With all of the do-it-yourself HTML software out there, it is relatively simple for anyone to create a functional web site, however using DIY web design software explains why there are so many poorly designed web sites - if someone has a paintbrush, it doesn't make them Van Gogh!

Let's look at the following scenario:
Scenario: You're convinced that anyone can design a website so you hire your nephew (he has a copy of FrontPage he'd like to try) or you hire an employee's relative who "creates websites in her spare time".

The Result: Your website does not have the professional look that is evident in your other marketing pieces so the first impression might not be a positive one.

Your site could be cumbersome for web site visitors to navigate and the pages might take too long to load, causing people to leave your website without contacting you.

The Real Problem: From their first impression, website visitors do not take your business seriously and they choose to take their business to your competitor. Web Design is a unique design medium and requires extensive knowledge in designing graphics specifically for the Internet. The optimization of each page for the search engines is ongoing since all of the search engines change their algorithms and indexing methods constantly, requiring a great deal of continuous education. Properly marketing a site online continues long after the launch of the site and, again, online promotion requires a lot of time, of which you might have very little to spare!

Hiring a professional web design team will save you time and money in the long run and bring you the results you need for online marketing.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and all of our web sites are designed with search engine placement in mind. That means your web site will rank well in a keyword search on search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo, to name a few. Search engines change their algorithms and indexing methods constantly, requiring a great deal of continuous education on the part of your web designer. The 82media.com SEO team participates in conferences, forums and discussion boards to provide content rich websites for today's Internet. Then we let the search engines increase your website traffic, naturally.

The average web designer quotes an estimate based on $60 - $125 per hour. The proposal you receive will be a "questimate" at best and you will more than likely end up paying more at the end of your design project than originally proposed.

At 82media.com, we quote all of our projects as a package flat fee so you know in advance what your project will cost you. All future maintenance is billed based on the request, which is very competitive for professional and award-winning web design services.

Make sure you ask the web designer what the proposed price covers. It should include the page layout, image and logo manipulation, transfer of your pages to your web host server and submission to the search engines and directories using the META tags the web designer formatted. In reality, it should cover your web site project beyond Internet launch! If a web designer quotes an hourly fee, remember that your final invoice might be higher than your initial quote, plus there might be hidden fees for search engine submission and other miscellaneous services.