Knowing what you want is the First Step in Obtaining Affordable Website Design

So you want to get a website up and running, huh? This raises a whole list of questions for you as the site owner.
What should my site look like? What should the site do? Do I want a theme? What about colors? Text style?
What do I want to achieve with my site?

While all these are major questions for you as the owner, there is one more question that is vitally important
to the success of your site. That question is: Which affordable website designer do I use and how much will this cost?

Which web designer do I use?
I would suggest that you look around, make a few phone calls and get at least three quotes. Ask what the designer’s
abilities are. For instance, if you are looking for a Flash site, you will need a Flash designer. Get the idea?

What will the cost be?
When looking at the cost involved, don’t just think about the immediate outlay. Look at the future output of the site
and think about what the end result of income will be. Remember that there is a difference between cheap web design
and affordable web design.

Know what you want before you come to the table.
So you’ve contacted a designer and you are going to meet for the initial design conference. Keep in mind that the
designer you have hired has no idea what you are really looking for. So this first meeting is fact finding. Do not
Lose your objective of affordable website design.
Normally the initial meetings are incorporated into the job quote, but you can make it a lot easier on the designer
by simply knowing what you want before you come to the deal table. There are many choices to be made here, so I have
compiled a list. This list is not comprehensive, but gives you a real good idea what to bring to the table and should
help you find and keep a cheap bottom line for website design.

1) Should I use a template or build from scratch? Building from scratch will cost more and be more time consuming.
There are many templates available that can make your site individual.

2) Consider your logo and ensure it doesn’t crowd your content. You want the focus of the visitor to be the content of the page. Affordable web design will accomplish this easily.

3) Hosting is a major consideration. Be sure to think on where you want to end up with this. Say you start with a 10 page site that you want to grow to a 100 Affordable Website Design page site with each page averaging 100kb, then you will need at least 10mb hosting
space. To be safe, triple that so you have a little breathing room. NOTE: Do not pay for more than you need here. That would be wasteful. This is where you can keep your website design affordable.

4) Build from scratch or use open source software? I would definitely try to use open source software. It will keep costs down and provides more flexibility down the line.

5) Layout is another biggie for the site owner. The best thing I can think of here is to actually sketch it out and show your designer what it should look like. Should the header be graphical or textual? Do I want one or two sidebars? These are all simple things that, if you know them out front, will reduce the cost outlay for the site. Remember: cheap website design.

6) Style. Tell your designer specifically what style you want the site to be. For instance, tell him you want it to look glossy, shiny, clean cut, simple, etc.

7) If your site has a theme, be sure to incorporate it into the discussion with your designer. Colors will also be determined by the theme, if there is one. If you want a musical theme, have the designer build around musical instruments or notes on a staff.

So it is important to bring a lot of ideas to the table when hiring a website designer. Know what you want, how you want it to
look and what you want to do and your costs will be as low as possible.