As a small business owner the opportunities of going global on the web is often an idea that never leaves the imagination. This can be either from the lack of experience working on the internet or the lack of time and resources a small business owner might have in house. One of the options is to hire a dedicated webmaster, you can hire a single person to do the work or a company can also do the job, this is often times expensive and if you’re just looking to see if it’s viable for your business to be on the net this may be a deal breaker. Having a website is an investment and as with any investment it’s a gamble, however the amount of money you put into it will not always be equivalent to the money you’re earning from it.
One of the cheapest solutions for a business owner is to outsource work; there are several websites that allow you to post project details and often times you can save lots of money. This too however may be a gamble because you aren’t sure of the quality of work the people you are hiring. When choosing to outsource work it is always important that you know that the person you’re paying does a good job, asking for a portfolio is always a good idea, to get a look at their previous work. Make sure you can communicate with this person at all times through every step of the way to make sure that your website is going along as planned. For the best results I suggest that you write all of the major content yourself and just have the webmaster you hired to encode the data, you know your business better than anyone else and it would only be natural that you can put the most compelling content on your site.
When you finally get a hold of a webmaster over the net and they build your site it is always a good idea to ask about any support that they offer after the site is up and running should any bugs and glitches come about. If your website takes off and you start making revenue off of it, it may be necessary to hire a full time webmaster. However in the infantile stages of your web site this is not advisable since you’re never sure if it’s going to be a hit or miss.
There are many flashy outrageous sites out there, chocked full of flash animations, and all matter of java code. These sites may seem and scream “Professional” but yelling doesn’t make things true nor does it attract a lot of people. These sites often actually reach less people due to the loading times that may be necessary to work all the doodads. The best way to reach a large number of people over the internet is to offer a site that everyone can browse with ease. Sure plain text may seem boring, but it gets the information out there. If your site really needs all that flashy animation chances are you’re not intent low cost web design and may cost you money that will only shoo away potential visitors.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, as long as you don’t use a picture as your background image; a background image takes long to load and makes it difficult to read the text, those thousand words might as well be a loop of words such as “amateur, hard to read, illegible, attention” and other synonymous terms. If you do chose to use a picture and it is absolutely necessary for your background there is a proper way of executing it, the picture should be pretty low contrast and be either on the dark or bright side; choose a picture that does not have a lot of features in it which may make reading the text difficult and confusing.
As with anything in life moderation is the best policy; there are such things as too little and too much. Depending on the intent of your site the balance point may shift further in one direction or the other. Finding this balance is up to you as a web designer and always keep the end user in mind.
The big mistake most people make when designing a website is they try to please themselves and in the end may turn away a lot of potential visitors. You should always keep the end user in mind; and this is simple since you are the end user to many other websites. The best way to produce a quality cheap design is to adhere to other practices that you like when you are browsing the internet. You know what a pleasurable online experience is over a confusing irritating one; the bottom line is if you were browsing your site, none of the elements should irritate you while perusing the pages.
When designing a website the budget is one of the main limiting factors, the price of hosting a site as well as paying for a web developer can be a deal breaker for most people looking to start a website. Low cost web design is almost synonymous with DIY, and often bring images of tacky web pages with scrolling banners in strange color combinations. In the early days of the internet this maybe true, however with the help of editing software available to web designers the necessity of an being literate in HTML is almost unnecessary. With the proper tools and knowledge any task is possible, web editing is just software, how you choose to use it is the difference between an effective web design and a poorly made one.
Always keep the target market in mind; always remember who you are trying to reach, and make your site more available and appealing to them. The best and cheapest way to include a large demographic online is to offer a website that is edited in such a manner that it is simple and easy to access by anyone around the world. Always consider that the internet connections of people abroad may differ from place to place, therefore the best and cheapest way to reach all these people is by having a site that offers all your content in a simple to access form.
There are many articles online aside from this one that will give you many tips on how to achieve a low cost web design, research is always key if you want to make a professional looking product. Doing it yourself is the cheapest way to get this done, and it also adds a new skill set for you to learn; in an ever growing digital age it may be a good idea to become literate and savvy to online design. Without the middle man changes to your site are swifter and faster to update.
Always maintain your site and check it periodically at least once a week, check for spelling or grammatical errors and dead links since these degrade the reputation of your website and make it seem unprofessional. When on the cheap it may be necessary to forgo flashy niceties on your site like drop down menus and flash imagery, this doesn’t mean that a bare bones site is ineffective. As long as the layout is logical and the site is full of information, good content, and is easy to browse; there should be no problems.
When editing or adding content to your website, the best and cheapest way to get attention is to be picked up on a search engine. That is people out there search for a keyword that appears on different websites and allow the search engine to find sites that match those parameters. Search Engine Optimization or SEO (which can also mean Search Engine Optimizer) is both an act and a job description, one doesn’t need to hire an SEO if they are really intent on low cost web design. It is possible to do it yourself, and like momma always said, “If you want something done right do it yourself”; well momma might be right but momma probably never had to do SEO.
If you’re reading this that must mean that you have some interest in the ordeal, and what you’re doing is the first step to becoming a good SEO, research is always key. When editing the content on your site think of different key words that may be associated with the products, services or niches of your site and include them in the text. Don’t go overboard and keep repeating “funny painted plywood cut outs” every three sentences, this is considered keyword stuffing and is both unnecessary and potentially malicious to your website. Make sure the information you include in your site’s content is relevant to all the other information, there’s nothing more irritating when you’re searching the web for something and when you click on the site it’s something completely different than what you were looking for.
Another way to generate more traffic to your site is by adding descriptions to your pictures, always label the picture with accurate data and include relevant key words. This will make your site visible on image searches and easily reachable for users. Another huge no-no in a good web design is stealing content, you know, copying and pasting data found on other sites and posting it on your own without the permission of the original site. You may think this saves you time but it is unethical as well as illegal and may result in breach of copyright suits on your part. Paying legal fees is far from the idea of low cost web design, so as far as plagiarism goes, just say no (yeah like Nancy Reagan). At one point in time this was a good idea for websites and SEO since if they use the content from another more prominent site, their site would also appear on the same search results; however new systems in place in search engines eliminate this as a benefit, most of these search engines may black list your site for copyright violations.
Templates are a tool for low cost web design because they save both time and money to the end user, with proper selection anyone can maintain a professional looking site that operates like one as well. When choosing a template it is important that you choose a template that matches the feel of your site, colors are an important tool in design since they can subconsciously alter the mood of your visitors. Another important aspect of color is to consider the contrast of the text and the background image, text is always easier to read when they are visible and legible in the first place. The background should not draw attention away from the main content of your site, and as such it would be best to stay away from using photos as backgrounds. The presence of a photo in your background makes the page load slowly and to most people it’s a sign of immature amateurism on a website (much like a Myspace page).
Being a web designer is a mix between art and science much like clock maker, and as a clockmaker one should avoid putting too many unnecessary parts on a time piece. When choosing a template it’s best to look for one that offers space for a navigation menu on each and every page to make browsing your site a quick and simple ordeal. Drop down menus should be looked into when possible however a well designed plain text system is just as effective. Avoid templates that frame the entire site, this disables the people visiting your site from using the navigational buttons on their internet browsers; worse yet it makes it impossible to find specific pages on your site from a search engine. Always maintain a balance between functionality and aesthetics, in my opinion a plain looking site that has a good layout is much better than an over the top flash animated website. To me flash laden sites scream “look at me don’t you think this is cool”, and often fail to give me enough information; whereas a plain looking site with easy navigation and lots of easy to read text gives me all the information I need in a simple easy to read fashion. Going with the simple site also reaches a larger population of people world wide where the internet and computer capabilities are not always the fastest or smoothest, and in the end it is the cheapest web design.