Cons

1. Too many options - customers can become indecisive if their are too many options to choose from. 2. Too many links to other web sites - this may take visitors away from your site and not return. Ideally you want to keep them at your site. 3. Can be expensive to build - content-based sites can cost thousands of dollars to develop if you take into account cost of graphics and/or hiring someone to build it for you. 4. Takes a lot of time to develop web site - building content-based pages takes time. It may take several years to create hundreds of content-based pages. 5. Attracts "tire kickers" - visitors want to look around to glean free information but may never buy.

Conclusion:

Before you decide on what type of web site to develop, first think of purpose of your site. If you just need a sales page and want to drive targeted traffic to your site using paid advertising (ie paid per click search engines, ezine ads) then a mini site could be sufficient.

If you plan on becoming an authority on your product or service and want to attract lots of free search engine traffic, then a content-based web site will serve you better.

Alternatively, you may create a combination of two ie begin with a mini site, leaving room to expand it to a larger content-based web site in future.

If you have not already done so, register a domain name and select web hosting. If you are unsure on how to do this, your web designer should be able to give you some suggestions that will fit your needs.

If you have already registered your domain name and found web hosting, do not give anyone your password unless you are sure they will be designing your website and a contract has been made for them NOT to give anyone your personal information.

To recap, planning a website can be difficult to plan, but it does not have to be difficult. Having all of your contents, color scheme preferences, graphics, etc. all on hand prior to having someone design your website can save you time, money, and frustration.