Selecting a web redesign company to overhaul your website is a big investment, but a very strategic one for your business. However, in order for the partnership to truly pay dividends, you need to allocate an adequate budget.
Many companies underestimate or constrain the budget when hiring a web redesign firm. But attempting to do a transformative website overhaul on the cheap rarely succeeds. No matter how skilled your chosen firm is, insufficient budget hampers the process and final product at every turn.
To execute a redesign that elevates your brand and delivers serious ROI, you need to financially empower your web design partner. Give them the budget they require to handle all the critical components – from in-depth planning, custom design, and streamlined UX to intuitive CMS integration, thorough testing, and skilled launches.
Cutting corners to save money almost always backfires down the line. But companies who invest enough upfront find the new website turbocharges their growth and justifies the budget many times over.
In this article, we’ll break down the key elements that factor into the cost of hiring a web redesign firm. Understanding these budgetary requirements will help you plan, select the right partner for your goals, and feel confident investing in a project executed properly.
Discovery and Planning
The upfront discovery and planning phase sets the foundation for an effective web redesign. Your chosen firm will need an adequate budget for initial audits, project scoping, and strategy development. This includes both branding and technical audits of your current site. It also covers in-depth meetings and workshops to align goals, user needs, content mapping, and other key plans.
Without proper discovery and scoping, the later stages will likely go off course. So empower your partner to do this critical planning diligently – even if it represents a significant portion of the initial budget outlay. Thorough project discovery and strategy is well worth the early investment.
Design
The design stage of a web redesign project also bears significant costs. Your partner will invest extensive time designing and iterating on critical aspects like:
- Information architecture – Planning the website’s structure and internal logic.
- User flows – Mapping how visitors will navigate through the site.
- Wireframes – Blueprinting page layouts and interface elements.
- Visual design – Creating the aesthetic look and feel, style, and branding.
- Interaction design – Crafting intuitive, seamless experiences as visitors interact with site elements.
- Accounting for responsiveness – Designing adaptive layouts for desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.
- Animations/transitions – Adding engaging and purposeful motion design.
This design process is complex and time/resource-intensive. But getting it right is crucial for site usability and driving your business goals through the new website.
Content
The content phase involves both creating a brand new copy and assets for the redesigned site as well as migrating or updating existing content. This requires its own budget allocation.
Your partner will likely handle:
- Copywriting – Crafting fresh website copy that aligns with brand messaging and site goals. This ranges from interface microscopy to blogs, product descriptions, etc.
- Content auditing – Evaluating existing content and pruning outdated or underperforming pages and assets.
- Media production – Producing new photography, videography, illustrations, animations, and other visuals.
- Content integration – Seamlessly incorporating copy into site templates and components designed for optimal user experience.
- Media migration – Moving select existing visual assets into the new site while maintaining quality and consistency.
- Accessibility compliance – Ensuring all content meets legal standards for accessibility (alt text, captions, etc.).
Testing and Refining
Before launch, adequate testing and refinement are critical for ironing out issues in site design, technology, usability, and functionality. Your partner will need a budget for:
- Technical QA testing – Rigorously testing all site functionality and flows to catch bugs.
- UX testing – Gathering feedback from sample users to pinpoint usability pain points.
- Stakeholder reviews – Multiple rounds of feedback from your internal team during development.
- Revisions and fixes – Allocating resources to address feedback, fix bugs, and refine the site.
- Performance testing – Stress testing site speed and capacity for real-world traffic volumes.
- Security testing – Checking for vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, etc.
While tedious, comprehensive testing and refinement ensure your site is bulletproof before going live.
Training and Launch
The launch stage also bears key costs, including:
- CMS training – Thoroughly teaching your team to proficiently use the content management system to update and manage the new site.
- Migration – Migrating your live site to the redesigned site, shifting over domains, data, etc.
- Redirects – Setting up redirects from old URLs to relevant new pages to prevent broken links.
- On-page messaging – Adding prompts on the old site to notify visitors of the impending launch.
While the previous phases were focused on construction, the launch is all about transitioning your team and traffic onto the new website. Proper training and migration limit any disruption.
Maintenance and Support
Many web redesign companies offer continued maintenance and optimization after launch for an additional fee. This provides huge value by keeping your site updated and performing optimally.
Post-launch support often includes:
- Continued technical troubleshooting and bug fixes
- Regular performance monitoring and speed optimizations
- Ongoing SEO enhancements and tracking rankings
- Site backups and security updates
- Content and feature additions to support new initiatives
- User testing and gathering feedback for future iterations
While not strictly required, ongoing maintenance ensures your investment keeps paying dividends well beyond launch day.
Conclusion
As shown, executing a complete website overhaul with a dedicated partner requires allocating the budget to all crucial stages. While the total costs may seem high, it is imperative not to cut corners or constrain your web redesign firm.
With an adequate budget empowering every phase, you’ll gain invaluable strategic planning, thoughtful design optimized for your goals, rich custom content, comprehensive testing and refinement, and a smooth launch.
While an insufficient budget may seem to save money upfront, it almost always leads to greater costs down the line from band-aid solutions, lost opportunities, and poor results. Invest adequately and rest assured the returns generated by your partner’s expertise will quickly justify the expense many times over.
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