subject: Does A Cheap Website Have To Mean A Poorly Built, Featureless Website? [print this page] A cheap, bargain website - or should I say an affordable website, doesn't have to to mean a poorly built, featureless website, without the inclusion of some vital and important features. There are web design companies in the market who will offer extremely good features for a very reasonable price, including some of the important features and nice touches that you would expect to find only in a high end package.
What Features Should I Expect In My Budget Website?
Here are 10 features that in my opinion even a budget price website package should contain:
1. A CSS styled website design with external CSS files. To clarify what this means, this is a much more convenient way of managing the design features and layout of a website on a site wide basis.
2. Website code that passes from the W3C validation process. This is an important feature as websites with code that passes the validation process will be much easier for search engine robots to crawl and therefore make indexing of your website a speedier process.
3. All meta tags should be completed and the important description meta tag on each page should contain page relevant information, not just a generic description that is repeated on every single page throughout the website.
4. The title tag on every page should be completed incorporating the important keywords for that particular page. Once again, the title tag should not be one generic tag that is repeated throughout the site but page specific
5. Of course you will want your new website to have a modern, fresh looking layout that is uncluttered and extremely easy to navigate. For some excellent site examples, view some web 2.0 sites as they are often particularly well designed, minimalistic and easily navigated.
6. Do you have a robots.text file? Is there going to be one included in your website build or will this be left out? This is an extremely important file to have on your server as it tells search engine robots which files they are permitted to index, and which ones they are not.
7. Do you have a site map? The sitemap.xml file is easily submitted to Google in the Google Webmasters panel by your site builders and is very important as it helps your site to be quickly indexed by Google, informing Google of a very page that exists on your site.
8. What about an interactive contact form? Will your website company be incorporating a contact form into your site as part of the affordable package price or will it be an additional cost?
9. How will your images be displayed on your new budget website? Will you have an impressive lightbox style gallery or will you just be permitted to have a few images throughout the whole site.
10. And whilst we are on the images, will you have to provide all your own images or will your web design company be able to provide you with some stock images in the event that you do not have any?
So there it is. 10 important features that in my opinion every website, including budget websites, should have incorporated in them. If your web design brief does not appear to include these features, ask your design company whether they will be present, if not, maybe you should consider an alternative design company to build your website for you.
