Website Design Services

We Build Websites That Get You More Business Online

Author:John Sammon
Updated on 3/7/2023

Your website is a key component of your marketing campaign. In many cases, a potential customer or client may encounter your company for the first time through the internet. This, among many other reasons, is why it’s critical to have a well-designed website.

When Sixth City Marketing redesigns and builds websites, we aren’t just looking to create a well-designed site (in all screen sizes). Our goal is to do this and to get you more business with our approach with “design for conversion.” Contact us using the form on our website or via phone to learn more about how we can help you get more business.

Recent Work

FAQs That Web Design Companies Usually Get Asked

How long does it take to build the website?
In most cases, it usually takes 12-16 weeks to build a website from start to finish.

Can you help with writing content?
Absolutely, we have a number of different services that we can help you out with including content creation and strategic content creation using SEO.

Do you use templates?
We don’t. We create custom designs for our clients that are focused on improving user experience, growing traffic from search engines and getting more people to contact you. Templates can cut down the cost of building a website, but the cost to maintain them and update them can be more expensive in the long run.

Do you host websites?
We don’t. We’ve found it better to refer our clients to national and more established hosting websites that specialize in the type of website we’re constructing the website in. A favorite of ours is Siteground.com.

How much does it cost?
There seem to be a few different tiers of website design cost. Here are a few:

• 0-$3,500 Range
  You’ll typically get this price range from someone on fiverr.com, someone outsourcing stuff offshore, a freelancer, or a college student. The end product is a functioning website but it usually costs a lot in the long run to keep up or maintain for a lot of reasons. Everyone has a budget and we don’t shame anyone investing at this point. The message we have for you at this price range is buyer beware.
• $3,500-$8,000 Range
  At this level, you’ll typically get a firm that will buy a website template at a website like themeforest.net and customize it for you. You may get some copy writing at this rate, too. Most firms who take this approach are smaller web design firms, firms that outsource the design and development offshore, or freelancers. The end product is usually a functioning website that looks professional. With this type of investment, you’ll want to have the buyer-beware mindset depending upon the firm. The other downside to this option is the site isn’t customized to the point where it takes into account your target audience and is therefore designed to get a better response. This type of option may cause problems in the long run because of the use of templates, too. It’s definitely not as risky as the previous range.
• $8,000+ Range
  This is the range that we are in. I elaborate on our approach below, but you get a custom-designed site that is built to get more traffic and response.

What Typically Comes With Web Design Services

If you haven’t been through a formal website redesign process, there’s a lot to understand on what to expect. Here are a few things that we typically include as part of our services:

1. Initial Discovery and Understanding Phase

   We start our process by listening. We start by discussing what the current challenges are with your existing website and what your goals are with the new website. Typical challenges that customers or clients experience with their websites that lead them to redesign their site include:

   • Lack of the ability to update their website via a content management system (or area that they can log in and edit and update content through a Microsoft Word like interface)
   • Design isn’t mobile friendly
   • The site design is outdated (typically people redesign their site every 3-4 years)
   • Branding, leadership or ownership has changed
   • They’ve merged with another company
   • They don’t like their current website editor or content management system
   • Their website isn’t SEO friendly
   • They aren’t getting sales or leads from their website

   We’ll follow up with questions about your target audience, goals and websites that you like. Our goal is to move into the design phase ready to provide photo mock-ups that emulate the site in both desktop and mobile.

2. Design Phase

   We have two stages to our design process. There’s a wire-framing stage and also a design stage. Here is a little bit more detail on what to expect in each phase:

   • Stage 1: Wire-framing

     The wire-framing phase is best described as sketching out the layout of key pages of your website. This is done with any color or graphics (Just squares or circles). We’ll typically outline the layout of your homepage, common inner page (like the about us page) and a blog page (if it’s necessary). The exercise is critical to achieving the goals of key pages as you can position objects to be larger to draw the eye.

   • Stage 2: Design
     Once you (the client) have approved the wire-frames, we’ll move into mocking up the design via Photoshop, Illustrator or a general design program. The product we produce and hand off to the client to review is what the website will look like. We mock it up as a photo because it’s easier to make adjustments to in the photo editing program rather than in html and css. In this phase, we’ll present the designs and walk you through the rational around why we created the site. At this point, we’ll address any questions and concerns that the client has and make adjustments where needed.
3. Phase 3: Site Map Planning

   This is the stage where our team will strategically reshape the structure of your website. We’ll create a hierarchy of the pages that make the most sense to improve the user experience and get people to the area of the website that they are most interested in. We’ll also review your website data and make recommendations in line with how people are navigating your website now. Finally, there’s another level of strategy involved in this step that pulls in principles of SEO. Our final recommendations will include a structure that is conducive as possible to drawing people to your website from search engines.

4. Phase 4: Development

   This is where our web development team will take your design and integrate it into the website content management software. Our team will work to make the site align with the mock-ups and also populate the website with the content and graphics.

5. Phase 4: Testing and Review

   We’ll present the website to you (we’ll send you a link to our development server that is hidden from search engines) and walk you through the key areas of the website. Your team will review the site and provide any edits/feedback. We’ll move to the final phase which is the site launch upon your approval.

6. Phase 5: Site Launch

   Our team will take the appropriate steps to migrate the files from the development website to the live environment. Typically the website files, graphics and database are moved. We’ll run through our website launch checklist which incorporates reviewing key elements to finalize the switch and also preserve any SEO equity that your previous iteration of your website had.

Contact Our Experts Today

Contact Sixth City Marketing today to give your website a new, clean look designed to maximize the potential of every website visit.