How to Make a Website That Looks and Feels Great

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a good website. Most clearly, internet development has come to the point where you can set up your own webpages instantly without much hassle. You can create your own webpage using any of the available social networks, such as Facebook.com, or if you want to make it more personal and private, you can use any available template and create your own website without knowing much about HTML, PHP, SQL and other technologies of website development.

However, if you are looking for a more complex web solution, it is probably a good idea to employ a decent web developer to do the job. A web developer or webmaster is someone who is responsible for your site development and maintenance. If it's a simple webpage, the odds are you don't need any maintenance at all, but what if you need an ecommerce solution, a fully-functional multi-featured e-store, where you sell goods and services. As sure as hell, you're going to need 24/7 support for this.

As part of the business solution, you might want to look for the following benefits:

Technical audit. Website source code analysis and optimization. Analysis of databases and software used on the server side. A document is sent to a client that sums up all the website bottlenecks and available solutions. Prices and fix dates are also included.

Website usability testing. Professional usability tests are run on a website to see if it meets usability requirements. If not, recommendations are made as how to improve the website usability. These recommendations are presented in both text and visual formats.

Website drafting. Project map, element description, functional description, action plan, cost sheet, mockups, database structure, UML-diagrams, technical requirements.

So how do you pick your web-developer? Let's see. I own a website that sells English lesson plans. It's a rather primitive website, but it does the job pretty well, sales are generated and money rolls right in. What do I need as an owner of this website? First thing off, I want to be able to make minor and sometimes major changes to the website. But I am not any good and HTML, and PHP is like Greek for me. Knowing this, my webmaster provides the easiest content management system (CMS), that even such a goof, as myself, can use without much trouble. So make sure, your website comes with a CMS.

Secondly, I want to make sure my website is easy to find on the web. This is where search engine optimization kicks in. You might want to ask your webmaster to fill the website with key words that will allow your potential customers to pick your site among similar websites.

Thirdly, the website should be easy to navigate and allow visitors to find information quickly. Can you do all of the above mentioned by yourself? If you are not quite so sure, it's probably a wise decision to find a good web development studio, that will do the job for you at a fair price.