A while ago you thought “I must get my business a website”. The only problem was that you didn’t have a clue on how to build a website. So you hired a web designer to all do the hard work and a webmaster to do all the updating. What happened? Probably it went a lot more expensive than you thought.

If you said yes. This article is made for you. It will gives you easy tips on how to cut the bill from the company that is managing your website. First of all, help the web company to get started. Provide your webmaster with links to websites you like so they can get an idea of what you find appealing. In some cases your webmaster will offer to build something similar to what you would like and also what they think would add positive impact to your specs. Doing this you will save a lot of expensive and unnecessary “creative thinking” time. Remember that you know more about your product than any web designer. You tell them how you want your product presented and they should give you the pros and cons of developing a website to your specifications. The next step is to find out which phrases a potential visitor would use to find you through a search engine. It’s best to build a website with the search engines in mind from the start so you won't have to go to another webmaster for those services and thus waste time and money.

The web site construction

Know what sections you will have on your site. This will also help the webmaster in setting up a directory or navigational structure. When you make additions to your website at a later date, this will help the next webmaster by giving them a nice neat structure to update. So make sure that the site is setup in an orderly fashion with properly formatted and clean code and a structure that makes it easy for anyone else you may use to update your website. Know what you would like to do in the future so your webmaster can choose the right ISP for you. Moving a website can be a hustle and a waste of time. With proper preparation you can avoid having to move. Help the web company help you. Tell them what your future plans are – will you accept credit cards, do you want to update your website yourself or do you want to just have a website that just offers information with no need for feedback?

The web site content

Always remember that the web company is charging by the hour. So if you can prepare the material you want to be available online, the web designers don’t have to do it, and you don’t have to pay them for doing it. OK, we’re done with the construction and now we need content. Let’s start with the text. Always deliver your text in a Notepad file. This is very easy and it saves a lot of time. First of all, copy all your text from whatever program you wrote it in. Paste it into the Windows standard text editor Notepad. Now save it. This wasn’t to hard, was it? If you don’t do it, the people at the web company will, and they don’t do it for free.
You probably want some images on that website. Here’s a lot of time to save! If you don’t have a scanner, buy one for only € 80. Scan any images you would like to use and email them to your webmaster. Once again this will save time on your bill because the webmaster doesn't have to do it. They can just take your image, do a little modification if it needs it. The small scanner investment can actually make you save money after a few months!

Familiarize with online publications

Now you’re online and you are saving a lot of time and money. The next step is to expand your website and make its reputation grow to attract more visitors. Start by familiarize yourself with online publications that target your kind of market. You will need to know how to send out a newsletter because you know how important it is to have a list of prospects you can market to. Right? And then… there’s actually a lot of stuff you could do. Do you know all the little tricks that make a site load faster, search engine friendly, user friendly? Do you know enough about visitor behavior? Website promotion? Buy magazines, read books and try to learn more. The more you know the more money you’ll save in the end.