Taking your Business to the Web

Step 3: Design & Build Your Website

If you have knowledge of web design and have a keen eye for design, it may be worth designing the website yourself (or a skilled employee within the business).

However, always remember that people may perceive the quality of your website to reflect the quality of your business.

Many people build websites using Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage depending on their preference (Dreamweaver perhaps more advanced).

Books to help you design your own website are also available at Amazon.com.

There are also free Web design tutorials at W3 Schools Online Web Tutorials.

b) Outsource to a Web Design Company

Those of you that do not have the skills or/and time to design a website may consider outsourcing the design process to a professional web design company (costs will vary). A web design company will either:

i) Design your website and hand it over to you on completion where you will administer the website from then in (i.e. no further contact with the web designer).

ii) Design your website and will continue to work with you on a long term basis to make changes when necessary and suggest future web solutions.

Ideally, point (ii) is most effective, as a long term relationship will allow the web design company to continually come up with new solutions to push/develop your website to new heights. However, even if you would prefer to have the website back in your hands once completed, it may still be worth maintaining a relationship with the web design company in case you need images, pages or alterations made in the future.