Most individuals who want to start a website think that they can do it all on their own – without a plan, a proposal, a website design template, and the like. But no, this is wrong. Just as with starting anything else, it is always advisable to have a concrete plan of how you perceive your website to be.
Here are some tips for writing a website design proposal:
Download or Create Your Template
A website design template will give you a starting point with your design proposal. There are many sites online that offer free design templates that you can download – or even customize and create one to suit your website’s needs. The bonus part is that you can always save those templates so that next time, you will no longer dread the long and tedious process.
Some of these websites that offer design templates are the following:
- BeeWits
- BetterProposals
Accomplish The Elements of An Effective Design Proposal
A practical design proposal is more than just a document showing your potential client costs, gains, and other numerical factors. A plan has everything a client needs to know about the launching of a website, its elements, goals and objectives, etc.
The elements of a practical design proposal that you have to complete are the following:
- A cover page letter.
- A problem & solution/recommendation statement. This statement will help show your client that you understand the problem that they wish to address through their website, and that you are around to offer them solutions.
- Costing estimate of project fees, design costs, future financial projections.
- A call to action for your client to convince them to undertake and approve your web design proposal.
The presence of all these elements helps to ensure that your web design proposal is efficient, reliable, looks more professional and convincing.
Make your Website Stand Out
More than all the content written on your proposal, one of the most important things for you to remember is to present a beautiful web design. Your web design should stand out above the rest so that your client will be more convinced.
Here are some ways to make your design stand out:
- Be personal. Do not present a web design that is universal, or similar to the other models that you have made. Although the design templates are more or less the same, you can impress your client more by meeting their specific needs and incorporating them into your design.
(For example: Your client is looking to have a web design suited to sell LGBTQ merchandise and to voice out LGBTQ concerns. Your web design should be tweaked a little to match the personality of the website’s viewers – such as making it fun, bright and colorful.)
- Make it clean. Do not forget to utilize white space. White space is those blank spaces kept white done merely to make an overlapping text stand out. The presence of white space will make your design look professional.
Study on your client before meeting them and apply their company’s goals, vision, mission, the tone of voice and advocacies into your web design to make a lasting impact when you finally present your web design. Doing this will show your client that you are well prepared and serious with your proposal.
Present Achievable and Realistic Goals
You can already present goals to your client upon showing them your web design proposal, even if this will still be the first time for you to meet them. Most clients who undertake the services of a website designer have an unified and common goal.
Your website proposal must be able to achieve the following objectives:
- Gain access to a more significant number of readers and target viewers.
- Be convenient and easy to use by a wide variety of users from the tech-savvy millennials to the more basic elderly population.
- Create income for the website and show how your design can achieve this based on the type of company you are presenting.
Offer Ongoing Support and Maintenance
This factor is one of those that a client will be looking for. After your client approves and undertakes the project from your website design proposal, they will appreciate it more if ongoing support and maintenance is a part of your package rates.
This support statement is especially needed after the website is finally launched and there might be some aspects of the design that may have been missed or overlooked. Your proposal becomes more effective when the client knows that you will stay with them for the long-term and not just in the whole project proposal state.
Now that you have these tips in mind, all the countless hours that you put into your website design process is into good use. All these will help your website design be efficient and successful. A website design proposal is something that you have to do seriously, as a failure in this process can also lead to potential problems in the future.
