7 money-saving web design tips

Web design within reach

Whether you're talking about building a new website from scratch, redesigning your existing site, or just rolling out some new killer apps, you're going to be looking at a rather large bill once a team of designers and developers finish bringing your vision to life. It's just the nature of the beast -- professionally built websites aren't free, even if some of the best tools around are so-called free-ware.

But whether your budget is $10,000, $50,000, or so big you don't even want to say, it pays to watch every penny because keeping prices in line will have a direct impact on the quality of your website. After all, a website is never really finished because technology changes too quickly, so there's always more you'll want to do. Having room left in your existing budget -- or avoiding huge budget-overruns -- will give you the freedom you need to launch the best website you can.

To help you make the most of your web design budget, we reached out to a handful of agencies that specialize in building websites for major brands. We asked those agencies what their clients could do either ahead of time (i.e., before hiring the agency) or during the project (i.e., how they managed changes, gave notes, etc.) to keep costs from going beyond the agreed-upon price. Here's what we found.