Monday, December 29, 2008

Designing Your Own Business Website Will Cost You

By Stephen Grisham, Sr.

Designing your own website may seem like a good way to cut costs when starting up a new business, but in reality, the process of learning to design a poor website yourself can cost your business time and money in sales in the long run.

The cost of a website design professional is quickly offset by the time and money a professional designer will save you. It's important for a business owner to consider what costs he might incur in sales if he neglects his other business duties to build a website. You should consider how much your time is worth, and how much time you're really willing to spend putting together a website.

Up front, HTML seems easy enough, but that's not the only programming languages. There are literally dozens out there. Do you have time to learn them all and make an fantastic website? Doesn't your business deserve more than a "Dear John" pre-formatted website? YES! This is where the web design masters come in.

A web site designer should at least be proficient in the four best-known web programming languages, which are HTML, SHTML, Java, and CSS. Most professional designers with a lot of experience can work with many more languages, which can help you get a better website, but the more training a person has, the more the design will cost.

If you are on a tight financial rope, your business can always consider hiring a student as a designer. Most 2 and 4 year colleges have programs for web design, and there are many skilled students looking to build their portfolios who will build your website for free or very cheap

Next, you need to consider what your site is going to be and what you need it to do. The more features on a site, the more room and bandwidth it will eat up on your server. You need to consider your space limitations when designing your website.

Some designs will require programs. If you have a highly skilled designer who is very expensive, it may be cheaper to buy a pre-built module for some parts such as your online shopping cart. On the other end, a student may not know how to build a bomb-proof shopping cart, so a module will be needed to prevent scripting errors.

Nobody wants your site information or the private information on it to be stolen or misused,, so one of the the most important features, if not the most important feature of any website is the safety and security of your customer's private information. . You need to be sure that your webmaster will give you support for the occasional, albeit entirely unavoidable emergency call.

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