* Toll free telephone support * 24 hour customer service * Better Business Bureau affiliation * Human e-mail address contacts * Google PageRank of 2 or above * Presentation of a hard-copy quote/design contract

Design Experience/Portfolio

Does design firm have experience in working with similar types of businesses? Even if a designer doesn’t have a web site in their portfolio related to your industry, firm you select should have a strong working knowledge of how to develop an effective site for your business type. Product and service web sites are not same. Your designer should have a plan of action for developing a site that reaches maximum number of prospective customers in your target market.

A few good questions to ask about a firm’s design experience include:

* Does firm offer a number of diverse, finished web sites available for review? * Will firm conduct research regarding my competition? * Will my web site highlight features, benefits and value of my product or service? * Has firm outlined a plan of action for creating an effective site, start to finish?

Design experience need not always relate to type of web sites firm has previously developed. If you have a specific look in mind, ask firm if achieving a similar design is possible. The ultimate goal is to know you’re going to get a tangible benefit out of your site through effective, affordable web design.

Additional Services

Many web design firms offer design, but do not provide other required services such as hosting and domain name registration. Ideally, your web design company should be a full-service firm, offering at least basic hosting, domain registration and search engine optimization services tailored to your needs. Research each firm to determine other key lines of business, so that any future expansion of your site will be seamless as your business grows.

Turnaround Time

An effective website should take 30-60 days to go live, from start of production. Unless you’re offering hundreds of individual products or services on your web site, entire development process, start to finish, should take no longer than 60 days. Turnaround time should include:

* Upload of your web site to hosting provider * Configuration of any scripts or forms on your site * Domain propagation (accessing your web site and e-mail via yoursite.com)

Hiring cheapest, fastest, or most elaborate web design firm does not always equate to hiring right web design firm. A limited amount of front-end research can save time and money in long term, and maximize sales revenue from your web presence.

Comes with in-built FTP, Spell-checker and preview. Tables and forms easy to edit, and custom scripts easy to insert. Java well supported and you can build independent pages.

Weaknesses: requires later version browsers, as it uses "layers". The "layers" can be turned off, but you have to use frames to insert images. Its creators didn't bother to explain in detail how to do this. User Guide not easiest to understand, anyway.

Actual Drawing web pages really do look professional, nevertheless. The Standard Version costs $59 and Pro version $99. There's a free trial version.

http://mercantilecentral.com/actualdrawing.htm

Web Easy Pro: This one will give you some pretty neat results. You can type your content, drag and drop, or cut/copy and paste it on to your web pages. You can also build independent pages.

Web Easy Pro comes with a good variety of templates and images, as well as in-built FTP, forms and tables. Easy-to-understand User Guide included, with examples.

Weaknesses: Requires user to select "custom" scripts from menu, and Java not well supported. Their page naming (example; 002, 003 etc.) is something I particularly don't like. Custom buttons not easy to create, and spell-checker not available.

Overall, with Web Easy Pro you can build a professional quality website several pages long in a short time. Cost: $39.99 for standard version and $69.99 for pro. You can download a free trial version, also.

http://mercantilecentral.com/webeasy.htm