We’ve all been there. It just needs some small adjustments, just a little tweaking, just a few tiny things we didn’t think of earlier. Next thing we know, our arms are stuck to the tree, half the yeast we forgot to put into the bread dough earlier is decorating the wall next to the mixer, or the bill for that website is getting out of hand.

We’ve had customers who approached their sites just like this, without a plan. What they wanted may have seemed simple to them, but without starting from a solid plan, those necessary little adjustments add up. When hiring a company to develop a site, it’s important to be as thorough as possible. It’s too easy to tell the developer something you want, yet completely overlook huge chunks of what the site does or could do.

Say you want a blog. You could leave it at that, but developers need to know more—they need to know what you want that blog to be able to do. Do you want video posting capability? How about a WYSIWYG editor? Sure, it’s possible to add things in later, but every detail the developers aren’t given from the start is an extra, higher cost for you to eat later.

If that seems overwhelming, well, sometimes it can be. For that reason, we always try to help our customers plan through their projects. We like to tell you about small things that could add up to big costs, or the uses you might have for different features, all before anything is set in stone. We don’t want you to be surprised by a lack of functionality or an unexpectedly high price tag.

The better and more thorough the plan, and the sooner we can get it together, the quicker and better the end result will be. If we plan for the little things from the very beginning, we needn’t waste any time or money fixing or adding them after the fact.

And less time and money spent tweaking your site’s features means more time and money for all the other important little things in business and life.