Before approaching a website design company you should have a good idea of the kind of website you need to ensure you get a proper price and no hidden or surprising fees during the course of the design work.

The types of websites that exist:

Informational:

An informational site is essentially a website that provides information on your business, company, services without selling any products online.  Examples of informational sites would be realtors, restaurants and even web design companies as they aren’t actually selling a product but bringing about awareness of their services and products they offer.

An informational website is open to the creative freedom of any design you want and use of any mixture of technologies such as flash, DHTML, java script, RSS, PHP, ASP and more. To keep a site SEO friendly it’s best to build a website in HTML, PHP or ASP but not all flash or frames.

Typically sites are built in HTML and the other technologies enhance the look and experience for your visitors.

• Flash can be used to animate and liven up a website or used to convey an important message. 
• DHTML and flash navigations allow for professional and customizable menus that can include drop down and slide out options to organize your site in an easy to navigate, attractive package.
• Java Script drives mouse over effects, photo rotations and other basic functions to more complex features that allow an interactive site.
• RSS can be used to pull in news feeds and other information that will update automatically.
• PHP and ASP are technologies that run databases.  Should your site need a database to store and show information dynamically such as lists, products, locations and other information that would normally require a large number of pages.

Ecommerce:

Should you wish to sell products on your website you will need an ecommerce website. Ecommerce websites are growing at staggering rates and so are online sales.  More and more businesses are seeing the values of selling online.

There are many ecommerce solutions to choose from, including open source software, paid software, custom designs and monthly plans.  Each option has its pros and cons and will be dependant on your budget, design requirements and size of store.

• Open source software is the least expensive option, however is limited in designs and functions.
• For a one time fee you can purchase ecommerce software that typically includes some design templates but will usually need the design work or at least finishing touches of a web designer.
• Customer websites can be designed allowing the most flexibility of any ecommerce solution.  These options are becoming more and more affordable with the new technologies a custom ecommerce site is an option to consider.
• There are many companies offering monthly subscription solutions.  The monthly fee typically covers the use of the software, hosting and support.  These options usually include basic templates and design work would be additional.   

To determine what is the best option for your ecommerce store you will need to determine your budget, design needs, right down to how many products you intend to sell.  Again, like the informational websites you need to ensure your solution is SEO friendly, although most ecommerce softwares are now ensuring they are SEO friendly.  

Blogs:

Blogs, like this very site are growing in popularity daily.  There are 2 blog solutions each with their own pros and cons.  

The first is with a blogging software there are free and paid softwares all with their own pros and cons.  Most come with a standard design but there are the options of buying a template or having a custom design made. 

The second option is with a 3^rd party blogs.  With these blogs you simply sign up for an account, choose from a selection of templates and start your blogging.  These are usually very simple to use but leave very little room for customization or personalization of the blog.

With either choice the customization of a blog is limited, but is a great addition to any site or a great site on its own.

Understanding what you are looking for and what you will need will help ensure a web design company will understand what you want as well as ensure they provide you proper pricing and lastly that they have the capabilities of building what you want.

One common mistake that many website owners make is not having a current copy of their website files.  Many don’t think to ask for a copy from their web design company and don’t have a web master to provide the files or ensure they are backed up somewhere other than the hosting server, or aren’t comfortable technically to download their own. 

Depending on your hosting company, your site may or may not be backed up automatically and should they have problems, crash, reset or in some cases we’ve even seen them shut down without warning.  Without your website files your entire website could be lost and you incur the expense and time lost to have a new site recreated.

Even if you aren’t technically inclined or experienced there are 2 easy ways in which you can back up your website files on your own computer.

Control Panel - Most hosting companies supply a control panel.  The most popular is Cpanel from www.cpanel.net, which is accessed at www.mydomainname.com/cpanel .  You will need to know your hosting user name and password, typically supplied when your hosting account was created.  Cpanel control panels are very easy to use and icon based.  One such icon is Backups.  In this section you can download an entire backup of the folders that make up your website all in one easy step.  At the same time this section can also be used to restore the website from these backed up files at anytime.

FTP Access - FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and isn’t as scary as it sounds.  It does require an FTP program which there are a few good ones that are free such as Filezilla from Mozilla the makers of FireFox or CoffeeCup.  Once you download one of these softwares you will need to know 3 settings;  FTP address which is usually ftp.mydomainname.com, your hosting user name and hosting password.  Once you have this information and enter it in the FTP software you will be able to connect to your hosting server.  Your website files will be in the folder typically entitled www or public_html.  Once you have opened this folder you can simply drag and drop the website files to your computer just as you would with windows files.

Having your website files backed up other than on your web server is crucial to protecting your website and now you have the steps to ensure it’s protected.