How do you design your site at the lowest cost and highest quality؟

When you decided to create a website for your business on the Internet and asked a programmer to design your site, and I saw a large variation in prices, starting from $50 to $3,000 and more..

At this moment, you are confused, why such a large disparity in prices?

There are also some ready-made platforms for developing websites.. How do I choose the most suitable one for me among all these changes?!

Of course, there is a difference according to the freelancer, according to the service, the level of companies, the reputation of the company, the characteristics you want in your site, the quality of the work required .. and other technical matters 

But you, as a business owner, ultimately care about the final product you want to get (which is your website).

It is not always required that the most expensive is the best, as it may be a site that costs $200 that meets your needs, and it may be at a cost of $1,000 that does not meet your needs or does not suit you. 

The important thing is that the site suits your needs and is at an acceptable cost and benefit.

Therefore, I wanted to share with you this simple information through which you will know how to choose the right person to build your website even if you do not have any previous programming experience.. You will know how to make the right choice after reading this article, God willing.

Let me define for you at the outset what are the components of a website simply and how it works.. 

For any website to be visible in the web world, it needs three things:

1. Domain

It means the domain of the site . For example, when you want to go to the Google site, you type in the browser: www.Google.com. Therefore, any user in the world who writes in his browser google.com goes to the famous search engine and does not go to any other site.

This is the concept of the domain in a nutshell, and therefore you will be required to reserve a domain from any company that provides domain reservation services (there are dozens of companies) that provide you with this service for $12 annually, mostly.  

And domain reservation is one of the easiest operations you do when building your site.

2.hosting

It means the service that you will rely on to host your site files and become visible on the Internet .. After the site is completely designed, and you want to show it to users to read and interact with its content, you will need to rely on a server that you subscribe with to show your site to users

In order not to get confused, the domain reservation service (mentioned in No. 1) is intended to reserve the domain only wwwexample.com

As for the hosting service, it is the service that makes images, articles, registration forms, videos, and all these things about your site available to the user, who can view and interact with them.

The hosting service usually starts at $4 per month for the new user.

3. Website design

 This is the most important part that you need to take care of when building your site and choosing it correctly, as it is the most cost-effective process. 

It means all the software work that you will do to build your site: how you will design the look of its pages, articles, the appearance of images, icons, speech, properties and all the parts that you want to appear on your site .. 

Of course there are a lot of details depending on your needs in your site, but let me tell you about the methods of building sites

a. Rely on ready-made tools

This method is very simple, you partner with a certain company that provides you with all the requirements to build your site and provides you with ready-made tools and you use them in designing your site as if you were designing it with the Paint program without writing any code. (The most famous of these platforms are Wix, weebly & shopify) and usually start with a subscription of $20 per month.

B. Rely on content management systems

 They are operating systems that are provided to you through which you can launch your site and use some other ready-made tools with some other additions that enable you to modify its code to show your site in the final form you want (the most famous content management systems are WordPress, Joomla and OpenCart for electronic stores) and often it is part of Some of these tools are free and some of them are paid.

 

c. 100% reliance on programmer

This method is to agree with a programmer or a company to design your site from scratch, and this programmer is responsible for developing and designing all the details of your site.

I will give you a simple example to know the difference between the three options 

For example: If you decide to buy a new PC, you will have a choice of three

A- Purchasing a ready-made computer from the companies that provide you with a computer case, the most famous of which are HP, Dell
B- You bring a processor, RAM, power supply, hard drive and motherboard and connect them to each other to form your computer
C- You agree with a factory to manufacture each of the parts The cyst with specific details 

You will ask me what is the best?

Each type has its advantages and disadvantages, and let me tell you the differences between them in a nutshell

 For example in option (a)

Buying a ready-made computer does not give you much flexibility to easily upgrade the processor, power play or graphics card, but rather you are connected to a motherboard that HP or Dell provides you with, and the price of the case is often higher than the price of the case you collect.

But what distinguishes this type is that you get a ready-made bag of everything and it becomes ready for use directly without any modification.  

The exact same thing when you rely on a ready-made platform such as Wix or Shopify or whatever the platform, it provides you with ease in creating your site in less than an hour and the platform is responsible for hosting and providing protection and tools for your site and everything .. But what is wrong with this method is that you You are governed by the framework that the platform creates for you and you cannot deviate from the possibilities that the platform provides you with.

 In addition to the high cost for the capabilities you get (for example, in the Wix platform, you pay $ 24 per month for hosting with only 20 GB of storage).

 As for option (b)

You may make some extra effort in choosing the motherboard and agree with the rest of the computing components and then install these parts together so that the device becomes consistent, but what distinguishes this option is that it is less expensive than option (A) and you can control your account more, change any piece and upgrade it with ease.

The exact same thing for your site when you rely on a system such as WordPress, you make an extra effort to connect all the tools that you will rely on in building your site, but the result is more control over the appearance of your site and the features in it and also you can move from one level to another easily.

 As for option (C)

You manufacture each component of your site yourself and thus be more customized to the capabilities you want for your site exactly without any increase or decrease, as you go to the tailor and ask him to tailor a dress for you that is 100% on your size.

So, in summary, in this part, the total that determines the cost of building the site is: Domain + hosting (according to hosting capabilities) + site design (according to the method and capabilities that you will provide in building your site).  

Now comes the important question: What is the ideal model that suits you in building your site?

Choose the appropriate model

Of course, each type has its advantages and disadvantages, as we talked about, and I do not want to give you the final advice in the end and do this or not, but I want you to understand some technical basics on your own to choose in the end what suits you.. and this you will learn about in the next part, God willing. in determining the optimal model for you.

In the beginning, you should set an approximate budget for the site, as you certainly have a budget ceiling and a certain price that you cannot exceed according to the nature of your business, and based on this budget, you will put yourself in front of the right choice.

Thus, we will divide the budget into three sections

Section 1: The Big Budget ($2,000+)

This department often has a good online project such as an online store or a service site that it creates and provides many services to many potential customers.

I’m not just telling you about someone creating a company intro website or an educational blog, but I’m telling you about a big project that has an advertising budget of over $5,000 and whose site has more than one service, more than one app, and more than one API.

This model will be the best for him to build a site from scratch, relying on a software team that helps him in coding each of the site’s code to suit his needs.

You will go to a reputable software company or Inhouse Agency and start discussing with them about the goals of your site and the ideas you want to implement for your business, then these programmers will convert this template into a professional website that meets your needs as a business owner.

The second section: owners of a medium budget (200 – 1000 dollars)

Of course, this budget will be determined based on your needs, for example, the online store that customers buy through is different from the site that contains some simple pages with an introduction to your company.

In the case of people with medium budgets, it is more appropriate for them to choose a content management system and then assign a person to monitor and implement the site’s work plan.

You will need to know some basic information that qualifies you to choose the appropriate system (will you choose OpenCart, WordPress or Joomla) and then you agree with a professional person (whether it is Freelancer or a company employee) to design the site with the required specifications based on this system and choose the appropriate hosting and template These matters are for him to finally design the site with the required specifications and have a role in following up the site and providing continuous technical support and other technical matters.

Of course, when you rely on a ready-made system and ready-made tools, the cost is less than the first type, which builds everything from scratch, in addition to the fact that when you rely on a well-known open source system (such as WordPress) it has the support of many programmers around the world, and therefore you will find a lot of people who have the ability to help you with the necessary tasks on your site. 

Tip : If you want to rely on this model, read well about the advantages and disadvantages of each content management system to know what is most suitable for you, and rely on a reliable hosting service that you subscribe to, and you are the owner of the hosting and you have access to the user name and password (do not make the first and last decision in the hands of the programmer only ).

Section 3: Small Budget People (< $200)

If you have a startup and want to save every $1 you spend and start with the least available possibilities, I will tell you how to start your site in a simple way and bring you a really good return.

We’re not going to cut the budget until we get to poor quality, and we’re not going to spend a lot of money on things that we can do without at the beginning, but we’re going to choose the fewest possibilities we can count on to launch our site.

We will bring ready-made hosting with simple capabilities (Managed shared hosting), then we will bring the content management system (mostly WordPress), then we will install it on the hosting and bring a ready-made template and ready-made tools and then you will install them and thus we will have a ready site in which you depend on ready-made tools and then you customize them as required.

Even if you do not have previous programming skill, as I said, we will rely on ready-made tools to help us create our site.

Exactly like a person who buys a new home and then buys ready-made furniture and puts it in its proper places.

If you are this person, this guide is for you

Through this practical explanation of about an hour and a half, you will learn about the things necessary to launch your site based on WordPress, and in this video I will explain my work to launch a simple site that contains: the home page + services page + contact page + about us page (and you can also build other pages based on on the same tool as in the video)

If you do not have a clear picture yet, write in the comments what you need to create a site and the characteristics you want in your site and I will suggest the ideal model for you, God willing.

 

Abstract |

Do not bother with the budget required of you to create your site or determine the programmer that you will rely on to build your site before you determine your goal of launching your site and knowing the model that suits you in launching your new site .. If you know that you are paying $100, $300, or even $1,000 to create your site For the real interest you get for that money, I don’t think you would ever hesitate to launch this investment online.