The Secret To Outsourcing Web Design

“I need a web site.” How many times have we heard those words?

We try to explain – you need more than a web site, you need an online strategy. It includes a web site, probably a blog, a mail list, SEM/PPC/Local marketing strategy and more. Web design is just a small part of it.

However, if you are going to outsource your web design, it pays to know the difference between a web designer, print designer, graphics designer and online marketing firm.

A true web designer concentrates on many things:

• Clean code (e.g. layout using CSS instead of tables)
• Browser compatibility
• User interface (easy navigation, most important content where the viewers eyes go first, set the viewer on a predetermined path)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Landing page design – which can be different from overall site design

Depending on their ability in graphics, they should at least be able to tell you the header goes here, a picture goes here, and leave it up to a graphics designer to fill in the blanks.

We constantly tell our clients that you don’t need a web design that wins awards, you need a web design that converts traffic. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Web Site Design – DIY or Outsource?

Create your own web site or hire a web designer?

There are several questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to build and edit your own sites or seek a professional web designer:

* How often will you update or make changes to your site?
* How many web sites will you be building?
* How complex (how many pages) will your website(s) be?
* Will your site be static or dynamic?

As a general rule, if you have more time and less money, you learn to do it yourself; if you have more money and less time you can contract it out.

FREQUENT WEB SITE EDITING If you are going to make frequent changes to your web site such as add new content, new articles, new products, etc, it pays to create, or at least edit, your web site yourself. You don’t want to have to run to your webmaster and pay $25 every time you change some content or want to test a new design or color scheme.

Many people will tell you that you don’t have to know the underlying html tags to edit web sites. Perhaps, but it’s LOTS easier if you know basic html. It’s not a complex “programming language” or anything, it’s just tags that tell the browser what to do. Once you have a basic understanding, the rest will come along in a “learn as you go” manner. Just go to Google and type in “learn HTML”.

You’ll also learn basic layout and formatting using tables and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Again, if you start with a few simple sites you can learn as you go.

Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

How Domains Work

This is a sample video from our Members Area. It explains how domain names work, including nameservers (NS1/NS2), IP addresses, DNS servers and computer host files.

It starts with a Registrar where you buy the domain name. You then rent space on the Internet through a web host which gives you an IP address for your domain’s space and nameserver info to pass on to your Registrar when you are ready for your site to go live.

You use the IP address your web host gave you to preinstall your web site.

Once your site is up you change your nameserver information on your Registrar, then the various DNS servers come by the Registrar and update their info to direct visitors to the proper IP address for your site..
————————
HOSB RSS Feed