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By admin, January 2, 2011 10:53 pm

Affordable Web Design – Web design pricing method

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The web design industry has three main pricing methods for you to choose from. This will off course depend on the designer, but most will offer you the option of paying per hour, per page or per project. By having numerous options it gives you the ability to choose what will suit you best.

Below is a list of these three main pricing methods and how they can effect your web design project.

Hourly Rate

This pricing options is usually used by Freelance web designers, they will change a base rate per hour around -0. This option can be affordable if you are thinking of having a 2 – 4 page website, however if you are wanting a more complex site designed with more pages the price will increase.

The downside to this payment options is that the freelance designers will often want to maximise their time, so you may find that the site is designed very simply, with minimal graphics. They may not want to spend much time developing your site, it will be simple, quick and easy for them to do.

Make sure that you talk to the designer before they start your site, to confirm an hourly rate, and a timeline for completion. Agree on the payment and timeline to hopefully avoid any questionable charges after completion.

Per Page Rate

This is another options often used by website designers, the reason for this payment option is because some web pages actually take considerable more time than others.

The main page or home page often required more time and effort. You want this page to grab your customers attention and the layout and graphics all need to designed correction. This is why these pages will often cost extra.

This pricing option is often rather affordable when you are working with a tight budget as you have the option of how many pages you would like. The less pages the lower your cost will be, and you will always have the option of adding more pages later on if you require.

Web Design Packages

This is the most common payment option for web designers. It is also the most convenient for you as your provided with everything you will require for your site and these sites can even be produced on a tight budget. With sites starting from around 9, you will be designed a fantastic site perfect for your business. Your sure to find a package to suit your business.

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By admin, December 31, 2010 1:27 pm

Myrtle Beach Web Designer – Prices to know before you Pay

http://www.themyrtlebeachwebdesign.com

Your business needs a professional, functional web site to compete in today’s economy. How many contracts might you be losing in a year because you have an unprofessional, malfunctioning web site or no site at all? Today people judge you by your web site (or lack of one) and these opportunity costs are losses you can’t afford!

But affordability is a relative term and the wide disparities in web site pricing can be confusing. A recent survey in the South Carolina area showed the wide variation in pricing for a brochure type web site from Myrtle Beach Web Design ers, such as one that would be used by an independent consultant or a small service company.

Many factors can affect the price a designer charges. Is the designer experienced or a newbie? Do they use template-based sites that cost less, but look “blocky” and can’t be found in search engines? Do they provide a well-designed content management system (CMS) so you can save money over the life of the site by changing information on the site yourself?

Marshal Web Solutions, a Myrtle Beach Web Design company, has been successfully building web sites since 2001 – that’s a long time in this business. We’ve built dozens of sites for happy customers and we have the testimonials to prove it. We specialize in graphic design and Search Engine Optimization.

Marshal Web Solutions, a Myrtle Beach Web Design company, has all three pieces of the web design puzzle: Design experience, programming experience, and small business and non-profit marketing experience. We listen to our clients and we don’t try to pigeonhole them into web sites that aren’t right for them.

The site we provide for you will be search engine friendly and professional in both appearance and function. It will add value to your business for years to come.

At Marshal Web Solutions, a Myrtle Beach Web Design company, we are known for our LOW PRICES. Our website packages start at 9, and that includes the domain and hosting costs!

Email or call us today.

(843) 995-4084

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By admin, December 20, 2010 4:46 pm

6 Fatal Web Design Flaws!

Even if you’re not an accomplished webmaster you can still have a professional looking website. You may be like I was five years ago—you’re teaching yourself web design and you’re starting to catch on to that HTML stuff. You’re so excited about your new bag of tricks—but slow down partner, sometimes less is more. In fact the only time more is more is when it concerns chocolate cheesecake or something like that. (I can never get enough chocolate!)

You’ve worked hard to get the traffic—now don’t drive them away.

1. Fatal Flaw One—Bouncing, Wiggling Animated Clip Art

This one is really annoying to website visitors, and a sure sign you don’t know what you’re doing, especially if you have them all over the place. Just because they’re free, doesn’t mean you should use them.

SOLUTION—You’re probably not a graphics designer if you resort to using clip art, so don’t worry about your weakness, just choose a nice color scheme instead in your tables. (More on that later.) Colors don’t take extra time to download either.

2. Fatal Flaw Two—Embedded Music Clips

Good grief. Don’t do this. I don’t care how catchy your elevator tune is. No one wants to hear it. Sometimes speakers are turned up and a sudden blare of music will scare the heck out of your visitors. They’ll probably leave!

SOLUTION—If you have a site that sells music, then people will expect to hear it sometime somewhere at your site. Make your music links clickable—a choice that visitors can make to listen!

3. Fatal Flaw Three—Unstructured Text

I can’t stand it when I land on a site that I have to read from each side of my screen to the other left and right as well as up and down. Even if you want to write one long sales letter—which obviously works fine for hundreds of rich webmasters, you still need to format it into a legible width.

SOLUTION—Put your text in one single data cell of a simple table. Center your table. Voila.

4. Fatal Flaw Four—Out of Control Scroll

Similar to number three, is the out of control scroll. This is when you have to scroll text left to right as well as up and down. This happens when newbies design their websites larger than 800 pixels wide.

SOLUTION—Most people view resolution at 800×600. Set your table widths around 750 and everyone will be able to look at your site without using a bottom scrollbar.

5. Fatal Flaw Five—Gargantuan Images

This is when newbies take photos directly off their scanner or digital camera without resizing and without compressing. And nothings worse than landing on a page that has an image taking over the whole screen, taking forever to download.

SOLUTION—Using a photo program like Paint Shop, Photo Shop or other, resize images to fit in the table you intend to put it in. (Usually under 500 pixels wide.) Compress to 72 dots per inch. (DPI) Photos scanned or taken for print are large and usually at 300 dpi—no one wants to wait on those!

6. Fatal Flaw Six—Nonsense Affiliate Links

This is the same as “sites with no value.” There’s nothing that looks more like a newbie did it than a page full of banners, buttons, and text links taking visitors away from the Newbie’s site.

SOLUTION—At least publish free articles on the topic of your affiliate program. For example, let’s say you’ve signed up for a “make money selling traffic” idea. There are thousands of free articles that you can publish on getting more website traffic. Put your affiliate link at the bottom, top, or middle of the page the article is published on. Not only will having content make your site more interesting, it will also make your site more valuable to search engines.

These are just 6 little mistakes. But if you can at least change these, you are well on your way to having a more saleable site!

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By admin, December 18, 2010 3:18 am

4 Stages of Web Design

Stage 1 – Style over substance

The first stage is to design a site that the chief executive officer, venture capitalists, and ad agencies like to see. There are all types of “bells and whistles” in this design. An entire site might be a Flash animated site. Or there might be some beautiful JavaScript mouse over effects or drop-down menus in the design. It’s always a pretty design, but the message is clear – style over substance.

Stage 2 – Designing for online visibility

In Stage 2, the reality of an ineffective web design begins to hit, usually around 3-6 months after the initial launch. A site will typically get rejected by many of the major directories, not be indexed by the major search engines, or not get the traffic or sales that were projected based on the various types of marketing strategies used. Typically, that’s when companies decide that they will try to hire a professional online marketer to promote the site. Doorway page companies, in some way, shape or form, rear their ugly heads. Unfortunately, many web site owners fall for a doorway page company’s pitch because the beautifully designed site couldn’t possibly be the problem with low site traffic. Yahoo might have rejected a site, or the site might have been listed in Yahoo and the company cannot understand why they have no description next to their company name. But in no way would many ad agencies or doorway page companies want to tell potential clients the truth — they simply did not design and write an effective web site — because it would mean losing thousands of pounds in business

Stage 3 – Designing for your audience

By Stage 3, after spending an exorbitant amount of money on pretty web site designs and various marketing strategies, web site owners generally figure out that they did not design or write an effective Web site for their target audience. Typically, web site owners will bring in a usability expert to analyze potential problems and present various solutions. Bringing in a search engine marketing expert to help with search-engine friendly web designs &templates early in the design phase can save a company thousands of pounds in online marketing costs.

Stage 4 – Site redesign

After careful usability and search engine visibility analyses, web site owners finally have an effective web site. A site that is written, coded and designed for user friendliness and search engine visibility generally gets the most traffic and resulting sales because it was written, programmed, and designed for end users.

Conclusion

Web sites should always be designed with your target audience in mind, not your own personal preferences. Colours have meaning. Professional designers understand the psychology of colour and the use of white space to best project the image your audience wishes to see. (For example, try not to use the colour red on a financial site.) Understanding the products/services/information your target audience is searching for is paramount to designing and maintaining an effective web site. When you launch a site, you might have to make an educated guess as to what your target audience wants. After that, tools such as site statistics software and reporting from site searches tell you exactly what your visitors are looking for. Then content and marketing strategies can be adjusted accordingly. Unless the advanced technology clearly benefits end users, do not use it on your site. If your venture capitalists or CEO’s or lawyers like the site, ask if they are going to spend the thousands or millions of pounds to keep you in business.

They’re not. Your target audience who will ultimately determine the success or failure of your site.