Website design & development

Website design and development can be both costly and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. An appealing design will reflect on your business or organization, but it won’t do you any good if your website can’t be found on the web. That is why we recommend researching keywords first so as your site is designed it is also being optimized for search engines as well. After you find which keywords are most effective, there are many different options available to develop your website:

• Develop it yourself. This would give you complete control over your own website and could save you money in the long run. The down side would be the cost of the software and the time needed to learn how to use it.
• Pay someone to design and develop it. This might the most expensive option, but might be the best choice if you want a unique look. There are a lot of good website design and development companies, but unfortunately a lot of poor ones as well.
• Use an on-line wizard (such as the one we offer in our website hosting packages). This would be the option to choose if you need to get something up fast and cheaply. The drawback here is the limited amount of customization
• Or choose a design from a template and customize it to fit your needs. If you don’t have to design the site from scratch, the time to develop your site and the costs involved are greatly reduced. And you can then customize your template to create a website that is unique and tailored to fit your needs.

Whatever choice you make, there are some important considerations to be made before you create your website:

• What do you want to accomplish with your website? If your answer is too broad or vague, it is unlikely you will accomplish your goals.
• What distinguishes your website or business from your competitors? With so many competing websites you must stand out from the crowd. This is also a big factor for search engine optimization.
• Who is your audience? The answer to this question will help you in deciding how you want your website to look as well as what content it should have.
• What content will you offer? If you have answered the questions above, the answer to this question should be much clearer.

Download our website design worksheet or fill the on-line form. Once you have done the preliminary work take a look at some web templates. Even if you decide to design the site yourself or go have a professional design your site, these will at least give you an idea of what you want. We recommend these websites: they offer numerous well-designed templates for a very reasonable price.

• Template Monster offers an array of templates from basic html and css to fancy flash designed templates. For optimization purposes we generally stay away from the flash sites.
• 4templates is a more affordable option and doesn't offer as many templates.
• BoxedArt offers an array of templates and also graphics for customizing your site. But instead of paying for each template they offer a yearly membship which might be a good deal for those doing more than one site.
• BigStockPhotos sells good quality royalty-photos for a very reasonable prices ($1.00-$2.00 per low resolution downloads).