Web Design for Business Websites

Key things for a business web site are:

• Keep it simple
• Keep it easy to navigate
• Keep it easy to use
• Keep it informative
• Keep it professional looking
• Keep it as quick-loading as possible

Key things not to do (unless you are greating an entertainment web site):

• Don't use intro pages or flash intros (it just slows visitors down)
• Don't put extra graphics that aren't needed
  
• Don't put music on it unless you are in entertainment
• Don't put on a counter (log analysis tells who visits your site)
• Don't use frames
• Don't use Flash navigation (unless you have a html alternative on each page)
  

SMALL STARTUP BUSINESS WEB SITE BUDGET (No budget to ~ $100)

For a small startup business that needs a web site, but has no or a small (under $100) budget the best thing to do is go with a hosting company that has web design tools for making a semi-professional looking site. These web design programs normally give you some templates to pick from and allow you to modify some things to personalize to your business.

A website is something that practically every business needs and can benefit from if correctly designed and used.

SMALL STARTUP BUSINESS WEB SITE BUDGET  (Budget $700 - $7,000)

Most professionally designed small business websites can be designed on a budget from $700 - $7,000. E-commerce web sites can also fit into this budget if they use existing shopping cart scripts.

Here are some points to budget for in general:

• ~$10/month - Can pay for hosting and there a lot of good hosting companies that provide website creation tools. Sites created with these tools can look good, but are not Search Engine Optimized (SEO) and you do have to work within the limitations of the web site creation software.
• ~$1,000/setup budget - Can pay for a nicely designed website of about 15 pages with contact form, SEO, and first year's hosting.
  
• ~$2,000 - $7,000 - Can pay for a custom designed e-commerce website that has SEO, and includes first year's hosting.

In creating this site, we used an open-source content management system (CMS) called Joomla! It can be adapted for use as a membership site (Community Builder), an online store (Virtuemart) and a lot more. It is one of many options out there for small businesses to get going on a budget. 

If you sign-up you will be using the Community Builder add-on and you will also see the Vitruemart add-on too. 

If you've read anything at all about Content Management Systems (CMS), you'll probably know at least three things: CMS are the most exciting way to do business, CMS can be really, I mean really, complicated and lastly Portals are absolutely, outrageously, often unaffordably expensive.

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Joomla! features:

• Completely database driven site engines
• News, products or services sections fully editable and manageable
• Topics sections can be added to by contributing authors
• Fully customisable layouts including left, center and right menu boxes
• Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site
• Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris and AIX

Extensive Administration:

• Change order of objects including news, FAQs, articles etc.
• Random Newsflash generator
• Remote author submission module for News, Articles, FAQs and Links
• Object hierarchy - as many sections, departments, divisions and pages as you want
• Image library - store all your PNGs, PDFs, DOCs, XLSs, GIFs and JPEGs online for easy use
• Automatic Path-Finder. Place a picture and let Joomla! fix the link
• News feed manager. Choose from over 360 news feeds from around the world
• Archive manager. Put your old articles into cold storage rather than throw them out
• Email-a-friend and Print-format for every story and article
• In-line Text editor similar to Word Pad
• User editable look and feel
• Polls/Surveys - Now put a different one on each page
• Custom Page Modules. Download custom page modules to spice up your site
• Template Manager. Download templates and implement them in seconds
• Layout preview. See how it looks before going live
• Banner manager. Make money out of your site