9 Things You Should Know Before Making a Website
Nowadays, every serious businessman should consider a well designed and maintained website for a huge number of reasons. Web experience evolved significantly far beyond the simple informative purpose. Companies can benefit greatly by creating or expanding their websites, integrating various functionalities and actually decrease their spending in the long run. Here we can share some useful advice with you about how to prepare before you go to the web design company or freelancer. It’s important to have a plan and some resources ready in advance. This way you can save precious time, make the communication smooth, and the whole working process quite productive. But let’s get to the 10 things you should know before making a website:
Images
One of the common problems when it comes to the creation of a new website. Images make the web application beautiful and complete, but usually humans simply look in the bigger picture and do not address the important details. You can try a simple experiment – go to your favourite website and disable all images on it. What happens? We bet it’s something ugly.
Clients usually come to us and say “I want a great website.” and when we ask do they have any images of their products, services or team, the answer is No. They usually don’t want to spend money on images at all and in the end – the final website looks “simple” to them. Business owners should understand the importance of the visual content, especially when it comes to their website.
Text Content
As a complement to the images and the whole design (and not only), the website needs text content. For a business web application, the content is crucial. It provides both information to the visitors and gives the search engines clues about the services or products. Usually our clients overlook this extremely important part of the web design just to save a few bucks. However, this is extremely bad mistake, because the copywriting services are not expensive, but highly valuable for long term project.
Colours
To speed up things and avoid communication problems, it’s great if the client has a clear view on the colours scheme of the website. The best approach will be to pick one major colour and at least one or two complementary ones. More than 3 major colours makes the website look like the local circus and it will probably have a negative impact on the visitors. Best to discuss it with your designer and decide it before the development part.
Fonts
Quite delicate part of the web design and surely an important one. The right font could benefit you greatly, especially if the website is blog or forum. Fonts should be easy to read and not too complex. Unfortunately, many clients are attracted to the “beautiful” fonts, which are extremely hard to read and will probably tire the eyes of the readers. Again its advisable to consult with the designer and pick the best font.
Domain and Hosting
Usually, clients who come from other industries are not aware that essential things like hosting and domain are not part of the website development price. Of course, there are companies who offer these as a bundled service, but in reality they are separate things and it’s good to educate the client and let him know what the price includes. Also the domain names are not always available, especially the .com ones.
Be aware that some companies take advantage of those factors and host the website on their own server. Once the client decide to part with them, they can take the website down, which result in business losses.
Pricing
Pricing is one of the most discussed topics in the web development industry. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to estimate. Usually, the client comes to us with a big and shiny idea about the new Facebook. However, large and sophisticated projects require a big investment. The expectations of the client and the reality are quite distant. The problem comes from low quality web developers, who usually offer cheap prices for low quality websites. These websites are usually build on free platforms with a free templates and require almost no efforts. If you are serious about your web project, don’t fall with those tricks.
Revisions
Once the developer finishes with the initial version of the website, the client will surely have some changes in mind. The minor they are, the better. To avoid problems and delays, it’s good to have most of the design decisions already made prior to the development process. This way a website project can be finished with a few revisions and go live earlier.
Maintenance
Another very common problem when the client does not understand the need of regular maintenance of a website. Technology changes fast and various software need updates. The need of maintenance is even more pressing when the web application is complex. Numerous bugs or server problems may appear in time. If you are willing to maintain a good and reliable website, the monthly maintenance fee is mandatory.
Legal
One of the important aspects when it comes to new website creation and namely the legal part of it. Pages like Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy or Refund Policy are vital for the business and they should be carefully crafted and presented on the website. Some clients are not aware of these legal obligations. There are situations where the client wants the web company or freelancer to handle it, but this is not part of the development. The importance of these pages is simply overlooked.