Page 175 - Social Media Marketing

160 Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

Hiring a Professional Web Designer

The tools currently available make it much easier to design and
maintain your own web site, even if you want to include complex
features such as discussion boards and shopping carts. However, if
you do not have a moderate amount of technical aptitude, you may
find yourself in some frustrating and time-consuming situations
when the tools fail to work as smoothly as intended. For this reason,
I recommend that salespeople hire someone with the required skills
to design and set up the web site. A highly skilled web site designer
can have your site up and running in a matter of days, and your site
will look better, run more reliably, and be much more secure than if
you were to do it yourself.

The cost of designing and setting up a web site varies depending
on the complexity of the site and the graphics, but a high-quality
design and installation of a site typically costs between $5,000 and
$10,000. Of course, you can find numerous companies offering de-
sign services in the range of a few hundred dollars, but you gen-
erally get what you pay for. Hosting services rarely offer help with
web site design and setup, but they usually have affiliates who can
assist you and are experienced working with the hosting service
you use.

Tip: Look for web site design and hosting companies that
specialize in creating web sites for salespeople in your indus-
try. If you see a site design you like, contact the owner of the
site and ask for the name and contact information of the Web
designer.

Promoting Your Web Site

Just because you invested a great deal of time and effort or money
in designing and setting up a top-notch web site, this does not mean
that immediately people are going to flock to your site. You need to