If you are the president or the marketing and media manager for a company tasked with developing and implementing a web marketing initiative, it can be very confusing, whether you are well versed in Web design, or if you are a complete novice. Especially given the completely integrated nature of web design today, it can be quite difficult to design and follow through on a comprehensive online marketing strategy.
Obviously, it all starts with your company’s home website. The first step, if you do not already have such a site, is to register a domain name and lock it in, before someone else nabs it. You want this domain name to be something simple, and something that is easily associated with your company’s name or product.
Once you have completed this, though, the rest of the process is less clear-cut. You will need to have a website designed, hosted and maintained.
Website Design
There are a couple of options for you regarding the design of your base website. Either you can hire a professional designer to construct a custom site for you, or you can go with any of the thousands of pre-designed “template” websites that many designers are making a good living selling these days.
The Pros of a Template Website
The biggest benefit of purchasing a template website is that they are usually far cheaper than hiring a designer to construct a custom site for you, and that a template website is made available to you immediately. You pay for the license and then you download a ZIP folder containing all of the fonts, CSS, and web coding for the site. From there, you have to upload all of the content to your web host, who will then get it running for you.
In addition, template websites have reached the point where they can be highly customizable in their own right, and often, the code can be changed around to suit the specific needs of your web marketing initiative.
The Cons of a Template Website
Unfortunately, utilizing a template website requires you or your IT team to have a rather broad grasp of the basics of web coding, and how to manage implementing your website through your web host.
Also, these template websites have particular glitches that are not easily remedied if you are not intimately familiar with the coding. Also, you will need to find a dedicated webmaster to maintain and administer your site. This can be expensive.
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