don’t insist on having music on your site when your designer is giving you all of the logical reasons not to do it. (Unless you are a musician or in some kind of music business, of course.)

The more you help your designer, the sooner your site will be up and running. And this will reduce the amount of hours you will be billed for your web project.