Creating a web site must be easy, something you can do yourself over a weekend , right? Your nephew/cousin/admin assistant has just taken a six week class in web design at the local community college, are they now fully qualified to produce that highly polished web site for your small business?
In all likelihood if you take these routes you will end up with a sub standard web site which, at its worst, can be detrimental to your business. It’s much better to call in the pros but what are the advantages of hiring a professional web designer?
To put it simply they know what they are doing. Consider the following
Design
Creating the look and feel of a web site is not just a case of opening Photoshop and playing around with a few pixels. A web designer will understand how to engage your visitors, enable them to navigate effortlessly all this while considering the complexities of coding the design-what is and is not possible. How many pixels wide should the site be, what fonts are web safe, how should the files be saved, optimized for fast download. What are the latest design trends? What type of design will appeal to your end user. A web designer will be continually asking themselves questions as they design.
Coding
Coding involves rendering the design into a form that can be understood by web browsers. A professional web designer will be an expert in HTML and CSS and well versed in platform such as WordPress, content management systems -CMS ( e.g Joomla) and be able to work with any shopping cart e.g PDshop.net. They will constantly test the coding to iron out any bugs and make sure of cross browser compatibility. Your site will look good irrespective of what browser of platform you are viewing it on. They will also remain up to date with all advances in the coding arena so you know your site will not be using outdated techniques.
Launching
The nuts and bolts of making a web site live, registering a domain name, opening a hosting account, configuring email, stats packages. All bread and butter to a professional web designer.
Internet Marketing
Having a site which ranks well for particular key phrases is on the wish list of most, if not all clients. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first step to achieving that goal and this end game will have been in the forefront of the designers mind as early as the design phase of any project. From researching the best keyword phrases, to naming files to optimize the potential of those phrases. What’s considered white hat (best practices) and what not do ( black hat practices) Getting the site listed is the next step, whether through organic ranking or paid placements through advertisers like Google. If social networking is part of your marketing plan your designer will help you implement.
So which route to take, the DIY or the PRO approach?
I can guarantee by hiring a professional web designer you will end up with a far more effective web site.
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