Counting the cost of your online branding effort
You’ve thought of a good idea to start a business, done your market research, prepared your business & marketing plan and ran through the financial figures. Everything looks good to go! But wait, you might want to design a logo and prepare some business cards. In this high-tech era, you will also need to have a website to showcase and publicise your products & services online.
After a quick search online, you may notice that some companies claim to offer web design at a couple of hundred dollars, while some may go up to the thousands. This huge disparity leaves you with a headache. Why is there such a big difference?
What should you do about it?
Web design is an art and science that is (almost) perfected over time and experience.
Companies which offer low rates could be just entering the industry, or they’re just providing a very basic static website for a couple of web pages without any bells & whistles.
On the other hand, if the company has years of experience dealing with websites, or your website requires quite a number of customised features (i.e. e-Commerce), do not expect the website to come cheap. You may wish to consult a web designer and have an in-depth discussion to check on the scope of services and various charges.
Conclusion
You must have a clear picture of what you need in the early stages and bring the requirements across to your web designer. You wouldn’t want to end up in a situation where you keep changing the specifications during the course of the project. This will increase the timeline and inevitability drive up costs.