Having a website made can turn into a costly exercise that may or may not be worthwhile in terms of effort and spending. Before you embark on the task, and even before you pick a web designer think about your organisation and what it really wants to achieve from a website. Once you have some answers to this question it will give you a good indication what sort of designer (if any) you need and a basic overview with which to begin.

Do you just want to have your business particulars listed on the internet so that clients who already know about you can locate basic information such as your email address or your opening times? If this is all you really require, because your business is say for example a butchers shop on a high street you will almost certainly find that your requirements are already catered for by the many business listings that are now on the web.

Do you want to provide an offering for existing clients, providing them with information, support and service once they have already found you via another path. In this case your site might need to be technically very well built, easy to revise but will require no Online Marketing to highlight it to the search engines.

You may wish to sell goods online, having a product which can be purchased without been seen as it is standard, for example dvds or cds. If this is the case then investment in a website that can cope quickly and easily with payments is vital, the site will need to have a good Search Engine Placement so that a large number of searchers are alerted to the products but the detail of the items themselves may be nominal.

If your product is a niche one, for example say you traded in antique silver snuff boxes, you may find that there is very little need for any search engine marketing as there are so few competitors for your goods on line. You may find that you for that reason achieve a good enough Search Engine Placement position without paying out for the services of a Search Engine Optimization Company. People looking for these niche items are willing to root through a few more search engine results pages than they would for a commodity. Nevertheless if you expect to get trade from the site you will have to think very carefully about how you lay out information about your goods, you will probably need access to a designer who provides a cost effective ongoing service to keep the information updated and also a decent photographer as images will be key.

Try to think about which of these examples would best suit your organisation and then select your designer on that basis, if you still require one!

Tags: home based business, internet marketing business, starting a business