Website Questions

[M.C.]

I'm a 24 year old entrepreneur working on his fourth start-up. The websites for my other three companies were all made by a friend and are very amateurish, but they seem to get the job done. However, my new venture will rely on it's website a lot more than the other three... The new business is a booking agency for children's entertainment which ties in to one of my other businesses loosely, using the contacts I've made as well as a few clients. My questions are as follows...

1. Should I pay the extra few bucks to have a professional website made?

2. How much should I expect to pay for a professionally made website?

3. I'm not very computer savvy. Is it worth taking a course to update my own website?

4. Can you recommend any good web designers?

Thanks in advance,
Marc

[Aletheides]

1. Yes

2. Depends (how long is a piece of string)

3. Probably not unless you want to just update it with basic stuff, news etc.. (get a wordpress blog integrated with a static design for that, I would recommend)

4. Not really...Try freelancers on Odesk.

[M.C.]

It's funny when you find yourself asking questions you already know the answers to deep down. Thanks for the reply.

[OverrideHost]

you could always find someone cheaper and better you just have to see if they are reliable

[M.C.]

Someone suggested 99designs dot com in another thread and I think I am going to try it out.

[chanson]

Marc,

Vaiz Enterprises :P

[Digduggg]

Yeah, get your site done right, I've heard good things about 99 designs.

[sabata]

1. Probably

2. Depending on the size of it expect 1500$ - 3000$ + (really professional website)

3. I think its always good to have more skills, but its not totally necessary

4. For design check DeviantArt thee is a lot of professional designers that would do the job

Hope this helps.

[M.C.]

Chris,

Haha! Duh, I'm sending you another email tonight! :P

Marc

[Tzarkov]

It would not be fair if I recommended my own business, so I will not, but as having worked for a couple of years as the head of a high-end web agency, I am in a position to give you some of ( if not the ) best advise you will have.

Regarding your first question, my answer is Yes, hiring a good design studio pays off the big bucks. Having an outstanding user interface for your site is one of the strongest competitive advantages you can have on the web.

Failing to perform in this, will be detrimental for your business if another site offers a similar service than yours. ( ejem,,, yahoo,, ejem ejem ).

Regarding your second question, as Sabata remarked, international prices are generally between 1500 to 3000 but depending on the site´s scope, there are simpler websites that made by the same designer costs less than 1k, and bigger websites can go far up that scale.

We have helped design a couple of those: example 1, example 2

The first was 16k, the second was 6k

Regarding your third question, taking a course to update your website is completely unnecessary. State of the art content management systems make it super easy to update your site. Just make sure the designer knows you need one before giving you the quote.

Regarding the forth, the best designer I know and one that has reasonable pricing is Andres from Agencia Web. You can check their site, although it is in spanish here, or directly contact him here Some of his sites are beautiful, others are stylish and professional-looking. You can choose a variety of styles with them, I have outsourced some of our web design work with them and they have performed well. I hope it works out for you.

PS: remember to let your designer know you need a CMS before they give you the quote.

[annajh]

There are many excellent designer here.wish you found them

[HENARRY JAYA]

I know in Health Class (a while back) we talked about...
Abortion/Pregnancy

Some topic ideas...

You may want a whole page dedicated to guys... (that's a biggie...)
Fashion/Appearance
Online Look (My Space profiles and other networking sites' profiles)

You need to be more specific about "Tough Questions...