Quick Course

Website Budgeting

It can be so confusing to understand what you are paying for when you buy Internet services. Here is a quick list of "do's and don'ts" to use as a guideline. Work with a webmaster who can thoroughly explain each service offered in plain English.

The intelligent purchaser of web services gets a lot more "bang for the buck" by following these simple guidelines.

Don't Pay for... -

• Don't give any money to "domain name registration" companies. They often have a hidden agenda to trap your domain name on their server and then force you to buy other services from them, such as hosting or designing. They are re-selling Internet addresses for a profit and then using the information they collect to market other products to you or to sell your information to other parties. Registering a domain name does incur a small fee, but your webmaster should do it for you at cost (around $15 per year) and make sure that you or your trusted webmaster have complete control over it.

• Don't give any money to "search engine registration" companies.  Second only to the domain name racket, "search engine optimization" has become a real pitfall.  Your qualified webmaster can submit your website to the search engines effectively in an afternoon's work.  There are no "tricks" or strategies that work to get higher rankings.  In fact, the search engines will punish sites that try to outsmart them to get better rankings--sometimes by banning a website from their index for life.  When you hear or see "We will register your site with thousands of search engines for only...," or  "We guarantee top ten placement,"  hide your wallet.

• Don't pay your ISP for web services.  Your Internet service provider is the company that enables you to hook up to the Internet from your home or business location.  Most of these companies provide excellent Internet connectivity service.  We always recommend that people use a local provider for their connection to the Internet, and the service is usually much better than that provided by the large national companies, such as AOL and ATT.  However, these local ISP's are very rarely qualified to design, implement or host websites.  The connection between your home computer and the Internet is an entirely different service than the connection between millions of computers around the world and your website.  ISPs will often try to blur the distinction and imply that your local dial-up access company is a logical choice for your website design and hosting.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

• Don't pay for a lot of fancy "bells and whistles."  Cute, clever and flashy "features" on a website are almost always counter-productive.  You want your webmaster to "design down" the tech end of your website, which makes the site available to the widest possible audience using the widest range of systems.  You want to pay for "cutting edge" technology when used by the webmaster to implement your project, not when your website is presented to visitors.

• Don't pay good money for a "cookie cutter" template web design.  Many so-called webmasters use point-and-click programs, then merely insert your name into the appropriate box.  The page layout and the navigation of your site should be custom written to reflect your goals, not some one-size-fits-all template of what a website should be or contain.

Do Pay for... -

• Do be prepared to pay for professional graphics services.  This is money well spent.  If your webmaster is not expert in this field, bring in someone who is.  Graphics for the web are different than for print, and you need to work with a specialist in web graphics. He or she will know how to process and create images for the web that are fast loading for your visitors without sacrificing high quality experience.  Simple test: ask your webmaster what a .jpeg (pronounced "jay-peg") is and what a .gif is, and how they are created. Then ask when it is best to use the .gif format and when it is best to use the .jpeg format, and why.  Compare his or her answer to this one.

• The smart dollar goes to a webmaster who has the ability to hand-code your website. This may take a little longer, but the dividends down the road are immense.  A webmaster who is not an expert in html is really not a webmaster, rather he or she is  an over-paid button pusher.  Here is the test: ask what program he or she uses to design websites.  A real webmaster doesn't use a program.  He or she hand types code.

  That's it!  The list of what you should be paying for is short and the services are affordable.

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Next: What You need to Know... and What you Don't

There are services for which you will need a professional , but there are many things that you can do to become a more informed customer of Internet services. Some things are obvious; if you already have your promotional copy typed, don't scan it and fax it to your webmaster. Another tip: spend a little time "surfing" the Internet. Make notes about the sites you like and why. Then, sit down and do your homework. A little time spent before you begin your project will save much grief and expense later.

next: what you need to know