Hiring a Professional Web Designer vs Building Your Own Website

Ah, the endless debate. The question of whether it's better to hire a professional website designer, or build your website using free online templates, comes down to these considerations:

Cost
This is everyone’s #1 motive for using template websites, which are unusually much cheaper up front. The options are:

Do-it-yourself Templates

• Free websites with ads
• Free websites with a yearly charge to get rid of the ads, which I have seen as low as $15
• Template websites that have all the goodies: Google Adwords, contact forms, lead capturing, etc for about $30 a month
  

Hiring a Designer

• Website designers generally charge you for their services upfront or over the course of your project and depending on its complexity, the fees will vary from designer to designer.
• The only other out of pocket expensive is to pay for hosting and your domain every year.
• If you choose not to pay for hosting annually, you can get your website hosted for as little as $5 a month.
  

It is more expensive over a short period of time to hire a web designer, but you get what you pay for, which leads into my next consideration:


Your Company Image
For me, this goes far beyond having a unique image, which you won’t receive with template websites.

Do-it-yourself Templates

• Businesses have limited options as to what templates they can use and how they can modify these templates.
• It is not uncommon for several companies to have the same website, sans of course what’s written on the pages and the name of the company.
  

Hiring a Designer

• Some website designers do offer template-based websites because it allows their clients to see the end result, plus it cuts down their labor costs. And naturally, they are less expensive. The one thing these companies can provide you with that the do-it-yourself templates can’t is actual marketing. They will edit and format your content so it gets attention.
• And, of course, you have your fully customized website. Web designers will usually research your industry and come up with a unique approach that will not only best represent you, but will be memorable in the minds of consumers. The overall appearance and quality of these websites are undeniably superior.
  
  
  

Site Ownership
When you create a do-it-yourself website, you are basically bound by the terms of use of their hosting website.

Do-it-yourself Templates

• If you do decide to host your website elsewhere, you cannot take your website with you; you cannot use their graphics elsewhere.
  

Hiring a Designer

• A good web development company will provide you with all the files you need in order to edit or transfer your site as you see fit.
  

Whether you should choose a template-based website or a professional designed website is all about what you feel comfortable with. I urge you to review your options before making a decision and hope that no matter what choice you make, it’s one that allows you to maintain your company brand no matter what web service you are using. Goodluck and happy hunting!

Have questions? Contact teakettica here.

Google Wave: Revolutionary?

Kati Driscoll, a friend & colleague of mine who specializes in social media, posted this video about the new Google Wave. This is actually a rather impressive demonstration that I thought I would share with you all.

Basically, a "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

For a full explanation on exactly what this product is, go here. For a lengthy video preview, go here.

For those who are still a little confused as to what this is and why you would use it, here are some issues that Google Wave addresses:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
  
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
  
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms? (Aka, Snail Mail)

I have to say, very little impresses me these days when it comes to technology because new products are simply ideas recycled. Google Wave, however, appears more revolutionary... and it's open source to boot.

This is currently only open to web developers, but definitely worth following.

Study: 95 percent of all e-mail sent in 2007 was spam

Let's talk about spam.

Not that kind of spam — the email variety.

A found a very interesting article:

There was a time--2004 to be precise--when spam "only" consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks' annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam. In 2001, the number was 5 percent.

[read more here]

This could explain that no matter how hard we try, no matter how many times we change our e-mail address, we are still getting spam.

If you have a website, one way to really cut down on spam is to not post your e-mail address.

Instead of posting your email address for spam bots to find, you could use a spam-proof web form like this:

teakettica can also install a security feature that will prevent spam bots from auto-filling your forms:



Please don't hesitate to contact us for more information on how you can control spam.

Where do you rank on the search engines?

As you know, we specialize in organic search engine optimization (SEO) — in other words, search engine optimization that is displayed naturally as opposed to paid advertising.

Want to know how it works? Take a look at two of our clients:

Go to Google and search for custom built garages Delaware The #1 website is Newark Door & Window.

Now go to Google and search for printer Wilmington Delaware

The #1 site is Small Associates.

If you are interested in higher search engine rankings and being found by prospects on the internet, please don't hesitate to contact us here.

website + business card

About a month or so ago, my client needed a website in a hurry for his daughter as a graduation present. The challenge: She is a health & wellness coach/instructor who loves both red and purple.

Red makes me think of food, or an emergency. Purple reminds me of flowers or something of the noble-variety.

How exactly was I going to pull this off!? If you've ever researched the health & wellness industry, everything is pastels and spa-like colors.

Solution: I decided to tone down the red and the purple and soften the colors with some blue...

A few hours later, the site was done — with a matching business card: