Last week, a friend of mine asked me if I thought it was possible to get a good website design for less than the $1500 she’d been quoted by a local designer. I get this question all the time (or variations on it, like “I can’t afford you, but I still want a nice website until I can”), and my answer usually starts with that annoying standby, “It depends,” and goes from there.

Since I know people are interested in finding ways to cut costs when starting out, I thought I’d take a few minutes and outline a cheaper alternative to hiring me or another full-service blog/web development firm. This “how to” post is also part of the “Crowdsourcing Business How To’s” extravaganza at Sparkplugging.

Premium blog design is not for everybody

In case you think I’m nuts (or suspiciously unselfish, which hardly ever happens in the real world), I’ll start by addressing the obvious question: why would I tell you how to not hire me?

Simple. My services are not right for everyone!

Don’t get me wrong—if you and I are a match made in heaven, you will get tremendous value out of working with me. If you’re an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, or represent a business, your investment in my services will generate a great return. My excellent code quality, attention to SEO, and blog savvy easily present a high value that goes on to pay for itself.

However, if you’re doing the web thing as a hobby, or you’re bootstrapping and have no capital to invest (regardless of the ROI), or you’re not sure if you’re going to stick with this business, it’s wiser to hold off on any purchases that aren’t absolutely necessary. In my friend’s case, the site she wants is for an on-the-side business that she doesn’t plan to take full-time for a long time, so her anticipated revenues don’t justify much investment.

Given that you might not be an ideal client for me—yet—I have no problem suggesting something you can do in the meantime. Hopefully you’ll remember me and come calling when you need all the bells and whistles!

Since you’re probably wondering, I’ll define what I mean by “small budget.” I believe you can get an attractive, working site or blog designed for as little as about $800. You may be able to get it done cheaper, but lower than that and I find that the results can be disappointing and inconsistent (sometimes you’ll find a diamond in the rough, but often you’ll just get a ho-hum looking site).

Start by doing your design homework

No matter whom you work with, you’ll get the most bang for your buck when you have a good idea of what you want. I’m not talking about having a specific design in mind (that almost always ends in frustration), but simply knowing your tastes.

An easy way to start is by identifying sites that you find attractive and serve a similar purpose as yours. They don’t have to be in the same industry (and it’s usually better if they’re not), but if you’re looking for a blog design, look for appealing blogs. If you want a site that’s more like a magazine, look for attractive magazine sites.

If you’re not sure where to look, you can get a head start by going through sites that others have identified as good-looking. There are a bunch of “CSS Galleries,” sites that showcase the best designs on the web (as decided by them, usually). Among my favorite galleries: CSS Drive · CSS Mania · Unmatched Style

As you look through the designs, watch for those that just strike you, that seem to resonate somehow. Go until you’ve found maybe 15 of them, and then look for similarities. Do most of them have a similar style (like “sleek and clean” or “grungy” or “shiny”)? If so, narrow down to your favorite 3-5. If not, keep looking until you identify the style that is most appealing to you.

Once you have just a few, make a simple list of likes and dislikes for each design. Think about things like colors, number of columns, advertising (if you want it, and if so, which types and locations you prefer), menu location, that kind of thing.

Create a design brief

A “design brief” is just a document that explains to the designers what you’re shooting for. The more they know about your goals and your desires, the more likely they’ll come up with something you love.

What should go in your design brief? A good starting point:

• A description of the site or blog the design will be used on, including how you intend to make money if you do (e.g. advertising, selling a product or service, affiliate marketing, subscriptions, etc.)
• A link to the site or blog if it exists currently, with likes and dislikes, and notes on anything you’re definitely intending to change
• A link to a high-resolution version of your logo, photo, or any other images you intend to use in the new design, along with any specifics on usage (many new sites will not have any of these things, in which case you can say so)
• A description of your target audience, with as much detail as possible about things like gender, occupation, age, and interests
• A list of the content that will go on the front page (the more detail, the better)
• A short overview of the style you like
• A description of the types of colors you like (pastels vs. earth tones vs. bold vs. bright) as well as specific examples in the next section
• Your list of sites you like (make sure you include the URLs!) with your likes and dislikes
• Anything else you think will help designers understand what you want in a design

You can create your rough draft in any text program of your choice and then copy and paste it in the next step and add links and such.

Set the designers loose

The least expensive way I’ve found to get one great design is to hold a contest (if you are going to need lots of great designs, like I do, it’s easier to find a few great designers to work with regularly, but if you just need one, the “finding” process can be overwhelming).

My favorite place to set up a contest is 99designs. Design contests are all they do, so there are many good designers already using them, making it a lot easier on you than finding designers yourself.

The way it works is relatively simple: you sign up, you buy credits, and you start a contest, using the information you’ve already gathered. You really just follow the steps, but here are a few notes:

• Plan on devoting a good chunk of time to your contest. Setting it up is easy, but you are expected to provide feedback to every designer who enters. Since designers are spending their time without any guarantee of winning, giving them feedback is a reasonable trade-off for the reduced cost. Give feedback every day if possible or you’ll get fewer entries. Feedback is in your interest, too, as it’s public, so your early feedback will be used by all of the designers to create something you like.
• Expect to spend somewhere between $400 and $600, plus the contest fee ($39 as of this writing). If you offer less, you’ll still get entries but the quality will generally be lower, as the best designers won’t consider your contest worth the time.
• Mention the prize amount in your contest title. It catches eyes.
• Pay attention to comments and answer questions. This should go without saying, but it helps the designers help you.
• Understand that in this step, you’re buying a design, not a functional website (that part comes next). Ask for the design in Photoshop (PSD) format.

If you provide detailed information, pay a respectful amount, and generally behave like a nice person, you’ll get good entries. Once you’ve paid for and received the design file, you’re ready for the next step.

Get that design coded!

There are a number of online services that will take your Photoshop file and turn it into a working website, like CSSRockstars. The process is simple: you upload your Photoshop file and pick the options you want, and they give you back working site code.

If you want a WordPress blog theme, they do those for a small extra fee—if you just need a static site, that’s the base package, but for the extra $70, you’re almost certainly better off with a WordPress theme, even if you use it to run a regular (non-blog) website; it just makes things easier to update. You can expect to pay between $149 and $399 depending on the options you choose, but you’ll probably tend towards the lower end.

The final step is to put the site up. If you’re not sure how to do that, we can help; our hosting package includes setup, so that’s an option, or you can find one of the many tutorials on the topic.

Ethical considerations

It should be noted that many designers dislike the contest structure that 99designs uses. They feel that it’s not fair to ask designers to create work without a guarantee of payment (you’re guaranteeing payment for somebody, of course, but not compensating every designer who enters).

I tend to take a fair-market approach to it and figure that if designers are regularly entering contests, then they find the arrangement acceptable. I actually like that it gives skilled designers all over the world a chance to compete for good jobs without discrimination based on location or language.

However, if you’re concerned about this question, I encourage you to do your research and understand the issues. You may find this interview with a contest-enthusiast-designer helpful, as well as the NO!SPEC site, which takes the opposing view.

Understanding the trade-offs

I alluded earlier to the fact that you can pay less if you’re willing to get less. So what are you sacrificing if you go with the above plan?

• Search engine optimization The folks at CSSRockstars are good, but their main focus is on producing functional code that looks like the design you sent them, not going above and beyond and coding for maximum search engine friendliness. Honestly, it probably won’t hurt you a lot in the beginning, but as your competition gets more SEO-savvy, it will become more difficult to be found.
• Online expertise If you need advice on your strategy, feedback on monetization tactics, or ideas about structuring your information, you’ll have to pay for it separately or fend for yourself.
• WordPress experience and setup If you want to use WordPress as the basis for your site or blog (and I highly recommend you do), it can be helpful to work with someone who knows WordPress in and out, someone who knows what it can do and can recommend plugins to get the most out of it.
• Time It takes a fair amount of time and effort to manage the whole process yourself—and frankly, that’s something many people are happy to pay someone else to do. If you have more time than money, it’s probably an advantageous trade-off if you’re okay with the first three on the list.

If you’re so inclined, you can start today based on the information in this post. If you have questions, or any come up as you go through the process, leave comments and I’ll do my best to respond!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 8:20 pm by Sarah Lewis and is filed under Design & Themes, Tips. It's also tagged bells, blog, blogging, buy, code quality, comments, Design, Design & Themes, entrepreneur, extravaganza, few minutes, full time, goals, long time, marketing, match made in heaven, nuts, optimization, planning, quality attention, real world, seo, setup, side business, titles, topic, tutorials, variations, web development firm, WordPress, Writing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.