Are You Paying Too Much for Your Website?

A lot of owners are still spending altogether too much money every year to have a highly paid professional designer handle their websites. There´s virtually nothing worse for your professional image than having a stale website full of worn-out information just because you´re afraid of the cost of changing it.

It´s time to stop throwing your money out the window.

The way websites are created and maintained has changed enormously. A pile of grooming was vital to be a website designer a decade ago. Designers had to be proficient with source editors like Dreamweaver, and they had to be intimate with extraordinary programming langages like PHP.

Today things are really very different.

There is a contemporary tool now called a "CMS", or "Content Management System", that makes them much less vital in the building and maintenance of almost all regular websites. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying: these people are still vital elements of the website design industry, but their function is changing. Any somewhat computer savvy individual can likely use techniques like this to act as their own webmaster. A Content Management System is fundamentally just a "point and click" site editor. It can be used to add and get rid of pages. All CMS include what is generally called a "WYSIWYG" editor, essentially just an exceptionally easy word processor that allows you to edit pages. WYSIWYG is merely a nickname meaning "What You See is What You Get". It enables you to plan the page, set up tables and upload photos and images. It also allows you to organize pages by altering the website's Navigation Menu.

In brief, a Content Management System allows almost any individual to rapidly and effortlessly perform all the duties that required a master designer hours to do only years ago.

Now customers automatically get access to a free or discounted content management system from Virtually every single significant website hosting service. This is more than most small businesses need. One of my favorite website Hosts, GoDaddy.com, has a great content management system for hosting small to medium sized enterprise web sites. Establishing "shopping carts" on sites is made simple for retail website owners by applications like Paypal that hook easily into their sites. Intuit, a company that provides software for accounting and CPA firms has recently branched into this new mainstream market and their templates already include a shopping cart feature.

The difference, of course, is cost. Most website designers make upwards of $25 per hour, and they´re usually not as motivated as you are to get your jobs taken care of in a timely manner. Expert design jobs can have wait times on web design jobs of 30 days or longer.

This doesn´t even include the time spent constructing the site. Constructing a website from scratch can often take 200 hours or more. That means months of lost time and thousands of dollars spent. By building sites in advance and offering menus of "ready-to-use" site templates CMS providers can get you around this expense.

Numerous site owners balk at using "templates" or already have custom-made sites that they have spent heaps of cash on and are very happy with, but lots of CMS providers are able to fine-tune their existing templates to best reflect your brand, if not straight-out replicate your current site, quite inexpensively. This is an emerging technology, but it´s disseminating extremely fast.

Of course the difficulty with sites built in this fashion is that, while inexpensive and simple to manage, they often want for important content. The necessity for industry specific content has given birth to an entire side industry encompassing the requirement for industry specific content, so before running off to GoDaddy, do a Google search for web providers that focus on your specific field.

Suppose you´re a CPA. This happens to be inside my professional field so it makes a good illustration. You'll notice a number of companies that offer sites especially for accountants complete with Content Management System just by Googling the key phrase "CPA Websites".

CPA Site Solutions is the best of these, and I'm familiar with all of them. For more than 10 years we've made top-notch sites for CPA firms. We also designed and offer one of those Content Management Systems on the cutting-edge that can "fine-tune" their site templates or replicate existing websites. To understand what we are referring to when we talk about "industry specific content" look at a demo accounting site:

http://samples.cpasitesolutions.com/?style=305

Notice the tools created specifically for website owners in the accounting field? Free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive finanacial calculators, email... A website like this may be reasonably useful for a very limited number of businesses outside their intended market, possibly a head-hunter or business consultant might have some use for them, but it would be worthless to a business like a retailer.

Many industries... retail, construction, schools, non-profit, restaurant and hotel, law, medical... have equivalent providers.

It´s worth the time and cost of retaining master designers for selected big, highly specialized concerns, but for most small and medium sized enterprises, especially in these problematic economic times, it´s time to reflect on new solutions. Finding a CMS that suits your company will reduce your costs and at the same time increase your control over your website.

Website templates are web page designs that are created by professional designers who sell the templates to others for their use. Templates that are created normally have dummy text on them, which gives the viewer a full look of what the finished product would look like.

One of the most important decisions that you will have to make when starting a site will be whether or not to use a pre-made template, or start from scratch. A pre-made template offers you the ease of production, as well as a lower cost of the design. It also gives you the ability to then customize a few things, here and there, to make it more personalized. A website from scratch is more expensive, yet again it all depends on what you want on the site and how 'complete' you would like it. The more ideas, the more the designer will charge.

Most of the created templates are offered in a variety different themes and color schemes. Some also come with a graphic introduction page, which offers images that slide/transform.

Remember, before selecting a template, you will need to identify the goals for your website. How would you like the layout to look like. Look at some websites and grab some ideas from them. What type of content would you like on there, pages, images, etc. When you have everything together, it becomes much easier for yourself or a professional designer to build the template.

There has always been advantages of using a web template:

* Provides the basic web page layout
* Provides a consistent look and feel for the site
* Most come with professional graphics
* Most allow you to customize those graphics to a more personalized look
* It is usually easy to edit the content on the template by using almost any HTML editor

Other advantages of using a web template are being able to receive regular updates that can keep your site compatible with others. If changes are needed this can be done easily without changing the layout of your pages or site. Some companies also offer a complete web design package, which includes features like a client portal and a monthly newsletter. Specific web design companies, like for CPA's, may also offer fully loaded pages of content that are pertained to accountants, bookkeepers, tax services, etc.

Like in most things, there are disadvantages of a template:

* It becomes difficult to make any changes on unless you are skilled at HTML and can use a graphics program like Photoshop. Content and page text is usually easy enough to change by using your CMS, but style elements are another matter.
* Any interactive features have to be integrated into the template, unless the provider has built it in.
* You do not own the copyright of the template, unless you purchase it from the designer.

Every person wants a website that stands out from the crowd. Using pre-designed templates is one way to accomplish this; you have the basic layout and structure of the design, but then you can go in and change out the colors, images, etc. Having a full custom websites, from scratch, can also be a big accomplishment. A full custom may cost more, but is built exactly the way that you have pictured it. So, what do you choose? Best suggestion would be, look at your finances, how much do you want to spend on your website? Do you have a budget for it? Take a look at some web designers and what they can offer you.

It is important to purchase a quality template. Since many of them come in a variety of specific themes and color schemes, you should be able to find one that is right for your site. It is best to find a website provider that offers many features for one price, rather than purchasing all features separately. It may, not only save you money, but save you the hassle of asking any questions to six different providers, rather than one.