Design a Website, hire someone or do it yourself?

To design or not design is the question that a lot of people ask themselves but the answer may or may not be so simple.

There are several factors you have to look at if you are going to design your own website and although there are several tools you can use some of these may have a steep learning curve for you and still not produce the results you want.

Designing a website is not some secret code locked away and only accessible by those that can break it if they are wise enough, anyone can design a fairly good website if they have the right teaching, patience and time. If you have nothing but time on your hands and you are willing to learn then you may be ok.

As mentioned above you will need software to design your website this may be programs like Photoshop (for graphics), Microsoft FrontPage (not recommended) or Macromedia Dream Weaver (the lesser evil of the w.y.s.i.w.y.g. “what you see is what you get” programs) or you can just do things the easy way and use notepad to hand code your website.

You will also want to take into consideration if you want to use HTML or XHTML/CSS HTML might be easier for a beginner but XHTML is so much better, less code, controlled by style sheets and much more search engine friendly. I would recommend that any person that is just getting into designing websites should learn XHTML and stay away from the old school thinking of HTML and page layouts controlled by tables.

Learning this may take time that you don’t have if you are a business owner wanting to get your presence on the Internet established soon so it can bring in revenue for your business. As a business owner you may want to visit design websites of companies specializing in eCommerce design and Search Engine Optimization just so you can get the full scope of what you need.

Finding the right company to design your website will require research on your part as you don’t want to just “pick one” you want to find out their business methodology, work ethics and simply see if you can communicate well with them, if you don’t have good communication with your website designer your project and future upgrades/additions will be a virtual nightmare.

Once you choose a website designer don’t expect them to be a mind reader, there are no crystal balls in this industry so you must give explicit details of what you want your website to look like, how you want it to function and what your overall goals are.

Hopefully this has given you some food for thought in the direction you need to go and if you do need to hire a professional website design company then please contact us at 276-591-3230 and let’s talk, you may like us and decide we are the perfect match for you!