Terry Barth Design & Photography

Sure you can build your own website. However. . .

• Do you have time? It will probably take much longer than you anticipate. Can your business afford the time you spend on this?
• Can you create a site that is professional looking or as good or better than your competitor's web site?
• Do you know how to properly design your site so Google and other search engines can find your site?
• Are you familiar common web site design & usability standards?
• Do you know how to design for cross browser compatibility?
• Do you know how validate your HTML code?
• Do you know how build your site using CSS? Do you know how to validate it?

The easy answer is how many new customers or additional sales will it take to cover the cost of the new website? You may also consider how many existing customer or sales will you not lose if you develop or redesign your site.

For example, if your average profit on the sale of your products or servies is $200 and the cost of your new website is $1400, you will need just 7 new sales transactions or keep from losing 7 sales transactions to cover the cost of your investment.

The hard part is determining which sales come from the new web site vs your other marketing activities. Of course there are some strategies for this problem.

Here are some considerations

• Is the content on your site more than a year old?
• Are the descriptions of your products & services current? How about contact information, photos or links?
• Is your site consistent with your current marketing materials?
• Have you looked at your competitors sites recently?
• Have you ever checked to see how your site looks in another browser?
• Do you have any broken links?
• Was your site designed before the latest versions of browsers became available?

1. You tell me about your business or organization, your customers, products & services the type of content you'd like on your site and what you think the purpose of your site should be.
2. We discuss a variety of approaches and site design options for how your website will help your business or organization grow or acheive it's goals.
3. We review a proposal and a fixed price and make any adjustments. We agree to proceed.
4. You provide the agreed upon content, photos, text, graphics, logos, etc.
5. I develop an initial site design based on the agreed proposal.
6. We review the initial desing for any minor adjustments/corrections.
7. I complete the site design, validate the HTML and CSS and test for cross browser compatibility.
8. I upload your new site to the hosting server.

If you already have a website, I can give you a quick assesment of your site. I will look at the overall design, usability, readability, search engine compatibility, cross browser compatibility and compliance with modern website coding standards. This is not an in-depth analysis but I can tell you if there are some problem areas that you might want to address.

It turns out that the popular browsers, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Safari, etc, do NOT display websites in the same way. Sometimes margins and borders don't line up, text sizes can vary, page layouts can vary. It's true!

Your site might look great in Mozilla or Safari, but might look terrible in Internet Explorer or vis versa. Sure there are standards for web browsers, but each browser interprets or implements them differently. Correcting a broken layout in one browser might break the layout for another browser. Consequently, some of your customers will think your web site is broken or unprofessional looking. Not a good impression.

Fortunately, using the proper techniques and testing for cross browser compatibility, these problems can be solved.

If you have more questions, please call. I'll be happy to help. 612 859 2453