How to prepare before soliciting Website Design Proposals

Which company to choose for your web design, or website redesign is an important and fun process that will allow you to see a wide variety of "takes" on how website design should be approached.

Before requesting proposals

You should spend some time doing some homework, and evaluating your competition's web presence as well as identifying the aspects that you like, and dislike about other websites which you have been to. Keep a log of the website addresses that you like and dislike which you can hand to the designer prior to designing your site. You can save a great deal of time, and possibly a round of revisions by presenting this information early on in the design process.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the purpose of your website?
• Who is your target audience?
• What is my budget for the website?
• When do I want to be up and running?

Website Pricing
Websites can range from a couple hundred dollars to a couple million dollars based on the specifications, complexity, and time it takes to complete. It is important to realize that website design and development is a skilled craft that is done for the most part by well trained designers and developers touting college degrees and/or technical certifications. Designers often hear, "My 10 yr old nephew does web design", or "My 13 year old son does web pages". You definitley will not get the same result from an untrained teenager, that you will get from a professional web designer. Remember, you get what you pay for!

Having said that, there is also another side to that coin. There are many larger design firms which charge astronomical amounts of money for the same design a small well trained company may charge one 1/3 of thier price for. It's important to read the proposals throughly and compare them to the others you receive. You may see many "fluffed" areas from the larger design firms which they try to add into the proposal to fluff it up or increase the price. It's important to make them explain things that look like fluff, and then ask them if you can remove them if you aren't convinced your company needs it. How do you determine if they are fluff or not? Look at the smaller company's proposal, and see if thier proposals contain this. If they don't chances are it's fluff!