Why Sharing Your Budget Helps
If you are seeking WordPress development work, odds are, you have a rough figure in mind about what you’d ideally be spending to get said work done. However, I frequently encounter what feels like hesitation in sharing a project budget. On my inquiry forms, I have a budget field and I would say 8 out of 10 times, it is skipped / left blank.
Why I Ask About Your Website Budget
There are a variety of approaches that can be used to get to any given endpoint of a website project that also have implications in design and development hours and thus, overall project costs. Within WordPress itself, one of the first major splits in the path are whether you use an existing theme or a custom theme. If you have a small budget for the overall project, but you are looking to accomplish bigger features like e-commerce or similar, then you’re most likely going to be limited to using an existing theme. If you have a more substantial amount you’re willing to invest, identifying a custom solution that meets your needs is likely a better choice than theme modification.
Ultimately, I’m looking to present you with a good solution that is within your budget, if at all possible. If you have a $10,000 budget, but you’re ultimately describing a $5,000 project, I wouldn’t quote it at $10,000 because you’re willing to spend that. However, it may open up conversations of something that could be added to improve the overall project or better help achieve the overall project goals outside of what was in the spec, if you have additional to invest in your web presence. It’s more of a suggestion of how to best optimize your investment than anything else.
On the flip side of that, if I know your budget is $5,000 and you’re describing a $7,000 project, it allows me to try to work with you to take what you’re ideally looking for and figure out if it’s possible to get it within your budget. Maybe that’s making some changes to overall functionality and pushing more complex pieces to a later phase or a similar action.
Knowing your overall project budget helps to identify the approach that would be the best fit with that in mind. If you compare it to when you go car shopping or house hunting, you have a budget in mind to avoid wasting your valuable time on a bunch of options that aren’t a good fit. Sharing a website budget cuts to the chase and helps most efficiently identify great solutions that work for you.