1. What should I look for in a web designer?
2. What types of information or material should be included in my web site?
3. Are there any "don'ts" - things I should avoid?
4. What can I expect to pay for web site hosting?
5. What can I expect to pay for web design?
6. Can I maintain my own site's content after the site has been created?
7. How do I get my site listed on the search engines?
8. Is it worth paying for premium or pay-per-click search engine listings?
9. If I want to allow customers to "shop" for my products or services via my web site, what do I need to know or do?

The first thing to look for is a web designer who is a good communicator. Good communication between designer and client can make the entire process more effortless. Depending on how large or complex your web site is going to be, if the web designer is also going to be responsible for coordinating the effort between themselves, you, and any additional service providers (e-commerce or hosting providers, for instance), you will also want a designer who is an experienced project manager.

You will also find it easier to work with a designer who has a good blend of superior technical and design skills, AND has a good understanding of business and marketing skills. A web site is not just about great technology, it's also about helping the client company develop a site that is a perfect fit for your overall business and marketing strategies!

If your budget is small, it may be very tempting to choose a designer based primarily on the price they will charge -- I've known a number of business owners whose first site was designed by a friend or relative who was "just starting out" and therefore would work cheaply or even for free. And the resulting site looked like it was designed by an amateur. It's true, you do get what you pay for -- so don't make price the primary deciding factor! Check the experience of the designer - they should be able to produce examples of a number of web sites they have designed for other businesses. DO look at their other client sites and decide if you like most of them. If the designer's style is compatible with your tastes, chances are the designer will create something you will simply love!

In large part, what is included in your web site will depend upon your industry as well as your marketing goals and who your audience is. However, some basic things to include (which, believe it or not, are sometimes overlooked!) would be: having your company phone number and a contact email address easily accessible; including something about your company philosphy or vision, perhaps even a history of how your business came into being; and descriptions of your products or services.

Additionally, many businesses include: brief bios with photos of key team members or company leaders (especially important for service businesses but also a nice touch for product-based businesses); a media area for press releases or links to media articles on the company; a "Contact" page that contains complete contact information (addresses of the headquarters and often additional locations, plus phone numbers and email addresses); a client list and/or testimonials from clients; resource lists; white papers or technical articles that showcase company expertise; or even quizzes and questionnaires.

In deciding what to include and what to leave out, you want to strike a balance between showing your prospective customers what you can do for them, and not overwhelming them with too much information. After all - you want them to have a reason to contact you to learn more, don't you?

Yes! Here are a few of my own pet peeves in web design:

• Sites that use "frames" technology - it's outdated and also prevents the search engines from finding your site;
• Sites that "dump" information on the visitor right on the home page - the home page ends up being so cluttered it overwhelms the visitor;
• Sites with poor navigation between pages that makes it difficult to move around and find what you want;
• Sites that don't have contact information easily accessible;
• Sites that focus on flashy technology but really have no substance in terms of content or message;
• Sites that focus on flashy technology that doesn't work properly or causes the site to be slow-functioning;
• Sites that have a design or content that clearly hasn't been updated in years (stale and neglected) - this shows the company either doesn't care, doesn't take having a web site seriously, or perhaps is in financial trouble because they don't invest in continual improvements to their site.

In a nutshell, anything that diminishes from your visitor's ability to have a wonderful, effortless experience in using your site -- that's a "don't"!

This will depend partially on the size of the site, some of the features, and how much traffic you might expect the site to receive.

If your primary purpose for your site is to act as your company's "brochure" and your presence on the internet, and you are not incorporating features such as shopping cart technology, then basic web site hosting fees will probably range anywhere from $10/month to $35/month. If you are hosting multiple domain names, you will pay extra for that in most cases. If you have a site where you are getting a LOT of traffic, you may be charged extra for that because the added traffic means more overhead for the hosting company (gee, what a great "problem" to have!)

Then, when you add in things like e-commerce/shopping cart functions (which have a very broad range of prices and is too complex a topic to address here) or other "extras", this will add to your costs.

As you define your requirements for your web site, you can then research your hosting options and related costs. I then recommend you set aside budget funds annually to cover the recurring costs of hosting, e-commerce, and so on.

Here again, we're dealing with a very broad topic that is influenced by factors such as the experience of the designer; whether the designer works solo or has a larger design company (higher overhead means higher billable rates); and specialty features such as Flash technology, e-commerce, fill-in forms, etc.

For an experienced web designer with at least 5 years of solid experience in designing sites for business, you should expect to pay hourly rates from $75 and up. The more experience the designer brings to the table, the higher the rate will naturally be.

A web site that is built based on existing templates is a good way to control costs if you are operating with a very small budget of under $2,000. For custom design of a site of 20 pages or more, you should expect to pay a minimum of $2,500 and may pay $5,000, $10,000 or more depending on the level of graphics design expertise involved. Large corporations with very extensive complex web site literally pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to create, update and maintain their sites.

This is a question I am often asked, especially by solo professionals or very small businesses. I completely understand the motivation -- saving time and especially money, which is key for a small business.

However, updating content on a web site is NOT like updating the text in an email or a Word file. It requires a specific skill set, starting with HTML (and potentially other programming languages as well). Although you can learn basic HTML quite easily with a few weeks or months of effort (and a great how-to book or a night school class), being able to know how to USE those skills in the high-level, creatively demanding ways that sites are now designed, takes years of practical experience -- including knowing what NOT to do. Even something as seemingly innocent as accidentally deleting a letter or punctuation can completely destroy one of your existing web pages!

Additionally, unless you really want to be in the web design business or unless you are someone who genuinely ENJOYS learning new things on your own and "tinkering" with something new, learning solid web design skills is time consuming -- and your time is worth money, too! In most situations, your time will be much better spent on business development and serving your customers -- so why not just hire someone to maintain your site material and save yourself the headaches?

Search engines -- an important part of having a web site is other people's ability to FIND it, right? Yet this has now become such a complicated technical area that most web designers (myself included) no longer offer "adding your site to the major search engines" as part of their services. There are now entire businesses set up to handle this service.

The cheapest and easiest place to start is actually something you might decide to do yourself -- you can make a list of the major search engines (with a little research you can determine which these are) and then find out what is required if you want to add your site to their listing. Some will allow you to do this with just a few steps and for free; others have a lengthier and more costly process to get listed. But, this IS something you could choose to do on your own and is a basic place to get started.

But there's more to this game, and this is where it gets sticky. There's getting listed (the above process) and then there's the issue of how far down the results list your site appears when someone types in some search keywords. Determining WHAT keywords your target audience is likely to type in is a bit of an art form. And, you need your web designer or a search engine expert to "embed" or place those keywords within your web page files, so the search engines can "index" them when they are adding your site to their listings.

Consequently, you'll want to consider just how important the search engines are to your overall web site/marketing game plan. For some businesses, it's not important and you might be able to settle for adding your site to Google, Yahoo and a handful of others. But for other businesses, getting a prime listing on a search engine becomes a much bigger project and financial investment (see next item). If you're in the latter group, then you should locate a reputable search engine expert.

Note: ignore the spam mail you may receive, offering to list your site on the search engines for a small monthly fee. These are nothing but scams!

Check my Resources page for some additional links to search engine resources.

Again, this is a judgment call, and a decision you may want to make only after consulting with a search engine expert. For some businesses, it's often well worth the additional expense; for other businesses, the payoff won't cover the costs.

This is another area where there are a myriad of choices, and what you choose will depend on what you're willing to spend. Here are some of the most common, listed in order of easiest/cheapest to more complex and expensive:

• Simply list a phone number and email address where people can contact you to order. You'll handle the order process directly rather than people using the site to place the order.
• Have a faxable/mailable order form available for download on your site (usually in Adobe Acrobat .PDF format). Again, people can use your site to see your products and prices, but will use this "low-tech" option to order.
• Have your web designer set you up with some simple links from your site to a service such as Pay Pal. (www.paypal.com) Pay Pal is widely used by web sites and Ebay auctioneers as a means of allowing people to pay by credit card or e-check, but where the merchant doesn't want to (or can't) obtain their own merchant account from another source (getting a merchant account isn't always easy). When Pay Pal receives the payment from the buyer's credit card, they deduct their fees and forward the balance to the bank account you specify when you enroll. Their fees are competitive too, so this is a quick and easy solution, especially if you only have a small number of products or services. The downside - if you want to edit your Pay Pal product/service descriptions frequently, this is a little time consuming and may require your web designer to update the links from your site to Pay Pal's.
• Use a shopping cart hosting company (example: Professional Cart Solutions). This may take many forms: some will allow your web site to be hosted elsewhere and all the shopping cart people do is provide the means for you to set up your shopping cart, load up product photos and descriptions, and accept payments. Others may offer the option of having your full site, including the shopping cart/catalog portion, with them; others may require you host everything with them. There are many, many such service providers. You will need to do some homework or get some recommendations from your web designer - he or she may have a personal favorite!

Copyright © 2005-2007 Lisa Taylor Huff. All rights reserved.
Get The WOW!™ is a trademark of Lisa Taylor Huff.
Read the privacy policy, disclaimer and site usage statement before using this web site.