This guest post was written by Jason Roberts. He is an artist that has made a progression into designing websites. He specializes in the design and layout aspects of websites using rich colours to produce dynamic designs. He also creates Facebook business pages and Twitter accounts, for more details visit his website.

For anyone out there thinking about having a website designed here are just a few key things you should prepare and consider. These are just some of the things I as a designer require from a client to help me produce a good and functional site. Before you go hunting for a designer firstly make sure you have thought of the name for your site, create a list of all the sites that you have found that you like. Save the links and write what you like about each site as this will give your designer some idea of what you want.

Make sure you have an idea of how many pages you would like and prepare in advance all the text that will be need. If you have photographs prepared make sure they are full size and have not been compressed. Most designers will have state of the art software to do this which will produce better results.
Keep it simple! You can do great things with designs and have a multitude of flash components within your design. Now my advice is keep sites simple and clean, the less complicated a site, the easier the user will find it. The more hi-tech you want a site the more money it will cost as not all designers create databases and such like. Some designers will out source work that requires coding and solely look after the design aspects. Larger design companies will probably cover all aspects in house but larger design companies can be more expensive than some of us freelance designers.

Getting your site seen:

Do not forget about such online resources as Facebook and Twitter, I as a designer make sure I tell my clients about getting a presence on both these sites. I also create and set up Facebook business pages and Twitter for my clients so that it matches their website design. Then once the design phase is finished the client has a good presence online and does not have to worry about trying to set it up after.

Google: Now please remember to allow up to four weeks for Google to index your new site. This means basically that if someone types in the name of your site in the Google search bar they will find you. For example just typing “profizik” in the search bar no http or www bit.

Keywords:

Now when you write your front page make sure you think about keywords. More does not mean better results. If you are writing about say a B&B business that offers the best cycling holidays for beginners in France. Now some of the keywords here are B&B, bed and breakfast, holidays, France, cycling, cycling for beginners, etc …

Your email signature:

This is one of the most powerful marketing tools that cost you nothing. Make sure you have a link inside your email signature. Everyone you ever contact then can see this and you just never know who they might pass it onto.

Friends and Family:

Make sure your friends and family get to see your new site and ask them to pass it onto their friends for feedback.

Hosting of your site:

Now if you live in France one thing you might want to consider is what type of hosting company the designer uses if he or she hosts websites. If you wish to access statistics about your site how many visits you have had or other information. Then if you are not fluent in French make sure the designer hosts with a company that has English control panels. I for example rent sever space from a UK company to host the sites for my clients that way they have access to Cpanel in English and also support.

Remember that once you have your site is online the work does not finish there, you cannot rely solely on the internet to bring in business. You will need to be clever and market your site via every means possible thus directing people to your website.