My Approch to Your New Website
I liken my website design method to a building contractor. Buildings are not built from scratch any longer. The contractor doesn't cut down the trees, mill and cure the lumber and haul it to the construction site, nor does he do similarly with any of the other of the thousands of components that go into the construction of a house.
There are many tools and software products available now to build very nice websites. It is no longer necessary to build a website from scratch. This is particularly so for the small business market I'm interested in serving, which only requires a website of a few pages, and doesn't handle any highly sensitive information, like a financial institution would.
By using these tools, I can build you an attractive website that will meet your needs, now and in the future, and at a price that will comfortably fit your budget.
If you already have a website, these same tools make it possible to easily "remodel" your site rather than building a new one, if that is what you would like to do.
If you are building a new website and are on a tight budget, you can start small, and add features and content later on. You don't have to do everything all at once.
The Alternatives
You can still have your website built from scratch. This would obviously give you total control over its appearance in particular. Many of the tools available would be used for the functionality, but rather than using them "as is", right out of the box, the developer might modify them to better suit your custom designed website. If you want to go this route, just be prepared to spend thousands of dollars. Writing custom code, and the graphic art skills of a talented designer don't come cheap.
The only other alternative is the increasing number of do-it-yourself services out there. The design, structure and functioning of the websites these DIY solutions can create is still rather limited. They will require more of your time to learn how to build the site using their software interface, and then to administer it afterwards. They hook you in by letting you build the site for free, but you have to host the site on their system, which at $20, $30, per month, or more, will cost you a lot more in the long run then my method. And they all try to up-sell you by offering additional features, many of which you would want, for an additional fee. Also you will be locked into their system, you can't take your website files and install them somewhere else, so if you do want to move on, you'll have to start all over again.
When I build your site, you own the finished product, to do with as you please, and you own, and have complete control of your domain name, even if I'm providing the hosting for your website.
