Choosing The Right Web Design Service

There are many companies offering web design services. It’s hard to choose which web design service is best for you. Especially if you do not know what all the jargon is.

Hopefully what follows will be a breakdown of what you may need to know to understand all the gobbledygook they offer.

STATIC PAGES (HTML).

Primarily these are just the display of information that is to the most part unchanging (this document you are reading now could be considered like html, and while it can be changed it is intended to remain the same) if for example you just wanted a page that showed a picture of some building work you did or your warehouse or caravan in Wales and a bit of text explaining your product or service then this can be done on a single page working with a layout editor just like MS Word (Actually you can use MS Word).
More often than not nice layouts websites with 5 pages (Home, Products, Services, Contact Us & Photos) designs can be done really cheaply as basically all we need to do is download a pre-created layout (often referred to as a template) modify text and make sure your pictures and links work this is why you get so many websites basically looking the same but with different pictures (nothing wrong with that imagine the most successful supermarkets they all have a basically the same floor layout, people are familiar and comfortable with the layout and can navigate to areas of relevance quickly and easily). If you see someone offering a website for under £100 you can be fairly certain this is what they are offering you). And they are worth it if they meet your needs. Do not get roped into spending money on a website that has all bells and whistles if you do not need it. Websites are not written in stone, if your business or Project develops then your website can always be improved.
Sometimes you may wish to have a truly unique layout. This being the case you can expect prices to increase dramatically as the person doing the layout has to A) have an artistic flare... have you ever known a good artist to be cheap. Be really know a bit more than just the basics of web server technology. And again have you ever known an “Expert” to be cheap. Now add the two together.

DYNAMIC PAGES (PHP JAVA etc).

This is where web design separates the men from the boys. If you need your website to interact with your customer or a database, so they can search products, leave feedback, Post messages for all to see, update stock levels etc. for every page that displays this information there are a few more that process the information, these are effectively computer programs as these things don’t get displayed to your viewer by magic. Lets say for example you wanted to list the weeks your caravan in Wales was available and the price for the corresponding week, this could be done in a table on an HTML static display, the problem being every time someone booked your caravan for that week you would have to ask your web designer to modify the table..they would charge for that (usually between £20 and £40) per time. However if you wanted a site where you could change it, you could ask for edit access sometimes referred to as CMS. To do this you would best use a program called Adobe Contribution which in itself is a web design program but with all the clever techno junk removed so you can simply change the text. Again this is at a cost usually around £110 for the software. A decent web designer should be able to program you a management area where any parts of the website that change on a regular basis can be changed by either you or your customers (automatically) let’s say they can book online, take payments from PayPal, remove the week from listings all automatically, wouldn’t that be nice. Well They can, this is dynamic pages. However for just such a system you would need a database holding the current information, html pages displaying the current information and PHP pages modifying the information. For every screen you see there is at least 2 working on it. Many beginner web designers do not offer such services. However just remember that to get all this you will have to triple the budget of a basic HTML setup.
Again there are templates out there for common requirements like SHOPS, ever notice how most online shops look the same. This can be a very cost effective way of setting up a stock control, payment system, if you were to pay someone to make a shop like this from scratch for you, you could expect to pay in the region of £6,000 to £20,000. Fortunately most web designers will set up the shop for you to populate with your products for no more than £50 using one of these design templates. On the downside you will be restricted to the layout and the inflexibility of the prewritten script.

Domain Names

This is the (URL) Universal Resource Locator (the web address) of your site, now we would all like boots.com if we owned a boot and footwear shop in Brighton, however the single word domains have all been reserved or used many years ago, the same with initials up to no 3 letters so any combination of three letter ‘ABC.COM or even as obscure as ZYY.COM’ are all gone many of the four letter combos are quickly going if not already gone and most two word domains such as “GOODCARS.COM”. You can buy them from the current owners but again depending on “how good a word” or “How Memorable” it is expect to pay a premium or obviously if a trademark or of interest to a major corporation you can just forget it” and you would be amazed just how much even an obscure domain name can sell for if it fits the right “keywords”..I’ll get onto keywords later an example would be “DOORHARDWARE.COM” which to me is not a great domain name however someone paid $85,000 for it off its last owner this year ! and ‘WON.COM’ a much better name sold for $115,000. A decent web designer should advices you on a domain name if you do not already own one.
Now a domain name is only an address, but its like an address without a house, a plot of land, where the world knows you exist, this is intrinsically linked with another service called hosting.

Hosting.

Hosting is the server computer that actually holds your information, imagine a building with all you pictures and text sat in it. Just because you own the domain doesn’t mean that you have any data there, if someone went to your plot of land (DOMAIN NAME) and saw the empty field then they would not see all your great services.
Sometimes Domain names and Hosting are bought from the same company however you must keep them separate entities in your head. As who knows in 10 years you may not have your caravan in Wales, but you do own the domain name “WalesCaravan.Com” which could be worth £50,000 who knows. Also bear in mind that often web designers will register domain names for your USE only, they will often be the owners of the domain its a bit like renting them for a year or two years at a time, if you wish to OWN the domain name register it yourself. Your web designer should be able to advise you on  getting the registrar company to make the domain point towards your Hosting Server. Once this is done anyone visiting your domain name will automatically see your Website.
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