Ask yourself these questions.

• Are you building a information site or an Ecommerce site? (a site that sells something)
• Do you have a design in your head or are you starting from scratch?
• Do you expect the site will need to be updated with fresh information on a regular basis?
• Are you an expert on the subject matter? (not the website design, but the purpose of the site?  If so, can you write articles about your subject?

What is available?

Everyone and their brother these days seems to be able to write websites.  While hiring a friend or family member may seem like a good idea, there are several limitations.  We will show you some methods and software that you can use to build a site and along with that the pros and cons of doing so.

Frontpage 

Designed for the amateur.  Made by Microsoft.  You can usually pick out a site made by front page, they are very basic and you cannot use any advanced templates with the program.

Yahoo Site Builder

A step up from Frontpage, but still more or less based on text and pictures.  You can do a lot with site builder but it does have limitations if you are looking to build an ecommerce site.  This product is free from Yahoo.

Dreamweaver and Adobe

The cadallacs of web design software.  These software packages are more costly but are highly valued and widely used.  The learning curve is a bit steeper but you can do a lot more with these two packages.  The ability to use templates and edit flash sites is a big plus.

Joomla 

Joomla is an open source software product which means its free.  They really excel in content management.  That means if your content is going to change a lot or you regularly update your content, then its an ideal solution.  You do all your administration online through a control panel.  It takes a little to get the hang of, but it is a very powerful solution.

Online solutions

There are several sites that offer you the ability to build sites with an all in one type package.  Citymax, Blue Voda and One and One are a few examples.  I used one of these and had average results.  I wont mention which one, but I had to scrap the whole thing and start over with Dream weaver since they were not set up to do outstanding search engine optimization work.  They work entirely on their own systems which means standard rules and techniques do not work in their systems.  If you plan on building a Ecommerce site, these types of sites are not recommended

X Cart 

X Cart is a shopping cart software solution that actually builds a site around a database of your products.  The site building part is pretty much straight forward and the real power is in the shopping cart.  This program is excellent and widely used in the ecommerce world.

Yahoo stores

Yahoo is the leading shopping portal on the internet today.  Yahoo does a lot of things very excellent.  You can learn the store format with some online tutorials and some outside references.  Yahoo is a powerhouse in building stores and they integrate the store owner into their search results.  This is very powerful.

Now that you have a brief overview of the different types of software, its important to ask a potential designer which type they use.  If you plan on administrating the site yourself, it will pay to have software that is widely used and can grow with your business.

Questions to ask your web designer

• What software do you use?
• How will I know how to maintain the site once you are finished?
• What if I make a mistake, can I find you to help me fix something?
• Can I expand the site using the template you created?
• Who puts in the content of the site?
• Will you insert the meta tags and keywords that I give you for each page?
• Do you know the importance of no follow tags and where they should go on my home page?
• Do you install a Google site map on the home page?

If you get weird answers or fragmented answers, find someone else.  Most site designers have no idea how to make a site that is coded with the proper tags that allow it to be found by the search engines.  Why you ask?  Because this takes time after the site is designed, you would have to insert the content and then go back and program the keywords and meta tags.  The essence of search engine optimization is a science in itself.  Most designers are not experts at it, if they know it at all.  The first thing a good SEO person will do will be to recommend what changes you need to make to your site to get it right.  Why not make the changes part of the initial design so that you don’t have to pay for things twice.  This is where the Village Navigator excels, we get it right from the start and help you maintain and promote it along the way.  It’s a huge difference.