Often, a website is a key part of any business and is a mightily powerful tool for any company. However, you can be forgiven for thinking launching an effective website will be a costly process. That is far from the case and with the correct knowledge and planning, it’d actually possible to build a website on a budget.

Planning your website is vital as failure to do so can end up in the site costing two or three times more than expected meaning all important post-launch marketing activities need to be scaled back, impacting on the overall running and launch of your business in general. To set a realistic budget, you must decide what the overall objective of your site is, what do you want it to do?

Consider the design you want to go for, is a standard WordPress theme the one for you? Or, is a custom design more suitable? You also need to decide whether you wish to use your own photos for your site and whether those photos need taking, or if stock photos would fit the bill. In regards to content, how much unique content your site requires needs to be worked out and whether it will be easy or hard to write. If you’re planning to outsource a writer, it’s essential you check out their credentials as you don’t want to throw money at someone who’s going to do a poor job.

Similarly, whilst creating text content can prove difficult and may require a writer from outside of the business, creating images can also prove expensive and time-consuming, thus not convenient when trying to launch a site on a budget. With this, it is wise to be tight with your cash when choosing imagery, though being too tight may do more harm than good has text-heavy pages will result in frustrated and bored visitors who look elsewhere. In addition to this, stock imagery will result in an unimpressive site that looks a thousand others on the market, be unique! Take your own photos, hiring a trainee photographer is likely to result in some pretty impressive photographs and won’t cost you an arm and a leg, and if it’s imagery you need creating or designing, look for a trainee designer.

In terms of site lay out, there a ton of sites out there offering ready made layouts for a single web page, or even a series of integrated pages for a site. There a number of great templates available that include the likes of banners and placeholder images that allow you to visualize what the page would look like once it is populated with customised content. It’s definitely worth taking the time and comparing free templates. Depending on the design, many free website templates can be edited and reconfigured to alter the layout to best suit your business, this can be done using various colour schemes and different layouts. Though, use the templates correctly by choosing ones of high quality, created using well-written code and compliant with current standards to ensure that your site is compatible with search engine optimised so your audience can find you with ease.