Web design FAQ's
How Do I Choose a Web Designer?
The best way to familiarize yourself with a web designer is to spend time at their own business website. As you review the work of a web design company, ask yourself:
- Do their links work throughout their own site?
- Are the graphical images and photos they're using in focus and in color?
- Is the idea behind their web design original or does it look like a template?
- Can you view the web designer's client list or portfolio?
- Do they come up in Google if you enter a search: ex - Maine Website Design - are they TOP TEN in Google? or at least, on the 2 first pages of Google? If they cannot be found with a basic search relative to their content, then your website will never be found either! Marketing skills...you certainly want to make sure your web designer has those skills!
Why Should I Hire a Web Design Professional?
We all know someone who designs web sites as a hobby - your nephew, a
friend, a co-worker. This also explains why there are so many poorly designed web sites - or "all lookalike"
- commercial template type of design.
Some "designers" don't even bother to change the original photos...
Let's say you hire your nephew or an employee's relative who "creates
websites in her spare time". The Result: Your website does not have the
professional look that shows in your other marketing
campaign so the
first impression could be negative. Your site might be hard
for web site visitors to navigate, the pages might take too long to load,
or it could be just...plain boring, causing people to leave your website without contacting you.
From their first impression, website visitors do not take your
business seriously and they choose to take their business to your
competitor.
Web Design is a unique design medium and requires extensive knowledge in designing graphics and page layout for the Internet.
The Internet is VISUAL! You have 4 seconds to grab your visitor attention. You miss with a poor design, your client is gone!
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and all of our web sites are designed with search engine placement in mind. That means your web site will rank well in a keyword search on search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. Search engines change their algorithms and indexing methods
constantly, requiring a great deal of continuous
education on the part of your web designer.
What about the price?
It's not just about the price - it's also about originality in concept and successful search engine placement.
The Port Web design team quote all of our projects as a
package flat fee so you know up front
what your web site project will cost. Search engine
submission and metatags coding is included in our price. Some web designers do not submit your
web site once it is finished and online, or they might charge
you an extra fee to provide this service. Your web site
has to be manually submitted to the search engines. Again it's
included in our package flat fee. If a web designer quotes an hourly fee for a website creation or a complete redesign of your website, remember that your final invoice might be higher than your initial quote.
All future update and maintenance is billed at $45 for HTML and $65 an hour
for Flash, PHP and database work.
To decide what type of website your business needs, or if you wish to update your existing website, contact The Port Web Design. We will analyze your business and offer online solutions that will be the most appropriate for your company.
Always happy to meet you at your location.
Don't miss our local website:
www.kennebunkport-maine.com
and our new INTERACTIVE website:
www.maineartgalleries.org