I recently saw Yahoo’s commercial for its web hosting service.   It showed the many painful and wrong ways a small business used to have to go to get a website up and running.  My favorite was the couple reading an HTML book and saying they were designing it themselves.  I know that I did design my own site.  It was a pain in the rear end.  If I had tried to do it with my wife, I would be divorced now.

One of the other methods was to “Hire a professional, and wait and want and wait.”  I hate to tell them, but most professional web designers work by word of mouth and strive to get the work completed on time and within budget.  If they don’t, the words shared won’t be pleasant.

The preferred method touted by Yahoo was the “Design Your Own” where you basically customize their web templates with the colors and options you like.  Then, miracle of miracles, the world will beat a path to your site and buy your products.

There are problems associated with this off the shelf methodology.  First  is that you may have a pretty/macho/utilitarian  site that would excite the nearest 10 yr old.  What about necessary forms for contact, orders, and payments?  What about the need to add and delete photos of your merchandise?

Second, what about all of the meta tags, RSS feeds, links to your blogs and social networking sites that comprise the spiderweb of search engine optimization?  Oh, that’s right, Yahoo is going to show you how, for a fee, to get more people to see your site.  I have one word in response – bullhockey!!Most people don’t have a clue about how to maximize their web presence.  They publish and pray.

Creating a professional website, finding the best hosting, and maximizing your search engine optimization are critical in your web success.  I was lucky.  By “word of mouth” I found Ken Hood.  He had basic templates that could be custromized to fit my Agency’s personality.  But, he had even more.  He had vision.  Ken Hood is inovative and pushes the envelope.

Go tohttp://www.kenhood.net and contact him.  Sure, you pay a little more, but all services are included, no nickle and diming you to death with a call center operator to assist you.

Ken isn’t the only designer out there, but in my book, he is the best.   Just remember -

Ask for references.  Then ask the references for others they referred to the designer.

Get the low down on the hosting charges.  What is included and what is the security arrangements?

Finally, get the total per month fee for hosting, changes and web mail.

More than likely, you are going to pay more, but you get what you pay for.  Visit my site http://www.timhawley.net and see how it differs from the quasi-design- it- yourself models.