Web Design

Alright, so you have hosting, now you need to build a Website. Web Design is far from a simple undertaking, so before you being building and get yourself frustrated, We recommend you answer the following questions...

1. What is your budget? If you are going to pay for a website, how much can you afford. Remember that every company out there will offer you as many add-ons as they can in attempt to get every last dollar from you. You need to set aside a reasonable budget up front, do not go broke on your website, only spend what you can afford, and remmber that you will need money for advertising if your starting a business.

2. What do you wish to do for your website, is your site a business? is your site a family site? is your site informational?

3. What do you need to get from your website? Do you need online forms? Online email links? Shopping carts? Payment gateways? SSL (secure socket layer, required by most credit card companies in order to accept online payments)

4. How much can you build of your website yourself? Every hosting company will say that their web design tool is easy to use when you ask them. The truth is that if you don't know what your doing, your website will reflect this. However, just because your website isn't the greatest in the world, if properly marketed and coding errors are kept to a minimum it can still turn a profit. If you can build a reasonable portion of the site yourself, or can hire some starving college student off craigs list to do it for you, you've got an edge up and can save alot of money.

5. What sort of add-ons do you want your site to have? Flash Video? Music Player? Games? There is no end to what you can make your site do, but beware that Flash and Video and Music cannot be read by Search engines, so having an entirely flash website while very cool looking will hurt you when it comes to marketing your website. You can have the pretiest website out there, but it won't help you a lick if you can't market it.

Ok, so now you have a basic idea of what you want. I can tell you right now that you will pay on average of about 100 U.S dollars per page. You will find that it varies around this total, unless you can find package deals where they throw in add-ons that add value to your website.

No, matter what you do for your web design, remember to always save a minimum of 300 - 500 dollars for advertising, the more you have the better off you will be. A properly SEO'd website will make a profit off of any website no matter how poorly designed.