|
|
|||||
|
Cheap Web Design
If you think it's simply a case of who will do it for the best price, think again. As with many things we buy there are several important factors to take into account. For a moment let's compare setting up a website with buying a house. When you are looking for a new house it's not simply a case of comparing how many rooms you get for your money. In fact there are lots of factors outside of the property itself. What is its location like? How will it stand up as an investment? The same is true of a website. Here are the things you need to consider:
Cost Cost is by no means the be all and end all but in a competitive market place it has to be a decisive factor. Before you start looking you should work out what you can afford to invest in a site. You should look not so much at the one off cost of having it built but the ongoing costs. When you get a quote for having a site built you should ask about ongoing costs. Find out what you have to pay for your domain name, for hosting, what they will charge you for making changes to your site or adding new pages. Also, find out what marketing if any is included in the cost. Hosting Ask your would be designer about hosting. Be very wary of anyone saying "we have our own server". Professional hosting companies have lots of servers running concurrently from different locations so that if one goes down another seemlessly takes over. They also have greater security and fire protection. This means that your site stays up whatever happens. I have known small companies where their own hosting server is kept in the toilet. That is not to say that you should be wary of smaller companies but you should ask them who they use for their hosting. It's far better if they leave this to the professionals and outsource it. Domain Make sure you get a proper domain name. It is important that your domain is recognised as an independent entity. You should watch out for being given a subdomain. www.yourcompany.com is good, www.yourcompany.hostingcompany.com is best avoided. It's also important to find out what domain extension is best for you. Don't let a designer talk you into a particular extension as they may be getting a bulk discount. .com, .net and .org extensions are the top level domain extensions with the individual country codes coming next. Decide if you want to market to a worldwide audience (and risk getting lost in the crowd) or specialise in one regional market (e.g. use a .co.uk or .us extension). Design Design is not just about a page looking pretty. Functionality is more important. Look at the designer's previous work. Is the navigation obvious? Do the pages load quickly? Is text easy to read? Look through their previous work and look at it with a critical eye. Try to find things wrong with the pages. Watch out for templates. If your designer is using templates it not only means that they're doing minimal work for their fee but your site could be penalised by search engines for being the same as other websites. It's much safer to have a site custom designed for you even if it costs a bit more. Accessibility It's increasingly important that your site is accessible to all users. You want your site to display and function properly not only on a PC screen but also laptops, palmtops, PDAs, digital TV services, mobile devices and software for the visually impaired. If your site cannot be used by all of these browsers you are losing a large proprtion of your potential audience. Ask about accessibility and request that your site be built in XHTML rather than HTML (it's on its way out) and that it uses CSS for the styling. Marketing If you just build a site and don't do any marketing it will just sit there and never be seen. This is a mistake that too many people make usually through trying to cut costs. Find out what, if anything, is included in the cost of your design. Is your page optimised for search engines? Do they submit it for you? Will they give you any links? Optimising web pages for search engines is a key part of any site's success. There are companies who specialise in this but if your site is built in a way which makes it unfriendly to search engines there's not a lot they will be able to do for you. This is a crucial part of the design process and should not be overlooked. Support What happens once the site is built? Does your designer just say "that's it, finished" and move on to their next site? You should find someone you are able to talk to about your site and seek advice without charge. A website is an ongoing project and a good designer should never wash their hands of it. Chris Smith works as a web designer, developer and internet marketing consultant. For further information on design and free advice please visit Chris's website - www.chris-smith-web.com">Cheap Web Design (www.chris-smith-web.com">http://www.chris-smith-web.com)
MORE RESOURCES: | ||||
|
|
Transforming A Site From Good To Excellent
One of the challenges of moving a web site up from good to excellent is transforming it from just a bunch of web pages and graphics to an interactive experience. Another term for this is community - a place where people can come to communicate with others.
Do You Make These Common (But Deadly) Website Design Mistakes?
Building a website can be overwhelming, here are some design tips to help keep you on the right path (or is that web?)--- Designing a Frames-based web siteFrames may make the job of maintaining a big web site easy, but search engines hate them. Most search engines cannot find their way through them and end up indexing only the home page.
Welcoming Your Website Visitors
Imagine you're going on a blind date. You've heard wonderful things about this person, and in your heart of hearts you're thinking -- hoping -- this might just be "the one.
A Beginners Guide to Web Page Design
Designing your own successful web page can seem difficult and nearly impossible if you do not do a little research first. The reason you need to know the basics of web page design is because the design of your website will actually influence whether or not people continue to visit your site and ultimately, whether they will buy from you or not.
Hiring The Right Webmaster
The Questions You Should Be Asking ? The Answers You Should Be ReceivingWhen interviewing webmasters, don't let price be your deciding factor. Among webmasters there is a split between those who are skilled in the fine art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and those who are not.
Website Design Considerations
Q: Should I build and maintain my business Web site myself or pay someone else to do the work for me? -- Wesley L.A: When you say, pay someone else to do the work for you, Wesley, I am going to assume that you are talking about hiring a professional Web site designer to do the work and not your next-door neighbor's teenage son.
4 Things That Make A Web Site Great
First you need original content. Content is the heart beat of any exceptional Web site.
Creating a Favicon
Once, I attempted to create a favicon (the little graphic in the URL address box) for this Web site, but never did finish the work until now. I used a free program that allowed me to copy and paste an image to create an icon, but I believe it has spyware so I won't share its name.
Why Choose A Professional Web Designer?
It seems that almost every Tom Dick and Harry do web design in one form or another. Everyone seems to know a friends' brother's son who can build websites for real cheap.
Create Favorite Icon
Favorite icon appears to the left of your link in either address bar or in favorites menu of your browser. It gives your website more personality, better visibility in favorites menu and is easy to create.
Will You Site be a BIG SUCCESS. 7 Reasons Why It Might Not!
With so many new websites going up, it is hard sometimes to tell if your site will be a BIG SUCCESS or an unexpected flop? If you are unsure of whether or not your site will fly with visitors or crash and burn, this article is definitely for you. Now we all know the importance of great service, but if your website doesn't communicate this, then you could be headed for failure.
One-Product Sales Sites: Avoid These Top Blunders
One product, one long web page: this kind of web site is sometimes called a sales letter site or mini-site, and it focuses on one and only one goal, as many sales of that one product as possible. With a one-product sales site, no distractions, no subsidiary goals, such as newsletter signups, are allowed to interfere with that goal.
Elements of Graphic Design for Your Website
We've all seen them. Poorly designed web sites that make you cringe as soon as they load.
Website Design For Small Businesses
There are many different website design companies, offering different facilities such as flash design, however what should a small business look for when seeking an internet prescence?When choosing which company you would like to build your website, there are many factors which you need to take into consideration.Firstly how much is the website going to cost to build and host.
Selling Multiple Products? Avoid These Top Blunders
When your web site sells more than a dozen items, you may face a fierce challenge of helping shoppers find what they are looking for. You'll need to classify products into categories, but these will serve as obstacles and even deal killers if those categories do not match those in the heads of shoppers.
Good Websites Stand Out From The Masses Of Boring, Hard To Travel Sites
Good websites stand out from the masses of boring, hard to travel, and overly commercial sites that now rule our Cyberspace. Interactivity and integrity are necessary for a site to become a hub of activity.
Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site
Congratulations! You've got a brand new site and it's doing pretty well. You check your statistics every day and the hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks very good.
Dont Overdo it!
Have you ever been to site with so much ad clutter that you wanted to just leave? Odds are you have, and odds are even better that you did in fact leave! Always refer back to the KISS philosphy. Keep It Simple Stupid!1.
Hiring a Graphic Designer
You've come up with a great product. You've got the sales letter written for your website.
Website Polls For You And Your Visitors
Setting up a survey on your site is extremely simple and many times just as beneficial, for two main reasons. One, they let you create a more interactive website for your visitor.