The web design world can sometimes be an intricate labyrinth for someone looking for a professional website. The website design and web development field is particularly tricky and difficult to navigate through – there are a lot of web design companies, countless freelance web designers, website design softwares, web templates, and what not! In this post, I will try to shed some light on the process of getting a professional website design solution, list the available options, and the pitfalls to avoid.

THE BASICS OF GETTING A WEBSITE

A few basic elements must be in place in order to get an online presence:

1. A domain name or URL – for example www.noamdesign.com
2. A hosting server
3. And a professional website design solution!

It is easy to get a domain name and a hosting service. Prices vary from a few dollars a month for most websites to many thousands of dollars for big websites with large bandwidth demands. Moving on to the point – how do I get a professional websites?

THERE ARE 3 MAIN WAYS TO GET A PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE:

1. Design it yourself

Learn web design. Well, if you have a lot of time and little money, that may be the right solution. You will obvioulsy have to make compromises regarding the quality of the end-product. Both in the design and programming aspects of your website. And you’ll still have to invest in the software – which is quite costly!

Use a website builder. This can be very time consuming but is usually quite inexpensive. The major problem with ALL website builders is that it is impossible to create a professional website with this type of tool. You can definitely have a small website, and even maybe a decent one. But a professional website – there is no way.

Buy a theme or template from a digital marketplace and customize it. In the “design it yourself” category, this is probably the best option. You can find many great looking templates or themes out there, often at a great price. Installing the website and customizing it might even be relatively easy if the theme or template is based on an open source platform such as WordPress just because there is so much documentation and help online on how to use, customize, and setup this type of systems. However, the problem when buying a website template or theme is that you can never know the quality of the code behind the scenes – more often that not, it is very poor. What does that mean for you, apprentice web designer? Is that you may end up needing professional web design help and spend some dollars…

2. Hire a web designer

A freelance web designer or an affordable web design company. This can be a great choice if you already found a great website template or theme that you simply need implemented on a server under your domain name, with minor customization.

Professional web design company, preferrably a local firm. If you have a serious web design project, this is the only solution. Period. Of course there is the trouble of finding a good web design company… Make sure to remember the top 5 questions to ask a web design company!

3. Go to websitetemple.com

This new website design service is really excellent if you are looking for an all inclusive web design solution: domain name, hosting, great design, advanced features, and full blown Content Management System so that you can easily customize your website with your content (texts, images, etc) as many times as you want, as often as you need – without having to hire a web designer, ever! I’m a big fan of this new website design service (I guess that’s why we partnered with them). You should try it out at websitetemple.com!