Think carefully before spending on a complex website

Having a website designed can turn into a costly project that may or may not be sensible in terms of effort and spending. Before you embark on the venture, and even before you choose a web designer consider about your organisation and what it actually wants to get from a website. Once you have some answers to this question it will give you a good indication what style of designer (if any) you need and a basic overview with which to get going.

Do you just want to have your business details listed on the internet so that customers who already know about you can locate basic information such as your telephone number or your opening times? If this is all you really require, because your business is say for example a grocers shop on a high street you will probably find that your needs are already handled by the many business directories that are now on the web.

Do you wish to provide a service for existing customers, providing them with information, support and service once they have already identified you via another route. In this case your site may well need to be technically very sturdy, easy to revise but will require no Online Marketing to highlight it to the search engines.

You may wish to sell goods online, having a product which can be selected without been seen as it is standard, for example books or cds. If this is the case then outlay on a website that can deal quickly and easily with payments is vital, the site will need to have a good Search Engine Placement so that a huge number of searchers are alerted to the products but the detail of the objects themselves may be nominal.

If your product is a niche one, for example say you traded in antique silver letter openers, you may find that there is very little need for any search engine optimization as there are so few competitors for your goods on line. You may find that you therefore achieve a good enough Search Engine Placement position without spending on the services of a SEO Company. People looking for these niche items are prepared to root through a few more search engine results pages than they would for a commodity. Nevertheless if you expect to get sales from the site you will have to consider very carefully about how you display information about your products, you will probably need access to a designer who provides a cost effective ongoing service to keep the goods updated and also a decent photographer as images will be vital.

Try to consider about which of these examples would best match your organisation and then pick your designer on that basis, if you still require one!