When you are a small business it is always important to watch every penny you spend but when it comes to creating your presence on the internet many people are penny wise and dollar foolish. While initial expenditure should be a consideration, designing your web site should be looked at as an investment and not an expense. We fully believe that in most cases you do not need to spend tens of thousands on a web site some times the lower cost options do more harm than good.

There are many inexpensive or free hosting sites that allow you to create your own web site. These are fine for a personal site but not advisable for a business site - in fact many do not allow a commercial site so read their terms of use carefully.

How your site looks is only a small part of designing a site. Designing your own site can be worse than not having a site unless you know the underlying elements that make a site successful and the things that make it a loser.

Hiring a designer to do your site can also be challenging so here are a few guidelines and questions you should ask before making a decision.

• The price of a basic five (5) page web site without a shopping cart or forms should average around $60 to $150 per page. If the initial cost is more than that ask why - are you being charged extra for scanning, graphics or other basic items? Ironically the larger the design company the higher the price you may pay.
  
  
• Don't pay strictly for a set number of pages - we quote our prices as 'up to' a certain number of pages because until we see the content we don't know how many pages are needed to make the site look good and be easy to navigate.
  
  
• Don't pay for pages based on the amount of text or graphics per page - some designers base a page on 500 words and 2 or 3 images but until the site is laid out and content in place there is no way to be certain that formula will work for your business.
  
  
• Are you paying for a custom 'from scratch' design or a cookie cutter template? While using a template can be fine, will your information just be slotted into the design or will the design be worked to fit your business.
  
  
• If your designer or hosting company registers the domain name for you, whose name do they register it in? Many, many companies think they own their domain name when their hosting or design company are the registered owners.
  
  
• Who owns your web site? You may assume because you paid for it you own it but we have run into many instances where a business wants to change their hosting or have a new designer update their site and it cannot be done because the hosting or design company owns and controls the site and will not allow it to be moved. When we design a site, once it is paid in full you own it.
  
  
• Speaking of updates - will the designer update your site and add pages as needed and what will they charge to do so?
  
  
• Will your site have the META tags for search engines, a proper title and content geared towards search engine optimization as part of the initial design?
  
  
• Does your designer offer any type of support in the event something doesn't work properly or once the site is done is it your problem? Will they charge you to fix it? How much? We offer a full year of fine tuning to your site and will be available for the life of your site.
  
  
• Will the designer work with you towards the success of your site, including payment options for the initial design, low cost maintenance packages and affordable search engine assistance?