Best way to design a website without spending a fortune

Donald wrote in part - "What is the best way to design an efficient, attractive website without breaking the bank?"

The emphasis should always be on how can you have a web site that will be effective. Then comes the secondary question of how much will it cost to achieve that goal. But being "effective" comes first. (Too many real estate brokers and agents only focus on cost... and never achieve "effective".)

This is really no diffferent than when you chose to open your brokerage firm. You made choices - where to open your offfice, what type of equipment and furnishings to buy, and dozens of other questions. You could open an office that was very attractive and inviting in an upscale area OR you could open an office in a little strip shopping center sandwiched between a run down convenience store on one side and a laundromat on the other. Which would be more appealing to the clients you are trying to attract?

Your web site IS your Cyberspace "office". This is the first impression strangers see about your company. What impression will it give? Professional and attractive? Or amateurish and cheap?

You can get an inexpensive template (lots of choices of companies to pick from), but that will usually also require upwards of 100 hours or more of your time "fleshing" it out, since they only give you a nice "skeleton" to work with. What is your time worth? Do you know how to create content that both the visitor and the search engines will notice? Do you know how to include search engine optimization so that your site can be found in Google or Bing/Yahoo? Can your new template site even allow SEO inside? Do you know enough about web site design to even ask that question? ;-) You see, this is no different than getting first licensed in real estate. Just because someone can get licensed relatively inexpensively, that is no guarantee of real estate success.

Or you can have a custom site completely designed for you for probably around the cost of the brokerage fee from one $100,000+ condo sale... where the designer does all the work to make the site visually enticing and organizes your content to attract results... all while you concentrate on what you do best - list and sell real estate!

In planning your web presence, ask yourself the questions I have posed above. This will help you to determine which direction you and your company should go to build a web site that will bring your company results.

Win

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Win Singleton, CRB, e-PRO
Summit Web Design
(703) 536-7631
wins@summitweb.com
http://www.summitweb.com
"Custom web design that gets results since 1996!"
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