Today there are so many options whats the best and most affective way I can get on the web and begin reaching and engaging my customers? Well there is several ways really you can do-it yourself, Hire a web designer to do it for you, or use the many free blog and web site areas on the net. Let’s look at each one a little more carefully.
Let’s start with Hiring a Web Designer to do your web. This maybe for you! As a small business person myself there are times I just get to busy to pay attention to my web. So hiring a web designer is an option. What should you look for? Look for someone you has a passion for web design and is interested in your Idea’s (repeat Your Idea’s) a good web designer is going to listen to you and your Ideas and then start by taking your Ideas and refining them to work on the web. Not all of your Ideas will translate to a good web page but a good designer will bring your ideas to the surface with great understanding.
When talking with a web designer
- ask how are people going to find your web sight? (Designers are going to hate this) but if they say to you we can do S.E.O (Search engine optimization) for an additional fee, you mite want to go on to next designer.
- Your designer should be telling you that promoting your website is important and all so a big part of your marketing campaign.
- Your new site Domain name should be placed on all your publications ,Business Cards and any other external advertising you do( Search engine optimization I believe should be all part of a Web sight that I do for my client’s. After all if you don’t succeed on the web, how dose that help me the designer.)
- You’re designer should be talking with you all the way through, explaining how your domain name is important to the search process and making your text relevant to the pages being created.
- Its not always a good thing to use your business name as your domain you may be placed in High competition for the search engines that would take years to get recognized.
- Your designer should be explaining how important the content of your site is to the SEO process. Making sure you have the right amount of keywords used in your content. (it’s possible to have to many making the search engine flag your sit for irrelevant)
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You can DO-IT yourself or have an employee with the interest do-it. Most Small companies starting out don’t have 2 to 3 thousand dollars to spend on a web design. I Didn’t. That’s how I got started working in the web design field and looking for the most cost affective way to achieve a good working web site. For the DO-IT-Yourself plans I recommend this program I stumbled upon this in 2002 and have been using it ever since. SBI if you want to get a head of the game and build a web sight that works this is the program that will do just that. You can sign up for free and take advantage of the wealth of information and teaching that SBI has to offer before ever spending any money. Hosting and building a web sight with SBI is less then a dollar a day and will walk you or that employee Thur the whole process. SBI is tailored to specific industries to help make the information understandable to what is your interest. Trust Me this is worth your investigating. Compatible with dream weaver and most web building software but not necessary SBI has a host of excellent templates to fit what you need to start getting the news out about your Business.
Another DO-IT Yourself plan is a more traditional means most web hosting companies offer pre-made templates with in there hosting packages to get you up and running in a matter of minutes. Using this type of plan will require you to understand a little more about web dynamics then the previous plan. To be affective you will need a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization. What keywords do and how to use them. A FTP software program to upload completed web pages. (Not completely necessary but time saving) And a little HTML understanding would be nice to.
If you have a good understanding and would like to start out with this route. To help you a long J D Webcrafters offers several Hosting plans at an affordable rate www.hosting-at-jdweb.com . There is a complete Demo of the inner workings for you to see how the hosting interface works. Our hosting programs offer everything you need to get on the web in just minutes, One click installs for over 30 programs including WordPress, Joomla, and Web Studio with templates to fit your needs plus more. You can all so use a web builder on your CPU.
For a good Web design program go to my Open Sorce software Guide for a free NVU web building software suite.
Free Online web sights OK I,m not going to get to involved with this one because I don’t recommend doing this. Most free web sight have there own adds included and make the sight look and feel unprofessional. But with that said if you want to get an Idea on doing your own sight you can play with them to see how things work. (Just please! don’t use them for a good business sight)
If you want to Blog a topic about a product or Idea. I do recommend Google’s blogger its clean and the templates are very professional but it does not replace having your own website . I use Google blog to write about things I’m interested in and single out a topic from my sights to help build another line of traffic. You can find it by clicking on the more button at the Google home page.
