Custom websites are among the most important PR instruments used in modern business. Recognizing the value in effective custom web design brings better awareness and professionalism to your organization, using your website and the internet to its full potential.

Your custom website design team needs to create professional, custom websites that impress your visitors, build brand recognition, and sell products and services. Being closely-knit with the design team, in collaboration with you, using a proven strategy to ensure that the final design matches your specific needs and expectations. Custom web design is just that, custom to your needs. Whether you are selling products online or services to your clientele, your website should reflect that. The internet is a vast and readily used tool, don’t disappoint your visitors, get a custom web site that is designed for you specifically.

The first step to finding the right firm is by discussing your business and its objectives. After you sign your contract, the development of your custom website will begin. At this time, it would be a great idea to supply your designers with information for your website (i.e. copy, pictures, products, contact information, etc.). The development of your custom website should begin smoothly from here.

Custom web design for you and your company is highly important. Websites are an investment, invest wisely in custom web design for better results.

A. Website Design Solutions for Your Small Business
The website design for your small business can be the life or death of your company. Since design is subjective, anyone can instantly be turned off by the design of a website. Nothing says "small time" faster than an outdated and unloved website, but there are solutions for small businesses that don't require large budgets to throw at the website design and development.

Large Design Agencies
If you go to a large design or advertising agency to have your website designed and developed, chances are you are going to pay the salaries of the 50-100 people that work there. Larger design firms usually have a decent amount of talent behind their walls and there tends to be more checks and balances than the smaller firms; ie...designer presents to the art director who then gets the design approved by the creative director.

Small Design Agencies
Smaller firms can usually produce good designs in a timely manner with a decent amount of client interaction, but this option is going to be hit or miss. If a firm only has one or two designers, then you're basically stuck with whatever they can do. The only way to preview the style of these smaller firms is to review their portfolios and see if their work is up to your standards.

Your Best Design Option
The best chance for a small business to end up with a stellar design is to go with a freelancer or a one or two man show. The only problem is how to pick your designer. Many designers, such as myself, who can recommend website design and development services, have worked for larger firms and have a great deal of design experience both in corporate America and neighborhood design.

It is easy for a large firm to get away with charging these prices because they are well established. The trick for the small business owner is to find a designer that is in between fame and rent. The nice thing about a freelance designer is that his or her name is riding on the project as well. A freelancer lives and dies by their design work - just like your small business - and they will do whatever it takes to creates a stellar design that makes client happy.

B. Do Your Homework While In Design Business
The Internet has opened up a promising new potential for numerous small - and large-scale web businesses serving to various work needs around the globe. This web design or development businesses span a number of areas ranging from content creation, link building, and website design to high-end programming and site maintenance. However, it's more difficult to run a web design business online than build a good website. Like all business moves, online businesses also involve a few steps, planning and strategies for better delivery.

To give you an idea, your web design business needs to be framed under these heads:
Finance: pricing your time/work, accounting for it, invoicing, billing, etc.
Legal: contracts, copyright issues, Internet laws, trademarks, etc.
Logistics: office space, computers, relevant software, books and guides, etc.
Documentation and testing: creating proposals, payment terms and conditions, tracking the number of modifications, checking technical issues, load times, browser compatibility, etc.
Create a client questionnaire first. Mention the site specifications in the proposal; and you may also win trust by attaching a story-board to it. Remember, a written contract outlining the lawful scope of work ensures full payment and better client loyalty.

Have a pricing policy for your business, based on the number of pages, amount of time required, number of tools and technologies involved, etc. Include charges (if any) for the kind of modification you’re doing on a running project.

Whether you’re a novice to the Internet-based business world or a technology expert, it’s important to understand what is needed to take your business online. This article is designed to educate business owners on how to navigate the online process and assess an accurate value to Web design services.

Website Design
Before you begin your search for the right design firm, first consider your budget. If a designer claims they can build you a fully functional site for a couple hundred dollars, you can accurately presume that your site will likely be built around a template created by a fill-in-the-blank software application. If that fits your budget, fine—but don’t expect anything original, polished or fail-safe, because such mass-produced sites litter the Web and are typically rife with problems, including deadly slow load times, text bleeding into images, sloppy alignment, dead links and frustrating error messages.

• Next take a good hard look at the company’s portfolio, both its premium designs and its lower-priced examples. If the sites in your price range look amateurish, cookie-cutter, bland or in any way unprofessional, so will your business.

• Test the company’s own Website for design, content and ease of navigation. If theirs looks slick and works well, it suggests they have the resources to create quality work.

• Find out how long the company and/or its staff have been in business. Is the firm fly-by-night, or does its workforce boast experts who have been in the business for years?

• Will they customize your site? A good company can use your current marketing materials, including your business logo, color scheme, literature and graphics to create a site that brands your business perfectly. If you have no such branding material, do they have the talent to create if for you?

• Does the company have sufficient staff to work with you directly? If you’re not satisfied with their work, will the company return to the drawing board until you are satisfied? Do they offer a no-strings money-back guarantee if they can’t please you?

The Supporting Services
In order to take your business online, let’s forget about “bells and whistles” for now and get down to the essentials needed to establish your company on the World Wide Web.

Domain Name – A domain name is your online address (URL), and the right domain name is crucial in enabling your current and prospective customers to find you. That’s why it’s vital to select a memorable, easy-to-spell domain name. Try using your business name if it’s unavailable; if not, try forming a name based on words that describe what you do or otherwise associate with your business. Untaken domain names can run from about $2-30 or more—however if the URL you want is considered a “premium domain name,” which is typically a name in high demand due to its simplicity, memorability and widespread market appeal such as homes.com, cars.com, food.com, etc., expect to pay a premium price. Web Hosting – Web hosting is the service of providing server space to Website customers so they can keep their sites up and running. The server space size required varies from site to site—if yours is large with lots of pages, graphics, traffic and/or shopping options, you will require more space than a 1-3 page brochure site.

No matter what your site’s size or ambitions, one important caveat when choosing a Web hosting provider is to make sure that it provides 99% uptime—companies with long or frequent downtimes mean your site is also down during that period, possibly costing you credibility, customers and sales. Solid companies will post it on their Websites or have a representative who can give you an exact percentage. All reputable companies have their stats available, and no company is up 100% of the time, no matter what they say.

A host offering 99% uptime allows your Website to stay up and running virtually 24/7, assuring your customers that your Internet doorway is always ready for business.

Website Content
The content of your Website is a combination of all the information and graphics on your site, most notably the text. If you feel inspired to write your own content, that’s great. All content should be proofread by an expert in grammar and punctuation before it’s published—otherwise your business will look as if it cuts corners and lacks quality. After all, if you don’t care enough to make sure your Website is professional, why would anyone trust your company to be?

Website Marketing
The first step is to figure out your action plan for overcoming the obstacles to your business growth, such as: How will your site get discovered by prospective customers? 1. Get your site listed in the top search engines – Internet surfers typically use the most popular search engines, like Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. to find what they want using keywords specific to a service or product. 2. Place online advertising in relevant places. If you have the funds, you can pay search engines like Google to place your company at the top of certain keyword lists, so that a random search for say, “running shoes” places your site up top and in bold print. Less expensive options include placing banner or text link ads on the Web pages of companies whose products or services compliment your own. Also, don’t forget to put your URL (Website address) on everything, from your business cards to stationary to the company car, anywhere it will be seen.
If you’re not a writer, hire a professional to write this content for you. Take advantage of people’s love of sending forwards to generate some free publicity for your company.

Maintenance
For example, you might find a Web design service that touts its low prices, but always inquire what that low price includes. Ask up front if your design company offers everything you might need, such as search engine submission, hosting services, marketing consultation services, ad campaign creation, copywriting services, tech support and other elements your company may require to launch your online business. One company may give you a break on your Website design, then charge you a whopping $50 a month for hosting. Does their bargain-priced Website include any other services, like customization, graphics, branding elements or Flash animation if you want them? Will they allow updates to your site when you need them?

A. Build a Website for Your Business in 7 Easy Steps
You are obviously reading this article for a reason, you need a website for your business. In my personal opinion, every small business, large corporation, non-profit organization should have their own website online.

Why doesn't every business nationwide have a website?

1) Layout & Design
Now that you have a feel for what your competitors are up to on their websites, you can start to get together ideas for the layout and design of your website.

2) Find a Professional Website Designer
I would prefer to stay local, but like myself, I have clients nationwide that desire my website design services.

3) Request a Price Quote Estimate
Just like me, many other website designers (atleast the professional ones) will have some way to request a total cost estimate for your website project. This is normally a free service in the form of a web form that will ask you for basic information about your project such as number of pages, timeline, budget, design specifics, etc.

4) Decide on a Website Designer
Once you have received responses back from website designers look over all of them (there may be a lot depending on your area) and choose a designer that gives you the fairest price and expresses and understanding in the result you are going for. Like I said, I suggest staying local and requesting a face-to-face interview. Typical small business websites should only take 5 to 7 business days max from design to publish and should range in cost from $250.00 to $2,000.00 based on specific needs, turn around time, features and other factors.

Make sure your Website Designer offers the following:
Free Quote Request
Is capable of custom website designs
Previews of the work
Design revisions/changes to previews
Satisfaction Guarantee/Money Back Guarantee
Transfer of full ownership once work is completed
Provides a professional invoice for work completed
Offers multiple file delivery options, CD-ROM, uploading to server or zipped file attachment

5) Working With Your Website Designer
Feel free to be open and express your design needs and requirements. Remember, this is your website and you have hired the designer to do the work for you. This is similar to ordering business cards, you will need to tell the designer specifics like layout, page/category names, the goal your website is trying to accomplish and what info you would like on the site. Being specific will help get the design idea across to the designer which will allow him to be more productive and efficient in the design process. In turn, resulting in a more accurate design with a fast turn around.

6) Previewing the Designer's Work
During the website design process, you will be interested to see how far along the designer has come. I call these previews which are emailed to the client for approval of the work. The client can review and refine my work. Once the website design meets the client's requirements and the designer gets final approval, we can move on to the next step which is finalizing the entire website and publishing.

7) Finalizing and Publishing
Finally, once you have given the designer the final approval he/she will create the entire website. It is very time consuming for designers to create entire websites and this avoids investing time and money incase the client backs out. Be prepared with the text (also called copy) and information, prices, descriptions, paragraphs, etc. that you want to display on your website. Some web designers will charge extra to create copy for you, but you can save a lot if you write it out in a Word document or email and send it to the designer. Once the site is complete, the designer may require payment before uploading or sending you the files he/she created. Make sure you get an Invoice for your records and request a hard copy back up if the designer is uploading the files for you.

B. The Plastic Web of Ecommerce Website Design
Ecommerce website design embraces the idea of the Internet storefront. Cash, checks, credit cards, and debit cards are all viable means to handle paying for services, goods or other. When it comes to ecommerce website design, this is an issue that acquires paramount importance.

The importance is highlighted when you acknowledge there are no cash registers or night deposit-drops on an ecommerce website design. Many ecommerce website designs do not limit their payment acceptance to just credit or debit cards, but also feature a way that customers can pay by check or money order. So what goes into the ecommerce website design to increase the functionality of accepting payments over the Internet? A merchant account can be a tough call because unless a company possesses a proven financial track record along with a solid financial backing, chances are the merchant account could be expensive. The official websites are packed with information for developers setting up their ecommerce website design. The drawbacks to independent acquirers are the fees and exclusions that the seller will have to cover. The age of the plastic web means that setting up an ecommerce website design has never been simpler. In order to make the best decisions during this phase of the ecommerce website design, check the fees associated with the merchant account or acquirer. For example, make a chart that compares the fees for application, setup, statement, discount rate, transaction and monthly minimums.

By breaking down these fees, the selection of merchant account will become easier. The determination of fees will also impact the way business is billed, including raising certain prices to absorb the cost of how payment is received. For standard ecommerce website design where the site boasts its own shopping cart and shipping calculator, the fee breakdowns would be rolled into the posted prices. The research will prepare the developer of the ecommerce website design model that incorporates a pricing model.

• Identify Products/Services

• Set Prices

• Determine Shipping Vendor

• Establish Shipping Prices

• Research Merchant Accounts

• Obtain Merchant Accounts

• Give All Data to the Designer

Whenever a web designer gets a web design project, he or she will require to take a step back and go through the research process in order to complete the job. The research process is a tedious process, it determines how well, and successful will the result of your web design. Ideas for web design will share with you how to go through that research process smoothly and obtain results.

One fine day, you received a call from some client and he requests you to design a website for his company.

RETREIVING THE DETAILS:
After meeting up with the client, you get a lot of details that will assist you in your design process. This details applies even when you are designing a personal website.
1. Nature of the Company
2. Client Preferences (Example websites?)
3. Target Audiences (kids? Young adults?)
4. Platform (Flash? Html? Php? Asp? )

1. What are you going to design?
2. What style of design are you approaching?
3. Whom you should design for?
4. How will your design work?

DETERMINING THE STYLE:
For a start, you should base on the client’s description of his company, his nature of the company to give a rough gauge on the design style.
Web Hosting business >> High tech web design, sleek and professional design
Example 2:
Dolls and Toys business >> Kiddy, Girly, Colorful, Fun design

COLOR THEMES:
Having a good and suitable color theme on your web design will give users a pleasing experience while surfing through the web site you designed. One of the important techniques is to get a color chart from your local art store or use some color chooser tools to aid in your color selection. Your color theme will affect the mood and feel you want to create.

Colors also have their own meanings. For example, white is clean, blue is cool and corporate, having a white and blue color theme gives you a clean and corporate web design. Orange and yellow are warm and friendly colors, Grey is cool, combining a Orange-Grey theme will give you a friendly and fun mood. Dark colors are also popular among many, because they easily matched other bright colors. Whether your color theme turns out successful depends heavily on the first step “Determining the style” of your website.

PHOTOS & GRAPHICS:
After getting the colors done, its time to think about the graphics and images. Searching in Google for “stock photos” will give you plenty of results on this. Having a mid-range camera should do the trick as images for website are all on low resolution. 3. Creating Graphics Images – A web design will always need custom-made graphics images. You will need some skills in creating the graphics of your needs, or you will feel stuck while designing. Learn about vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks.

INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES:
Reference sites will give you ideas on usability, color theme, ideas on relevant images, navigation, features and many more guides to work on your web design project. Always consider them as useful references to help you whenever you need inspiration and ideas for your web design.

A. What YOU Should Know Before Getting A Web Site!
Everyday thousands of new businesses make the leap and take their business on line, what about yours?
1. What do I expect my web site to do? There are many types of web sites out there from purely selling products, to purely informational and everything in between. Do you need a one page online resume, portfolio, bio, or online brochure to really get your company’s information in front of the public? No two sites are exactly alike, and because of that, the prices for your web design can fluctuate. This question is one you must ask yourself before you hire a web designer!

2. How much will a web site cost me? What is your budget for your web site? Remember, this is your virtual store front. Honestly, you can find web site design from $35 (if you get this for a quote, and you have any hopes of ending up with a professional site…WALK AWAY!) to $10,000 (good for huge companies that can afford it, but not the best bet for a new business). Realistically, expect to spend from $85-$200 for a one page resume, bio or brochure site and from $300-$1,800 for larger full featured sites, and expect to pay either half or all of it upfront depending on your designer.

Aside from that there are monthly hosting fees that range from $10-$40 per month for a descent sized site. Ask your designer if they offer hosting in addition to designing your site? You will usually get a much better deal, and you already trust them to design your site (I’ll go more into hosting plans and options another time). (example: www.thebestmoms.com) If not, ask your designer if they can get you one? A lot the time, if you are buying a decent sized design job and hosting from them, they will throw in your domain name for free-although, you will have to pay the renewal fee each year which can range from $19-$35 (ask your designer).

3. What’s my web address going to be? People easily forget the hyphens when they remember the address, and you don’t want to be sending business somewhere else. D-using correct spelling; it is fun to play with the spelling of a word, but take in to consideration your audience’s ability to remember the way YOU spelled it as opposed to their natural urge to spell it correctly. It’s your job to get them to your site, not their job to find you, so make it easy. I suggest .com, or .net for selling (ecommerce) sites, but it’s up to you!

4. How long will it take to design my site? If you take longer to get your information (or your words for each page and pictures) it will of course take longer for your site to be up and running. Also, the more complicated your site, the longer it can take-though I’ve not seen a site construction take longer than 8 weeks. Make lists, and write out your ‘blurbs’ (text) for each page. If your designer does not offer writing as a service (ask), you can hire a creative writer online and sometimes you can even barter (trade your products for their services) with creative writers looking to build their portfolio. A lot of work goes into web site design, and so what seems like a minor change in the design plans to you may actually be a major change in the overall design, and some designers will charge you for this because your initial quote is based on their expected design hours. Like any other store, you have to market your site.

One great tool is search engines. Now, how do you get listed on search engines? You want to give your designer a two sentence description for each category or page, and a list of 20 words you think some one would use to find your site for each category. I suggest you ask your designer if they submit your site to search engines automatically or if there is a small fee for this? Simply submitting will not guarantee you top spot on the search engines; especially if you are in an already crowded field-even if you pay the $300 fees some search engines charge.

You can also market your site by putting the web site address on everything-return address labels, business cards, t-shirts, your car, your email signature; put it in your signature on message boards, etc. Most designers have policies about updates, from a monthly update fee only for the months you require updates, to an hourly fee per update. After answering these questions, you are ready to talk to your designer about the fun stuff-the design.

B. Are You Being Scammed By Your Web Design Company?
Does your web design company own you? This may be possible if you've allowed them to host your web site for you and also register your domain name for your company. Web design companies have a lot of control over their clients. This power is usually exercised when a client of a web design company finds a better deal on hosting for their web site and they simply want to switch their hosting provider, or when the "client" wants to upgrade their web site for a better rate than their current web development provider is offering.

- Current web design company sends their client a hefty bill for switching
- The web design company cancels their client’s account
- They may point the domain name to another place

Too much power is given to the web design company. I truly believe there should be a law against web design companies that can be summarized as such: For any domain name registered by the web design company on behalf of their client, the domain name may not be disputed or need to be disputed, the domain name is automatically owned by the client and is automatically bound by their web development contract.

If you are reading this and are in the process of searching for a web design company, please ENSURE that you have a contract drafted, outlining everything you are entitled to and that you have sole rights to your domain name.

See what most business owners fail to realize is that their domain name is as important as registering their business name itself. The same applies for your domain name. It is as important as owning your own company name. How to avoid this "Power Stricken" disaster:

The best solution is to go out and register your domain name BEFORE you hire a web design company. This ultimately gives you the power over your domain name. At any given time, you can go back and log into your "domain name registrant" in order to switch your web site to any hosting company you choose.

95% of all web design projects don't need a large hosting package that costs between $150-$500 a year. You only need a large hosting package if:
- Your web site is 1000+ pages in size

Ask questions when shopping for a web design company! - If you register my domain name, will it state in my contract that I own the domain name under all circumstances?
The FTP allows you to hire another web design company to go in and update your website at any time. Without the FTP information, no one can update your website besides the original web development company or hosting company that you hired.

In Conclusion:
Be weary of web design companies that don't provide contracts for all of their projects. Be careful with your domain name; make sure that in the end, you own all rights to your domain name, not someone else.