Building a website
Oct 07 2004
If you are setting up a web-based business, consider what you want the website to achieve. Will it be more of a brochure site, to alert people to your presence, for example with business contact details, or will you be using the website to trade with your customers?
Neil Barton, director of sales and marketing at web-hosting company Hostway suggests that you can outsource website building (depending on what you want the website to achieve) but bear in mind that this will cost you more than if you were doing it yourself.
‘Most web-hosting companies should be able to help you directly. You might feel more comfortable working with a designer and have them arrange the hosting for you, but ultimately you will pay more than working directly with a hosting company,’ suggests Barton.
The obvious advantage of using the former is that if you are just starting out, you can keep an eye on your money and build a site that, Barton says, you could have up and running in two hours. Using an external designer may mean you have to invest and allow for more time to get your website off the ground, as you will need to rely on someone else to make the changes.
He adds that Hostway has a product called Sitebuilder, a website building tool that allows you the flexibility of changing the look of the website and making use of a variety of templates.
“You can update or amend your site whenever you wish without restrictions. You might also want to take advantage of companies that offer a site building tool which allows users to create a site using templates where they can change the colour, text and font size,” adds Barton.