Setting a budget for your web project can be challenging because there is so much you want to do!

We will suggest some concrete steps you can take to figure out what is most important to make your next web project a success.

Set your Business Goals

What do you want to gain from this web project?

It's a good idea to set short-term and long-term goals, such as the goals for 1 year as well as 2 and 5 years from now. This gives you a general direction of where you intend to go with your website.

We recommend sitting down with your team of stakeholders and going through the goals together. We have a handy guide that can help this process along.

What is your Ideal Budget?

If money were no object, what would you spend on a website?

Even if you can't fit it all in now, the ideal situation gives you the list of features you would like and provides good goals for the development team to hit.

What is your Expected Budget?

If you don't have the resources you want quite yet, you can work with your development team to prioritize. To meet the budget limits, your development team can help you find the best solution that fits within your budget.

Sometimes the best solution is one that fits for the short-term until you have enough resources for the long-term solution.

How Does this Apply?

If your actual budget is lower than hoped, then your development company can swap out different technologies to meet your budget and feature requirements.

When one of our clients, Rocky Mountain ADA, came to us, they asked for quite a few features. After they gave us their budget, we had to decide the best way of getting them what they needed while staying within budget.

Here are some of the features we built for them:

• Section 508 and WCAG Compliant - They are an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) site, so they needed the site to work for screen readers and other tools.

• RWD (Responsive Web Design) - The site we built had to work on mobile devices.

• Browser support back to Internet Explorer 7 - They knew the needs and behaviors of their audience and delivered the tools to serve them.

They needed some features that are normally expensive, but our team built a secure and sustainable site that stayed within budget.

In Review...

The right budget means finding a technical solution that matches business goals and resources. It's about picking the right technology for each stage of your business. You don't have to have all the resources right away, but you do need to maintain focus on the business goals.