Small Business Website Design - How to Get Professional Results on a Shoestring Budget

Just because you are a small business with an even smaller website design budget, does not mean that you cannot have a professional looking website and presence on the web. All it means is you will have to do some of the work yourself instead of paying some design firm to do it for you. Amazingly enough, self designed pages from small business owners who did their research frequently end up being better and more focused than professionally designed pages. Consider the following suggestions when designing your own website.

Suggestion #1 - URL

First of all, your URL is very important and since it is the address to your website and what everyone will use to find your place on the web you need to put some careful consideration and thought into it. You don't want to come up with a URL that already exists as a .com and register it as a .tv. If you do this, you will just lose customers to the com. Likewise, you don't want to register a URL that has nothing to do with your website or content either. Be thoughtful and register a URL that pertains to your services or products, is as short as possible, and is spelled easily.

Suggestion #2 - Host

The next thing you must do is find a web host. Since you are on a shoestring budget you will be tempted to save money and go with a free host. Do not do this. Do anything you have to do to convince yourself that free is not always better because in this case it is not. Frequently the free sites don't get indexed by the search engines, they don't provide much space or bandwidth, and since they are free you can't do too much about it when the site is down or you went over your visitor limit. Instead, find an affordable host and there are many for under $10 per month, offer decent bandwidth, storage space, e-mail services, as well as other tools you need.

Suggestion #3 - Professional Templates

When it comes to designing your site, many hosts have tutorials and wizards that will help you do so. However, you will want your site to be as professional as possible so keep this in mind when choosing colors and the like. Also, use professional templates that you can buy or download for free online. They will give you the professional appearance you want for free.

Suggestion #4 - Text

When it comes to loading text on your website make sure you break it up into small chunks, use bold words, bullets, numbers, and anything else that you can think of to make it more readable. Avoid small fonts, light colors, or strange texts. Also, remember that the search engines use keywords in your text to return results, so be sure to include keywords in your text as well.

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

---

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website

When designing your website, remember to avoid useless and confusing... Read More

Pages to Include in Your Website

What pages need to be included on your website? The... Read More

Very Cheap Website Design Services

Are you looking for somebody to build you a website,... Read More

When Good Computers Go Bad

Remember the day that you got your new computer (or... Read More

Good Websites Stand Out From The Masses Of Boring, Hard To Travel Sites

Good websites stand out from the masses of boring, hard... Read More

Website Design - Choosing Your Colors Wisely

Colors convey emotions and emotions heavily influence the decision-making process.... Read More

How to Create a Great Landing Page for Your Website

The landing page or entry page of your visitors is... Read More

Quality Graphics for your Web Site

For most people graphic design does not come easy. Unfortunately... Read More

Maximising Web Site Viewability - Resolution

This is my second article on maximising web site viewability.... Read More

Setting Up a Website

Where does a person start when setting up a website?... Read More

The Newbie?s Guide to Small Business Web Design

You've got a concept for a business, are excited about... Read More

How to Find Inexpensive Web Design

Web design is a very competitive area and there is... Read More

6 Reasons Why Using Flash is a BIG Mistake

Most web designers and web design companies will try to... Read More

How to Hire a Web Designer/Programmer for Your Website

Hire a designer or a programmer for your website is... Read More

Website Design Basic Concepts

So, what's in a website design anyway? And, how do... Read More

The Ultimate Web Site Marketing Strategies That You Should Know

Most of us know that we need to advertise our... Read More

Website Woes: Top Five Offenders

I see a lot of mistakes, but here are the... Read More

10 Web Site Design And Writing No-Nos

1. Don't load your web site with a lot of... Read More

Web Design for Ecommerce

Your website is your tool for showing the online community... Read More

Great E-Cover Creation in 5 Steps

There are several graphic software packages available to help you... Read More

How Not To Get Web Design Work

I get the occasional web design lead from my website.... Read More

Make it Clear What Your Website is About

Just about every list of the "Top 10 Web Design... Read More

Is Your Web Site Turning Visitors Away?

One of the biggest problems with Web sites is that... Read More

Tapping Into The Visual Stimulus Of Your Web Site Visitors

"Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What an eye sore. Quick,... Read More

How to Create an Enjoyable Web Page Design

Novice and professional designers alike ? you may probably be... Read More

7 Benefits of HTML Validation

You may not bother with html validation or writing simple... Read More

Title Tags - How to Make Them More Effective

The title tags of your web pages are more important... Read More

Simple Steps To Proper Web Design

Over the course of the last decade, the Internet has... Read More

Some File Naming Tricks for Your Online Home Based Business Web Pages

Conventional Wisdom states you should use Sub-Directories to organize your... Read More

11 Steps to Sticky Web Site!

An attractive and user-friendly Web site is crucial to attracting... Read More

No More Jargon! Pamper Your Audience!

When your company built its website, did you think about... Read More

Be Friendly to Search Engines

The object of search engines is to give their visitors... Read More

How to Hire The Right Web Design Firm

Regardless whether you manage a small business, charitable organization, or... Read More