We are a Miami Web Design Company specializing in helping small and mid-size businesses reach their full potential in the online world.
If you are planning to build a website, or choose to have one built for you, there are many factors that you will need to address, so that you may make an informed decision on what your next step should be.
In the modern age, websites need to combine three core elements into their designs. Some web designers are experts at one or two of these three elements, but finding a developer that excels in all three can be a tricky business.
Nowadays, it is not sufficient for a website to look gorgeous. A lot more thought and effort has to go under the hood to ensure that the websites performs according to the foundations laid by search engines.
There three core elements are:
- Ease of use,
- Attractiveness of design and
- Search engine optimization
A Fourth element could be added to that list, one which is of equal importance, and the reason why is isn’t on that list is simply because this element is beyond the purview of the designer: Content (articles)
With the above in mind, and if you are still reading this article, as a business owner in need of a new website, you will need contemplate two possibilities:
- Do you take a chance and build your own website?
- Do you have it designed by a professional.
Here, I’ll address both issues, in terms of feasibility, long term efficacity, performance and cost.
Building the website yourself
I have been a web developer for over 20 years. In that time, I have come across a number of people, met in social gatherings, who, during the course of an evening amongst friends for example, often times talked about their needs for a website. They would say something like:
“I need a website for my business, but I really don’t want to pay a fortune for it.”
The answer to that question, inevitably lead to a variety of suggestions, the most common being:
- “Building a website is so easy. You should do it yourself”.
- “I have a nephew who’s studying computer in college. He could do this for you easily”
- “Why don’t you do it through WIX. Easy to design plus it’s free.
I usually stay away from mixing business with pleasure, and as a result I rarely express an opinion on this subject, unless specifically asked to do so.
But as a professional web designer, here are my views on the subject:
Building your own website is not as easy as you think. The internet industry relies on technologies that are forever evolving, and professional web developers have to keep up to date with this changes on a constant basis.
For a professional website designer, the learning curve is unending. There is always something new to learn, methodologies to understand, trends to evaluate…
Our industry is such that programming languages which might have been an absolute necessity to know in the past may end up becoming obsolete and in some cases, even incompatible with modern browsers.
And even when programing languages stand the tests of time, they still undergo regular re-births, just to keep abreast of security breaches caused by hacking. Or to adapt themselves to changes made in hardware.
So if you want to design you own website, be prepared to start getting to your books because you’re going to need all the knowledge you can muster.
This learning process, ongoing as it may be for professionals may take you several months to even years before you get to a level where you begin to have an understanding on how website design really works.
At this stage, you may ask yourself whether you should look into signing up with companies such as WIX where, you are told, “designing your own website” is easy. And free.
As the owner of an Affordable Website Design in Miami, you would be amazed by the sheer number of customers who call me to move their site away from WIX or other such platforms and into their own website.
The reason for this is that, the ease of design proclaimed as the essence of their marketing messages has severe restrictions, and requires a learning curve.
More importantly, these customers soon discover that what they though would be free, is in fact quite expensive.
In addition to acquiring enough knowledge to be able to design your own website, your next step will be to tackle the elephant in the room:
Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is a field that is even more changing than the web design industry! Google and other search engines are continuously fine tuning their algorithms making methodologies of yesterday become redundant a week later.
They do so in a constant effort to be better at what they do, offer more relevant results for searches, ensuring that people who search for anything are offered the right choices. Changes are also made to combat efforts by marketers to try and subvert the search engine results by abusing certain parameters.
All in all, it takes a lot of effort to design, create and publish a website that stand a chance of achieving success online and while the idea of doing it yourself may sound appealing at first, if you are serious about it, then my advice would be to look for a competent and reputable WordPress Web Design Agency in Miami.
Cheap Website Design in Miami: Solutions tailored to meet your needs.
Have you ever heard of the concept of “bounce rate” when it comes to the website developer industry? If the answer is no, then you should really pay attention.
“Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave (“bounce“) rather than continuing on to view other pages within the same site.”
Put in place by the all mighty Google, the bounce rate is one of the most important ranking factors in the search engine ever evolving algorithms, and certainly one that is unlikely to change in the near future.
It is estimated that it takes a few seconds for the average visitor to judge the value of a website and decide whether he or she wants to stay on for a while longer, or move on to the next site.
Think about it… Count … One … Two … Three .. And if, by then, your site hasn’t made enough of a compelling case for visitors to continue exploring it, the average person will have decided to leave your site and search for a better one. A decision that isn’t going to help your bounce rate ratio, and might, ultimately propel your site to a position in the ranking results that will be so low, it might as well not be there.
Lesson: If you’re looking for a web designer, make sure he or she understands the concept of bounce rate. A poorly designed website, that does not combine compelling content with a pleasing layout will not help you in your goals of achieving online success.
SOS Stevie is a Miami Web Design Company offering the skills of several experts designers who have been designing attractive and effective sites for years. Using the power of the internet, advanced conferencing software and cooperative web development tools, today’s modern web designers no longer need to rent expensive offices nor come to work in fancy business suits to work. Indeed, some of the highest ranked professional web designers are freelancers and operate from the comfort of their home office.
What is Web Design?
Website design stands at the very core of a company’s effort to showcase its services and products to the public at large. It is a field like none other, because the quality of a design and the structure put in place will determine whether a visitor stays on the site, or becomes one of the “Bounce rate” statistics. Poorly designed sites will increase that rate, making it practically impossible for high search engine rankings to ever move away from the pit in which millions of webpages find themselves.
Well-designed sites, by the virtue of a prolonged stay by visitors will at least convince Google and the search engines that if people stay on a site for longer, then there must be something there to investigate.
Website design combines the process of creation, development and refinement into one entity, transitioning smoothly from one the next, and it is this process that will be responsible for the ultimate goal of turning visitors into customers.
The designing process: How Can we offer Affordable Website Design Miami
Often times, after a few telephone conversations, our customers will often remark on the thoroughness of our questions and the interest we show in trying to understand what their business is all of about. We don’t ask questions to satisfy generic curiosity, but rather because it is important for us to understand, from the very beginning what your ultimate goal is, and learn as much as we can about your industry. We can never hope to become experts in your field, but we need to understand what it is, types of services or products offered, targeted audience etc.
When we are more familiar with the nature of your industry, comes the next phase of trying to get a handle on your very own taste. To that end we will ask you to send us a list of websites you like so that we may draw inspirations from these sites and reach a better understanding of your requirements.
We call this the discovery process and the more information you give us, the easiest it is for us to get started with designing a site that will meet with your expectations.
What makes a great site design?
Our development platform our choice is wordpress, and we like to think that we are real experts at wordpress website design.
Fast loading, clear navigational structure and effective call-to-actions buttons will form the basis of our work.
The importance of content
Content is to a website what an engine is to a car. A Ferrari without an engine may be gorgeous to look at but, other than the pleasing visual element, it is unlikely that you will enjoy it for long.
Compelling content, information written with clarity that draws the attention of a visitor and encourages him or her not only to extend a visit to your site, but more importantly, become a paying customer is absolutely essential if you want to be successful online.
However great we might be a developing websites, our efforts will mean very little if you do not have great content.
Give us your content, written in a way that is compelling to read, and we will incorporate it into your site.
The deal about responsive website design
Back in April 2015, an eternity in the internet industry, Google introduced the concept or mobile friendly designs, (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html), confirming a trend that websites had to be designed for a wide range of electronic devices. It is then that the term “responsive websites” started to make their marks and has since become one of the many ranking factors for google and other search engines.
In other words, responsive websites are design to adapt to the nature of the device on which they are displayed. (Desktop computers, tablets and smart phones.
We’ve been designing responsive sites for a long time now and our designers have the knowledge and experience to build sites that will adapt to a wide range of devices.
How long does it take?
The average website takes us from 2 to 3 weeks to develop, from the proposal acceptance stage to delivery. This time will largely depend on whether you provide us with all the necessary content in time or whether you make us wait for it.
What if you are not in Miami?
The beauty of the internet is that one is not limited to a specific area when it comes to online business. We have customers from close to 30 states in the USA, as well as in Canada, England, France and Belgium. Skype and messaging, combined with emailing makes our world a very small place indeed.
How affordable are we?
We are proud to be able to say that when it comes to professional web design services, you will not find more affordable rates than ours. We often get calls from customers expressing a hope that we are “cheap” enough for them.
For this very reason, we don’t say that we offer cheap web design in Miami, but rather that we are affordable.
Once we explain the differences between a cheap web agency and one which offers affordable rates, very often our customers will underand that if they want to save money and be successful, then affordability is the key word.
As such, we can confidently affirm that we are offer affordable (not cheap) website design services in Miami.
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