The first step to building your presence on the Internet is to design a Web site that customers will want to visit - and come back to.

Getting customers to stay long enough to explore your Web site is like getting them to stay at a store. Like a store, your Web site should be attractive and professional looking.

Most important: Whatever your business offers - whether it's a product, a service, or information - it should be easy to access on your site.

Identifying your goals

Whether you're building a site from scratch or updating your existing site, you've got a few options. Your goals for the site determine the options you should go with, so make sure you've got those nailed down first. Ask yourself: What do you want to achieve with the site?

• Will you use the site to dispense information?
• Do you merely want a Web presence so customers can find you online?
• What sections do you want in your site? (e.g. About your company, company history, product pages, executive bios)
• Do you want your site to act as a virtual salesperson, performing online transactions?
• Will you need to develop any special tools for users to interact with your site?
• Do you already have a logo that your site designer must incorporate in their design?
• About how many pages are you looking to have designed?
• Do you want your site to be structured to help gather data for marketing purposes?

Depending on your answers to these questions, you may be looking for a one-stop shop or separate contractors to address each part of your site. Designing your site can be as simple - or as complex - as your imagination and/or budget allows. And before you can decide the approach you want to take to accomplish all of your goals, you should know the difference between Web designers and Web developers.

Design vs. development

You'll probably find the titles "Web designer" and "Web developer" used interchangeably, but this isn't accurate. Designing a Web site is actually very different from developing one.

There are two major components to designing a Web site: the "front end" and the "back end." While there can be quite a bit of crossover, for the most part design refers to the front end, development to the back end.

Front end and design

The front end is what your customers see: the "pages" that display the graphics, the images, and the text on your site.

Web designers concentrate on the front end, choosing appropriate images and fonts and determining how images and text should be arranged.

A Web designer's strength is his or her appreciation for aesthetics. A designer doesn't have to be a technical whiz. But one should at least have a strong understanding of what will work visually on a computer screen and what the technical limitations are in designing for the Web.

A good Web designer will also have experience in collaborating with a Web developer.

Back end and development

Developers are part of a new breed of Internet professionals who can help you build your Web site. Web developers work on the back end, making a site work. This side of the process is not visible to visitors, but it is essential to enhancing the visitor's experience.

Back end functions include making images change or move, allowing visitors to view different pages or enter data about themselves, or performing sales transactions. If you're hiring a Web developer, learn to speak the language. Make sure the resumes of those you are considering include the following skills:

• HTML for the text and layout framework of a Web page
• Web Imaging to create and compress images for the Web
• Javascript to write programs that run as part of Web pages and to do tasks like validating form fields before submitting a form
• ASP to customize a Web page for a particular user on the server before it is sent down to the user
• Java/C++ to write programs that are embedded within a Web page - to do things that Web pages alone cannot do, such as playing a game within a Web page
  

Why use EMPIXEL;

• Pixel perfect graphics
• Award winning designs
• 10 years Internet experience
• Proven E-commerce solutions

Pricing

The cost of designing a Web site is tricky business. Web designing is a relatively new profession and even Web designers themselves are uncertain as to how much they should be charging since experience and abilities tend to range dramatically from person to person.

A good independent contractor, or a member of a Web design firm, will ask you questions about your specific needs and your expectations to determine the amount of time and work it will take to complete the project. Then they'll submit a bid or proposal. For best results, have each potential candidate fill out a standard form so you can compare bids.

If you're using an independent contractor, the full cost of the project will probably be determined by the designer's hourly rate and the number of hours per day the designer plans to work on it over a specific time period.

Some designers will be willing to negotiate a flat fee for the entire project. If you agree upon a flat fee, the designer will also have to agree upon a completion date.

In either case, the hourly rate for Web design work tends to be between $50 and $100.

You might find someone who charges less than $50 per hour, but that will likely be someone who is still fairly inexperienced. If your budget is small, you might could consider someone with a little less experience and ask them to design one or two sample pages for you to see how you like their work.

For a high-end designer, one with several successful Web designs in their portfolio and/or one who is capable of developing back-end functions of the site, expect their fee to be about $100/hour, or possibly more.