Are you thinking about upgrading your online presence with a new website? The first step can be the most daunting. Take a quick scroll around the internet, and it seems the options for sites are endless. Which one will best serve your needs, at a budget you can afford?
To cut down the confusion, we suggest you think of building (or overhauling) a website the way you’d approach building (or renovating) a house. There are three essential paths that you can take:
1. Custom Design
This option gives you a full-on website design (or redesign), from the ground up. It’s a bit like buying land and building a custom home from the ground up. From walk-in closets to designer colors to custom light fixtures, everything is beautifully designed to your specifications. This is the most expensive option, yielding the most eye-catching results.
2. Semi-Custom Design
This approach to a website is like buying a home and making modifications: knocking out walls, adding bathrooms, and upgrading the windows and doors. Rather than starting from scratch, you’ll begin with either your existing site or a pre-built template. This is our clients’ most popular choice for a website design or redesign.
3. Pre-Built Option
Think of this as choosing a tract home: serviceable, less expensive, but still a sturdy shelter. With this approach, we’ll use an existing website or a pre-built website and make very few customizations. Imagine painting a couple of walls in your tract home, but sticking with the cabinets and plumbing fixtures that came with it. This is the least expensive option but still results in a professional-looking site.
In keeping with our homebuilding analogy, the construction costs will also depend on the size and features your home contains. How many rooms will there be? What size? What features will they contain—electricity, built-in closets, plumbing? These map to the number of pages on your site and the features and functions they contain, such as drop-down navigation, imagery, e-commerce options, and more.
Not quite sure what you need? We can help you sort through the options. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients—from retail to social services to authors and more—to create sites that are just right for them. Please take a look at the work we’re passionate about, or get in touch if you have any questions.
