| |
| |
|
Web Design Information |
|
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 - Cheap Web Design (http://www.chris-smith-web.com)
MORE RESOURCES:
Goal-Setting - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function - and that's to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner. 7 Web Site Design Mistakes That Will Lose You Clients In today's world, a web site is virtually mandatory for any successful business. But there are web sites that will win you customers, and there are web sites that will lose you customers. Tips on How to Design a Great Site Have you ever walked pass a shop that, for some reason, you just felt that you had to go in? Maybe it was the décor, or the window display, or the pretty girl, or a combination of all those but something in the shop called out to you, "Come in" and you just had to obey.In the online world, won't it be nice to have a site that buyers just had to buy from, despite themselves? Surfers will be drawn to the "Add to Cart" button that squealed, "Click me!" to them. Creating Your First Website? Your Options Creating your own website is great fun! But how is it done? Well, there are five main options, read this carefully and choose which one you think is best for you!Use software you already have:You may not know this, but you can actually use Microsoft Word to create webpages! This is great, since you can save yourself the cost of buying expensive new software. Just create your document as you would do normally, and then just select "Save As" from the File menu. Recipe For A Good Looking Web Site We've all surfed the web and seen some awful web sites.Sites that never completely loaded. Turn Benefits Into Sales with Streaming Media The "Wow" factor that accompanied the introduction of streaming media on the Web has long passed, and the technology now has to prove itself to marketers. Its' acceptance by advertisers, in conjunction with other rich media technologies, is on the upswing, but it's still not widely used to enhance commercial sites. Website Woes: Top Five Offenders I see a lot of mistakes, but here are the top five offenders you need to correct to give your site a boost. Bad Title. Why Ugly Sites Sell More Than Pretty Ones What the heck is going on lately? Most internet websites I go to now, all I see are pretty graphics everywhere. I see moving images, I see crazy JAVA, things flying around. Website Design Basic Concepts So, what's in a website design anyway? And, how do you get a design that is appealing to the broad and varied tastes of all those Internet surfers out there?This is critical. Your website design is the first impression you make on your customers and visitors. Adding the Right Keywords to Your Website Content You've made your website, added a great title and keywords in the meta tags. That's it, right?Not quite. How Do We Know When Its Time To Redesign Our Web Site? A question we frequently get asked is, "how do we know when it is time to redesign our Web site?" The answer undoubtedly varies.The first thing to analyze is your existing Web presence. 10 Profitable Ways To Recycle Your Content 1. Repackage your web site content in to different products to sell. Give Your Web Wite Visitors What They Really Want - Information! Surfing the internet is basically an information-fest! From intellectual discussions to the bizarre.. How To Choose The Right Web Design Company 1. Size does not equate to competencePeople sometimes assume a company with more money, employees, office space etc will be more capable than one with less. Using Your Personal Website To Clinch That Job! With an increasing number of employment portals emerging, it is apparent that internet tools do help bring the job-seeker and the potential employer together. A sophisticated job search engine enables the job-seeker to have a smaller sample of relevant job openings instead of going through countless newspaper advertisements. Digitalize It! : (Modification of images with tools such as Adobe CS and Corel) Then it was a choice among crayons, paints and palettes for an artist and designer to create art. It was a box of crayons that make one happy designer during his early years of formation. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Webmasters A highly effective website will always reflect its highly effective webmaster. Throughout the years of doing a number of websites, I've seen quite a few effective webmasters all over the web and I would like to share to you their successes by exploring on this topic: "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Webmasters. Usability Lessons from the Hospital Usability isn't only for Web design. It's also applicable in the real world as things aren't always well-designed. The Right Trigger Words CNN.com's designers have gone out of their way to make their workdifficult. Web Site Redirection - How to Implement a 301 Redirect You just created a new web site but want to pass on thesearch engine rankings of the old one to the new one. Whatis the most effective and spider/visitor friendly strategyto implement your web site redirection? You should use a301 redirect.
|
| home | site map | ArticleGecko | A ClashX Production 2006 |
| © 2006 |
