Small Business Web Design

Every business today needs a website.

Well practically every business I can think of anyways!

With the ease and affordability of creating websites, it still suprises me how many businesses either have no web site at all, or something that looks 'Maw and Paw' ('Maw & Paw' is my personal term for amateur looking websites that maybe were designed by the owners of a bait and tackle shop 1 hour after learning HTML).

Websites are cheap.

Domain names are $9/year and hosting can be had for under $50/year.

And websites are not hard to maintain at all.

So when getting a small business web site designed, you have a few options:

Do it yourself:

This can be fun and challenging, and you really can do it yourself.

The problem is, that it actually takes a really long time to get good at all of the aspects of website design.

There are many elements such as:

Graphic design and logo design
Creating the template and structure of the website
Doing search engine optimization
Adding a payment processing system (if needed)
Maintaining and adding new products to the site

And probably half a dozen other factors

So, if you are going to go the route of making your own site for your own business, you can do it, but if you want to do it right, be prepared to spend at least a year learning everything you need to learn.

The education can be cheap...after all, you can read books at bookstores and buy books on website design...But many of these books are outdated and out of touch with real ecommerce.

You might be better of purchasing interactive, video learning materials online from websites. In these videos, you can watch and learn on your computer screen.

Option 2: Hire someone:

You can always find a local website designer to create a site for you, but keep in mind that the local website designer may not be the most talented one around.

They can probably do great looking sites but maybe lacking in other essential skills.

It is good to keep in mind that while you may hire 1 person to do your logo, you may hire yet another person to build a website using that logo, and yet another person to do website optimization for the site, and yet another person to add a shopping cart to your site.

If this all sounds complicated, it is really not, and all of these things can be accomplished in a matter of weeks.

The point is that you want to find specialists in each little area of website design.

You wouldn't want a bricklayer doing your accounting would you? In some ways this is similar to hiring the same person to do your graphic design and search engine optimization.

So, find specialists!