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Low cost web design options for small businesses
Posted 09/06/2010 - 07:57 by admin
In these tough economic times, small businesses have a lot of options available to get their website developed.
But for those business owners who have limited knowledge of web development and design techniques, getting a website developed can still be a tough decision to make.
There are some very important things that need to be considered when going for a first website for your business.
It's about knowing your requirements and the price versus feasibility of each individual requirement.
What features do you want in your website?
Most business owners go through a list of websites belonging to their field of business and wish they also have a similar if not an exact copy of one of those website.
This is not a very realistic approach and may cost a lot more than what you should really spend.
Define your website's requirements:
Instead of trying to copy features that others have on their websites, you should really focus on what is sufficient to make your website viable for your business.
For example, a website belonging to a popular clothing store can have an online ordering facility because customers are likely to order their favorite products online instead of going to the store to make the purchase.
This will most likely not happen on a website of a new, unfamiliar store brand. It is highly unlikely that people will place an order online for a brand they do not trust. So online ordering facility may be a waste of money for such stores. however, they can put up a complete catalog with pictures and prices which will be enough for such a brand.
Flash is not always good for web design:
For more serious businesses, having a big, attractive flash movie on front page may only be a big overhead in terms of website performance and search engine friendliness. The reason is, flash movies are heavy and take longer times to load even on fast internet connections and the test placed in flash movie is not readable by search engines.
Apart from flash, heavy use of graphics also makes businesses websites less user friendly and make websites appear non-serious.
For example, a website belonging to a lawyer may only contain a few images related to legal profession and the rest of the content be text to give visitors maximum information about the company or services.
Dynamic websites are not always required:
One more web design and development overhead on small businesses is to go for dynamic websites when they are not needed.
For example, if you have a small number of items in your catalog and the item list is not likely to change anytime soon then having a dynamic website will be a waste of money. Dynamic websites are expensive even if they are based on CMS systems like Drupal.
Even if limited dynamic functionality is required like contact form or guestbook, it can be done on a static website
with added modules that are available freely.
Saving on Search Engine Optimization:
Instead of paying a huge amount of money to SEO firms to get SEO done on your website, it is always wise to get your website designed and developed in a Search Engine friendly manner. Web designers and developers usually charge a small amount to provide the added feature of Search Engine friendliness which is also called Search Engine Optimized Web Design and Development, it will cost a huge amount if done by SEO specialists.
Most of the time I can manage to get a good quality website for a very cheap rate. You can always find good quality web designers from eastern countries who can work for cheap prices and yet deliver good quality web designs.
It is not only small businesses that are looking for cheap website designers. many of the large companies that do not want ecommerce sites also want professional yet basic sites that serve their purpose.
But the biggest problem is it is getting increasingly difficult to find quality web desingers at both low and high cost.
Cheap web design services are not always reliable. They mostly provide low quality web design services.
You must look for quality in the portfolio of web design service provider and don't go ahead if you are not satisfied with their design portfolio.
Use of flash in web design make websites slow and they take time and money to make.
Static graphics based web design is fastest and cheapest.
Cheap web design options for small businesses are getting easier by the day. There are so many web designers offering their cheap design and development services online.
Static web designs are specifically very cheap and if dynamic websites are built using CMS systems, then they are cheap too.
Agreed to most of your points, but having a cheap website does not necessarily mean it has to be very simple. You can enhance website with use of static graphics easily.