Website Design and Development

Chances are that whether or not you are not a technology guru, you keep hearing talk of internet technologies in terms of a never ending stream of acronyms. XHTMLⁱ, CSSⁱ, J2EE, PHPⁱ, ASP.NET, JSP, SQLⁱ, HTTP, SSL, VOIP, P2P, XML, RSS... Sound familiar -- or a bit like Klingon?

A question often heard in the internet industry is how quotations for web design and development services can vary so drastically from one web design consultancy to the next. People, quite understandably, get very confused when one quote comes back as $800, another for $8 000, and many big-brand sites can easily cost millions of dollars to create and maintain. Why the vast disparities? How can you assess if your $800 quote is a bargain or if you're paying for the glorified equivalent of a cardboard cutout?

When it comes to web design for your business website, what picture do you conjure up in your mind? Talented artistic people working hard to create a visual masterpiece, using sophisticated graphic design software? Well, you're not entirely wrong, only about 99% off.

A little while back I had a bit of a discussion about a certain profession that I won't mention here in case someone from the industry in question takes it the wrong way.

A very wise Winston Churchill is renown for having stated: "I am going to give a long speech as I have not had time to write a short one."

I often find it far harder to create a simple and intuitive website than to develop a complex, cutting-edge one.

Think about the last time you purchased anything on the internet. What was the site? Why did you buy there, and not somewhere else?