HOW TO MAKE A WEBSITE

Almost everyone today has a website. Some are for entertainment, sharing your views with the rest of the virtual world, while others are purely business oriented. If you’re gearing for a new site, you have to know its purpose and functions before you decide to give it a form. If you want to build your own website, be prepared to meet a lot of deadlocks with a smile. And if you understand the need to hire someone to do it for you, it is still a tricky business, choosing the right contractor is never easy. You need to consider multiple factors before trusting a company or a single professional with your website.

A Professional is a professional for a reason. Quite like your dad playing handy man in the house and trying to fix things while tweaking others, a person can make their own website by themselves. The success of such an endeavor however, is debatable. The net has an inexhaustible number of options that are free and quite easy. However, like your dad, you will mess one thing or the other before you get the hang of things. Making your website (especially if you have a limited budget) is a tedious process full of angst, confusions and repeated hit and trials. This is something you can easily avoid if you just invest once, that way your labor is in the selection not the actual making. Save yourself the hassle and frustration and hire a company that designs and executes your website for you.

WHY A PROFESSIONALLY BUILT SITE IS IMPORTANT

 

It’s amazing when you see so many companies/businesses that still don’t have a website or a poor one. If you’re in business or thinking of initiating one, a website is one of the first crucial steps you take, like getting a business email address and phone number. The look of your website will draw visitors and clientele to you.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau almost 41% of businesses are of the opinion that they don’t need a website. What’s more stunning is that these businesses are ignoring the current customer culture.

Here are a few facts that explain how the competition has shifted to websites:

-89% of consumers making in-store purchases always conduct online research before visiting the store itself.

-Pre-shopping customers are automatically, the base for online advertising (search listings or display ads) this is the clientele that participates at a deeper level with your website, looking an average of six or more pages than those not exposed; a good 53% increase.

-Online advertising has shown to affect customer purchasing habits. Apparently surfing the internet is synonymous with a much stronger inclination to make an actual purchase. This in return results in a whopping 43% boost in total revenue.

-45% of customers, who explore online, end up buying additional merchandise in-store when they buy the product they researched for initially. According to the findings of the study it can be proved that those exposed to online advertising spend almost 29% more on their in-store purchases.

-Online advertising pushes in-store sales at a 6:1 proportion to online purchases.

Getting a website may not be as easy as signing up for the telephone service but there are multiple service providers and companies who know how to create a website that lifts your virtual identity to new heights. A classic example of such a service provider is BuxUp.co.uk.

BE CLEAR ON YOUR DEMANDS

A website tends to turn out differently from your expectations because most of the time businesses are not clear on what they need.

• Right questions

-Is your web site going to be for personal use or business needs?

-Do you want a strictly informational site for potential clients?

-Do you need your site to be interactive?

-Can visitors buy a product or service online?

• You need to know

-How your business varies from your rival

-What your business offers specifically

-Contact information, about us page (should speak of the your identity)

-Demonstrations, case studies or/and assessments

-A verifiable and trustworthy payment method

– Web graphics and templates that suit your site best

-Ways for networking

 

If you have never dabbled in the website business then you don’t know the market rates for good professionals, newbie companies or freelancers. Web designer rates usually start from $5 per hour and go up from there, depending on experience and work required. Perhaps you have been waiting till you can afford a good web designer? Professionals don’t come cheap after all. So the best way to tackle such a situation is to look for a company that handles everything for you including your hosting, web design, SEO and other marketing needs. A reputable company delivers! The package deal they offer ultimately costs much less (in the long run) than your own haphazard efforts. It’s more economical and you don’t have to worry about the graphics, templates, or any other features that make your site personalized. All you have to do is make sure you work with the designer and developer closely, this way you assure your satisfaction with the final product.

SHORTLISTING CANDIDATES

It is best to classify at least three appropriate candidates to liken their styles, prices and technical expertise before making a final decision. Here are a couple of pointers you will need to look out for.

• Contractors that are involved in your industry

The mode by which you find a contractor matters. They must be capable of building and designing something that will resonate within your industry and be pertinent to the happenings in your field. There are ample places where you can run the risk of working with faceless developers who may or may not have the appropriate skills and may or may not have left their houses in the past year. Your focus should be on meeting legitimate developers that you locate through networking or ones you find through industry events. If you are not in the start-up networking scene take a direct approach, find contractors via reputable company websites or locate individual developers. It’s important that the people you find are willing to meet you in person and discuss in depth from the website to the quotation; find developers who are more engaged.

 

• Get different quotes

When you have located a number of designers, match their hourly rates, skill sets, and portfolios, this will provide you with a better picture of what you can afford and what is most suitable for your website. This will also get you up to date with the general standard in your industry. Many designers provide you with a quick mock-up (graphics and templates) to help you get a better handle on what a website can look like. Getting multiple quotes and hearing out what packages they offer always provides valuable insight into the person you will spend entire weeks working closely with.

 

• Service providers who can say NO!

In many circumstances, there is a characteristic variance in incentives between software contractors and business owners. The more features a business owner requests, the more the designer gets paid. More skins on a website mean more matter and a fatter paycheck for the web designer. Now that might seem like an ideal symbiosis, its not, because at the end of the day you are stuck with an overcrowded site with confusing and messy twenty something inessential features which no one utilizes. Any reputable and honest design consultant will have an eye on what he’s creating. He will always explain the long term pros and cons of any feature he adds. A good designer has the right incentive for work; they never spoil the quality of their work even if a client wants to.

 

• Multiple skills and services

Here is where companies like BuxUp.co.uk are a blessing, you don’t have to worry about a single individual having the right graphic sense, know coding etc. It is safer to have a team work for you and not have all your eggs in the same proverbial basket.

With a single contractor, it doesn’t just mean people who have the capacity to code for iPhones, Androids and Windows phones. A web designer’s job is to give your vision a virtual life, from coding to artistic and graphic design. But such individuals are usually very costly. If you’re viewing an individual designer as the potential candidate, make sure that that person has experience in both the science and the art of web development.

 

• Designers who look for a good challenge

The difference between a professional and an amateur is that the former will ask the “right” questions while the latter will ask too many. Unless you have no preparatory data and are initiating your website from scratch, you undoubtedly already possess some code that can be reused. You may desire to shift platforms, perform a complete design overhaul, but the probability that none of the old code can be recycled to save time (and costs) is small. This also goes for consulting groups that are constructing your website and mobile app. If code can be utilized a good designer will work from that base and make something great out of it. If your consultant is insistent on throwing everything and coding each project individually, best you get a second opinion. Before signing such a team or individual on, make sure you have complete surety that the team is not just slacking off or hesitant to work with what you are giving them.

 

• They should speak your language

Technical terminology is a great tool for confusing the best of us; coders specially have a ton of it. If your hired consultancy is communicating with a form of hieroglyphs, chances are they are confusing you deliberately. A great designer or coder will always explain thing in terms you can understand. Dropping the jargon is important for an effective flow of ideas between you and your contractor.

 

• Someone with more than one card up their sleeve

There is always great appeal in trying out the newest innovation to hit the market but, that does not necessarily mean that it is the best thing for your website. A flashy new template, a new design language that coders are raving about could be the new trend but whether that trend suits your website is very important. If you’re collecting several quotes, make sure to match stratagems and ask each company why they’d use one structure over another. If you find a service provider that will only use one tool and without any logical reasoning (Best thing ever does not count) it is probably best that you consider some other option.

• Ownership of the code

In the progress of a contract, it sometimes plays out such that the client does not end up “owning” the code he paid for. When you’re gathering figures and contracts, make sure that there is an explicit section stating that YOU will own the code along with time and payment schedules.

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