You’re looking for an affordable website design for your small business. If you’re like most people, you may start by Googling some businesses and drawing up a short list of website designers to contact. But before you do, it’s a great idea to do a little homework to make sure you’ll end up with a website that won’t cost a fortune and will provide value for your business.

One of the first things you should do when thinking about creating a new small business website is to develop a website design plan template. It doesn’t need to be too detailed at this stage but should include points such as:

• What are the objectives you want your website to achieve?
• What do you want people who view your website to do? For example, do you want them to contact you, provide their details to go on a distribution list, buy products, etc.
• Who is your target audience?
• What are your business’ key points of difference or, in other words, what sets you apart from your competition?

It’s also a good idea when developing a website design plan template to think about the key aspects of your website. Again, you don’t need to go into too much detail but outline points such as:

• When do you want the website completed?
• Do you want a website that you can easily update yourself?
• How many pages are you likely to want and what are they likely to be? For example, Home, About Us, Services, Testimonials, Contact Us.
• Do you have a logo that you want to include on the website?
• What colours do you want your website to include?
• Are there images you’d like to include in your website or do you want the website designer to provide images?
• Will you write the content yourself or do you want the website designer to develop content?
• Is search engine optimisation important? In other words, do you want your business’ services and/or products easily found by customers in search engines such as Google?
• Have you already organised domain registration and web hosting? If yes, your website designer will need the details.
• What features do you want your website to have? E.G. Ecommerce, customer forms, animation, drop-down menus, etc.
• Have you seen other websites that you like, whether or not they relate to your business?

A good website designer will help you complete your website design plan template will very likely have ideas that will greatly enhance your planning and thinking. But by doing some homework before you contact a website designer at the very least you’ll have a better idea of the website you need for your business.

To help you make a great start to your next affordable small business website design, click here to download a website design plan template form.