Now that you have decided that it is time to create a website for your business there are many questions you must answer. One of most important questions is "Who should create my website?"

I like to use analogy of playing music; in as little as a few hours, some people can strum a few chords on guitar and play a song. But to really play instrument and make your instrument sing requires experience and understanding. Likewise, although there are tools which are readily available to assist in process, effective website design requires experience and understanding of many diverse areas including: marketing, Internet graphics options and limitations, effectively creating a site from perspective of search engines, differences and limitations of different browsers and computer platforms as well as knowledge of software and coding required to move beyond simple static html pages.

It is also vitally important that your designer understand you and your business and know how to most effectively communicate you and your uniqueness to your Internet audience. To answer our question, we’ll look at some important pieces of information that you’ll need to find out before you choose your website designer.

What do you want in a website? What are your needs and intentions for having a website? Does prospective designer listen to and understand your needs and intentions? Have you checked other similar businesses to see what they are doing on Internet? Can a prospective designer offer any suggestions for improving upon what others have already accomplished? The more clarity you have about your intended results for having a website, more accurately you can communicate your needs to your designer and more likely it is that you will achieve these results.

As a website designer, this is often first question that I am asked by a new client. The simple answer is that it costs whatever you are willing to spend; anywhere from free to millions of dollars. A more productive process to address issue of cost is to answer a series of questions.

What are your needs, goals and expectations?

What are needs and expectations of your site visitors, customers and clients?

Is your business already established with its unique brand/identity?

What is required in terms of skills, experience and level of design?

Do you want to hire a high profile design house, a medium sized design studio, a small company or a student? What can you afford to budget for your project?

We’ll take a look at these questions to see how they influence cost of creating a website, look at two simple examples and give you some ideas for coming up with a budget for your project. In general, cost for a website will be based on how long it takes for design and implementation plus any additional costs required for hardware or software. While there are certainly no hard and fast rules, more experienced design company, higher their hourly rate. Generally, more robust and complicated site needs to be -- whether for handling large amounts of traffic, for technically sophisticated programming and database integration or for specialized images and text -- higher cost.

What are your needs, goals and expectations? What are needs and expectations of your site visitors, customers and clients?

It’s important to address what your ideas are for a website and why you want one. There may also be details or uses that you haven’t considered. The needs and expectations of your target markets are also important and will also address your analysis of your competition. A good designer will support you through a process to determine what is required to achieve results you require. PlanetLink often provides this as a consulting service with a portion of fees applied towards actual design work. Projects can also be implemented over time so that costs can be spread out. The more involved needs of project, greater cost.

Is your business already established with its unique brand/identity?

Websites on a tight budget generally don’t address this issue. It’s important that your website accurately represent who you are from perspective of "look and feel." If way your business is visually and thematically represented is structured and effective, then process of creating imagery for your website will ideally be an extension of what already exists. If budget allows, for businesses without a unique identity or style, often generation of website is an opportunity to create print materials at same time, thus saving costs.