Many business owners don’t really understand the difference between having a custom web design done and using website templates. In this article we’ll look at both ways of having your website built and the costs involved. Custom Web Design

Many think having a custom web design is too expensive but let’s look at the advantages of hiring a web designer over using a free website template or purchasing one.

Benefits of custom web design:

• Unique design:With a custom web design it is created just for your business. Your website will be different from anyone else’s.
• By hiring the right web designer, it will be constructed so it is search engine friendly. – How the background coding of your website is done will influence your success in the search engines.
• The website will be more adaptable to your company’s needs. If you have done your website planning, you will have a list of features you wish to have. By prioritizing this list of website features, you will give the web designer an idea of what to accommodate for in the future if your current budget doesn’t allow all the features to be implemented from the start.
• ScalabilityJust like adaptability, if you have planned what you want in the future for your website, a good web designer will take this into consideration as they select the technologies to use while building the website.

Other points to take into consideration when deciding if custom web design is for you are:

• Are you planning to maintain the website yourself?
• If you do not intend to learn how to code a website (or have someone on staff that can do this well) then you are going to have to request that a content management system be incorporated into the web design. There are limitations on some content management systems so be sure to review our Choosing a Content Management System article so you ask all the right questions about the proposed content management system the web designer is planning on using.
• Are you permitted to use the graphics created for the website for other purposes?The website design should incorporate your company’s branding. If you have already established your company branding, then that branding should be incorporated into the website.For a business that hasn’t established a branding or is under going a revamping, then you are going to want to know if you can use the graphics on the website elsewhere, like your letterhead, brochures and signage to mention a few. This will increase the price of the custom web design, but then you will have everything match.

Another idea if considering a custom web design is, just have a template made incorporating the website theme. You can then, if you have the skills, recycle the template theme to create the web pages for your website.

Website Templates based Design

There is a misconception on how beneficial and economical using free website templates or purchased website templates is. Let’s look at some points about website templates:

Website templates are good for:

• Getting inspiration on colours, layouts and features. You cannot have your web designer copy these, but they do give the web designer an idea of the look you would like.
• Very low budgets where you need to get up and running as soon as possible.
  
  If budget is holding you back from getting your business up on the Internet, then maybe a website template might be the way to go.
• Shorter development time.
  
  It would appear that using a website template would include a shorter development time required for your website. Not really, read on.

Now onto other considerations when choosing a website template.
Using website templates do have some downfalls:

• There is going to be a ton of other people using the same template.
  
  Unless you pay the “Exclusive” price for the template, the template website is going to keep selling that same template to anyone that comes along. Keep in mind, even if you pay the exclusive price, there are others who have bought the template prior to you and they still have the right to use it.If it’s a really appealing template, there may be lots of other people who have already bought that very template.
• You will be limited on the customization of the website template. Without web page coding skills, you are still going to have to either spend the time and money to learn how to code a web page or hire someone to help you.
• Some templates are laid out very specific.Meaning if you incorporate your own graphics or have extensive content, the template could break.
• Some website templates are not built to be search engine friendly.
  
  As explained above, it is important how the background coding of your website is done. If not done correctly, it could hurt your marketing efforts on the internet.
• Antiquated codingIf the website template uses antiquated coding, it might not work in all browsers.Browser specific features are another sign of antiqated coding.

Custom Web Design or Website Template?

When deciding if a custom web design is the way to go or if a website template is a better choice keep in mind that you want your business to stand out from the crowd and be memorable.

To maintain or build the website yourself you are going to have to invest some time (and money possibly) into learning all there is to building a web page.

Now, sit down and figure out exactly how much each method of building the website is actually going to cost. Include the time it is going to take you learn whatever you need to learn to use a website template and compare that to the cost of a custom web design where you will have time to market or build your product in the same time frame.

There is an old saying: “Time is money”

Keep that in mind when choosing between custom web design and website templates.

All the best!

A web development office is faced with rent, phone bills, internet bills, software and hardware, maintaining servers, etc. All business are equally burdened with costs; an industry needs to pay to keep using the work space and work materials it uses in order to make the finished product. This industry needs to sell its products and make enough revenue to pay all the bills at the company while making enough profit to pay the bills at home. Factories, utility services, stores, and web design offices are no different in this venture.

There is a difference between calling in a construction worker from a well accredited company and a friend with some experience. While experience can always be recognized, there is a difference between an individual that has dabbled in the work and a group of individuals with years of study and a diploma to show for it.

The artist doesn’t sell a work of art that took a few hours to create for thousands of dollars because the work he did in that time was arduously impossible. Doctors don’t charge as much as they do because there is a conspiracy in health care (modern puns aside). It is because they are offering you, their client, countless years of knowledge and practice that has formed into the beautiful painting or a health solution they have given you. Ten seconds of work is not worth ten cents when decades of study have made those ten seconds invaluably powerful. Even if the work was easy, the time it took to make it second nature was not. Businesses exist to offer the individual a perfected service they can trust. While we are all free to pursue the knowledge necessary to make our own clothes or maintain our own software at home, we can’t learn it all. Anyone can essentially learn HTML and build a Website, but only those that have pursued it as a full-time career for years can boast countless hours of practice-made-perfect.

1. AVAILABILITY If it’s not available you can’t have it – simple!

2. COPYRIGHT Ensure that you do not breach copyright or infringe trademarks with your choice of domain.

3. EXTENSIONS It’s widely acknowledged that the best TLD (top level domain) is .com. However, in the India, web users are more than used to .co.in /.in so this is equally acceptable for Indian websites. If .com isn’t available and you use .net instead (for example), check that .com isn’t either a competitor or that the ..com site content is acceptable! Always try to get the .com, your country TLD or .net in that order. Web users are still not used to .biz or .info.

4. BE GREEDY! If more than one TLD variant is available, buy as many as you can afford and set them all to point to your website. This is a form of brand protection and prevents unscrupulous competitors trying to cash in on your hard-earned web traffic.

5. BE MEMORABLE Make sure that potential web users will remember your domain name and that they can spell it properly.

6. BE PRONOUNCABLE Try telling people your web address over the phone – can they understand what you tell them? Or do they give up and try someone else’s website.

7. BE DESCRIPTIVE If you are a new business, very few people will remember or search for your domain name if it is your company name. Try choosing a domain name that is descriptive of your products instead e.g. cheap<>.com. Try testing it with a hyphen as well as using just one word.

8. OFFLINE MARKETING Use your domain name in your offline marketing literature and ensure that it is as visible as possible. However, if your domain name consists of more than one word, that isn’t hyphenated, try using capital letters e.g. which is easier to read – littlefishwebdesign.com or LittleFishWebDesign.com? Domain names are not case sensitive so your clients will find your site whichever version they use.

9. BUY YOUR DOMAIN FOR LONGER Search engines are now looking at less obvious information such as how long you have bought your domain name for. Domain names owned for less than two years are though to be penalised, so buy your domain for as long as possible.

10. OWN YOUR DOMAIN NAME If you use a web designer or third party for your domain names, ensure they are registered in your name and that you have a signed agreement with the company that they will release all the details (including password) to you, quibble free, if you choose to move to another design or hosting company.

www.amityinfotech.com

Benefit One – High ROI
Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, SEO brings you a higher Return On your Investment than any comparable form of marketing.

Benefit Two – Long Term Positioning
Once in place, a properly designed and optimised site should stay long term in the rankings compared to PPC where costs and outlay are ongoing and unpredictable.

Benefit Three – Targeted Traffic
SEO can increase the number of visitors who are actively searching for your service or product.

Benefit Four – Promotion that Doesn’t Sleep
Imagine having your own marketing and promotions company working exclusively just for you! One that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days every year. That’s the benefit of SEO!

Benefit Five – Increase Brand Visibility
SEO can give your brand a high international profile – and for a comparatively low outlay.

Benefit Six – Higher Sales
SEO can mean increased sales of your product or service.

Benefit Seven – Faster Loading Pages
Properly validated and optimised files will be smaller and leaner, meaning less server requests/overheads and quicker download times.

Benefit Eight – More Cost-Effective
SEO is among the most cost-effective ways of marketing.

Benefit Nine – Increased Accessibility
Observing sensible optimisation procedures can make your site more accessible to all users.

Benefit Ten – Cross-Browser Compatibility
A properly optimised site will be as near as possible validated to high standards. This means that it works in all browsers, meaning your site may be viewed by the greatest potential number of visitors.

Benefit Eleven – Navigable by the Engines
Properly optimised, all links should function correctly and all pages should be accessible to the engines, thus making your site easy for the engines to index and correctly categorise.

Benefit Twelve – Usability
Observing basic optimisation guidelines should mean that visitors have a more pleasant user experience.

There is more to search engine optimisation than just marketing, as companies can derive many business benefits from using SEO.

Expectations

We always make sure our clients have the proper expectations for their website. One of the most unrealistic most first time website owners have is that the moment their website is launched they will be listed on Google on the first page. In fact, it takes a little bit of time to come up even for your own company name – it isn’t immediate.

Another huge expectation is that by simply having a website up means that business will flow in. Just having a website is not web marketing – you still need to get your website in front of people to attract new visitors.

Responsibilities

We can’t do everything for your website – although we’ll certainly try so the process is as easy as possible for our clients. Depending on the project scope, clients may need to provide the website outline, content, images and other materials. There is always an emphasis on getting these materials together sooner rather than later as 98% of the projects that take longer than expected are a direct result of our clients not being able to collect materials on time.

Timelines

We like to make sure that every client knows what we’re doing for their website and when to expect to see deliverables. We feel it’s important, especially for the first timers, to have a good understanding of the whole website process and how long things can take. We like to establish a base timeline for things like when the first design comp will be available, when the HTML templates will be built, when the content management system will be setup, etc.

Of course, a web design timeline is fluid. Going back to repsonsibilities, a timeline can easily get extended when clients don’t provide materials in a timely manner or something unexpected comes up on our end with another project.

Effective Communication

With all communication, it goes both ways. Often times we will request materials from a client and not hear anything for several weeks. It really helps the web designer to coordinate multliple projects when there is at least an estimated time to receive materials. For us, we are obsessive about working efficiently as we like to respond to client requests as quickly as possible (and ideally within a few minutes of receiving the request – yes, I said minutes, not days). If we know when we will have what we need to move the project along, it helps every project we are working on including yours.

Another important aspect of effective communication during the web design and development process is to make questions or concerns known as soon as possible. In some cases, we’ve had a client who kept quiet about their approved design concepts missing a key element they were hoping for. They thought we would implement as we were building the site. Not until we were moments away from launching the site did they chime in about the missing element. It was no problem for us to go back and fix it, but this pushed the website launch back several days and could easily have been avoided. Our goal here at AMITY is to make sure you are absolutely happy with what we are creating for you so if something is off definitely say something. We’re more than happy to make things perfect for you.

For companies who are now considering gaining a web presence I would say go for it. You have nothing to loose and a lot to gain. You do not need to sell on the web to have a meaningful website. In many cases a business website can be used purely for lead generation.

Many businesses rely on customers from the local area. Typically these businesses would advertise locally and in doing so would receive a stream of local customers. In this situation I believe this business is loosing out on an additional extra stream of customers by not having a company website. Just imagine how many people go to Google or any other search engine and type in [townname service]. If a local company was to have a website and it was to rank for that term then they would be able to attract many new leads through the website.

A website like this does not need to sell the product or service, is simply there to gain search traffic for the preferred search terms. On the actual website you would provide some basic information about the company. and contact details. This will allow users to establish

1. this is the sort of company I am looking
2. I can give them a call.

Because the business is aimed locally it is not entirely difficult to gain good search engine ranking for the exact phrases you are interested in. The business can promote it’s website in a number of ways such as web address on company vehicles, stationary and leaflets ect. If the company is local many people may know the company name. It is however a lot harder to remember a phone number.

If people are exposed to marketing material with companyname.com printed on it then it will probably be easier for them to remember as opposed to a phone number. Another Point to take into consideration is people who know of the company but don’t know how to get in touch. They may know the company by name but have no idea where they are located or their phone number. These sort of potential customers may already be typing your company name into search engines and finding no results. By simple having a site on the web it is possible to capture these customers.

Choosing a domain name.
The domain name you chose for your company should ideally be companyname.com this makes sense. In some cases it may also be worth while buying a number of variations of this domain name to ensure you catch all typos. If companyname.com is not available then you may want to look into the legalities of the current owner.

Because of the international nature of the web there is very often not a lot that can be done about this but it is always a good idea to investigate this. If you are unable to secure your business domain try to find something as close as possible.

Developing a website
If you have experience of building a website then you may be able to achieve this part on your own. If not then you would be best to leave this to a web design company. Developing a website is not something you do half hearted. You do want to convert as many users as possible, an unprofessional looking website is not going to achieve this.

Homepage: An introduction to the potential customer. Very general information and a phone number

About us: Go into a lot of detail about the company. Give the customer a lot of information about the company.

Contact us: Let the user get in touch. Email, phone, postal address. It is also a good idea to use a feedback form so the user can contact you directly from the webpage. Another idea that can work well is a “call me” feature. The user supplies their phone number and a time. Someone then calls them back at the time specified.

Is is important to follow up on all leads that are generated. People do not want to be left hanging about. Act fast and secure leads.

Web hosting
A web hosting company is somewhere that allows you to host your website on their servers for a fee. Choose a web hosting company that has it’s servers in your country. This can help greatly when you want to rank well for your own countries index. For example Google has country specific search indexes that allow users to search for results from a specific country. Do a comparison on a wide range of hosting companies before you decide. Don’t just go with one because it is cheap. You get what you pay for. Shop around and compare the features and services.

Marketing your website
In simple terms you need to point people in the direction of your website. Get in touch with other local companies and ask them to link to you. Include your web address in any marketing material that you distribute. Get your website listed in as many web directories and local directories as possible.

Having a business website can work out very well for small companies who are looking to attract some extra customers. The web can be a great tool not only for selling but also for letting people know you are there.