Who Designed Your Site?

[djveed]

Hello! I'm in the process of a new website and small business. I am not tech savvy at all. If you're trying to launch a GOOD and widely publicized website (not just some single page chop shop site), what do you suggest for designing the site? Hiring a firm? If so, what firm? Or do you suggest just going the Dreamweaver route?

 

[ourcoffeebarn]

I use a combonation of Dreamweaver and WordPress for my blog and information pages.

For my stores, they are both OsCommerce based stores that I have been modifying for almost 5 years now.

They both (WordPress and OsCommerce) have very good user forums to ask questions and get help.

 

[djveed]

Hey thanks for the response. I assumed that by asking what you used to design your site - I'd get hundreds of responses with people simply trying to get others to click WWW and see their site. But only one?

Can anyone give me feedback or advice on how I could create a very professional and dynamic site, such as coffeegeek.com?

 

[ourcoffeebarn]

Do you want just an informational site like the CoffeeGeek? or a site with a store? or just a dynamic store?

Like I said OsCommerce is a GREAT Dynamic store.

WordPress is as dynamic as you want it for a blog and it's taking off like a rocket now!

Do you have access to a CPanel of your site? If so there are lots of php based Bullitin Boards and mailing lists or a forum like this one!

Start with somthing and just build on it and you learn as you go.

 

[caffe biscotto]

If you're not tech savvy or computer savvy, you might want to consider having a local web designer do your site for you, set a budget at a few grand or so.

As far as what I use, it's Yahoo Sitebuilder, pretty easy, almost a paint by numbers web design program from Yahoo! It comes with their webhosting plan. I have an online store with them, not coffee though, not yet....

 

[djveed]

The quotes I'm getting are well over four thousand dollars. Bunch of thieves!

 

[caffe biscotto]

Ha, djveed, you crack me up man. Web designers, along with mechanics, carpenters and doctors, all thieves imo, ha ha!!

The owner of the place I used to manage just paid $8,000 to have a local guy design a new site for him. I said what??? $8,000???!!! But hey it came out very nice and in the long run, a well designed website will pay dividends.

He's got a multi-million dollar bakery though, so it's just another drop in the bucket for him. The small business I currently run can't afford that kind of investment so we've chosen to keep Yahoo! Sitebuilder.

Good luck.

 

[djveed]

I'm very seriously considering learning web design just out of spite of these people. I've had three companies provide quotes for me - but the problem is that all three of them have pretty slim looking portfolios. I'm not comfortable forking out thousands of dollars for a website that looks like fifth grade art class.

 

[caffe biscotto]

Web design is getting easier with all of the tools and info on the internet these days. It's the marketing, advertising, keyword placement, over all search engine optimization, etc. that is the tough part. But still, I don't know why designers charge so many thousands for a few pages on the net.

An idea is to start out with a free blog, then once you get the idea down, you can transfer much of that content into a real website, then implement your keyword strategies, build links and advertise. Pop your site into forum website reviews. They'll be honest and tear you apart too, ha ha! Take it with a grain of salt though.