To make a great first impression - to grab and keep the attention of your visitors

Most people may come to your home page first but not necessarily - search engines or links from other sites may land them onto any of your pages. Your design needs to be attractive throughout the whole site, not just the home page.

To have good navigation and usability – again throughout the site so your visitors can find what they are looking for

To load quickly so they will not give up and go to a competitor

To allow search engines access your site content – some designs shut out search engines and may be counter productive for business sites

To project your company image – your branding, quality and individual character

To make your site stand out from the crowd so you can compete effectively for new business

You get a free 3 month warranty to help ensure you are completely happy with your site. We also review its performance with you after 3 or 6 months.

Web site prices range from free to over half a million dollars. Free web sites are generally paid for by advertising, and require the inclusion of large banner ads on the client’s pages. They also generally require that creation and maintenance be performed by the owner. Mashwebdesign.com does do free web sites, but we can be surprisingly affordable if it is a big website.

Most clients who contract with small web designers like Mashwebdesign.com don’t understand, or even do not want to understand, the nuances of web design techniques, and may be unaware of many of the features that a web site can provide to benefit their business or organization. As a result, the time required to design a site that optimally serves their needs can be quite unpredictable, and the design objectives are apt to change as site development proceeds. For this reason, Mashwebdesign.com prefers not to quote a flat rate unless the potential client has very specific design goals in mind.

Most sites designed by Mashwebdesign.com cost less for a basic 2 to 3 page site with no interactive features to a few thousand dollars for a large site with lots of images, interactive submit forms, databases, and/or dynamic content.

Mashwebdesign.com also has a number of prepared scripts, such as an announcements form, a customer information request form, a guestbook, or a password protection management system, which can be adapted for a specific web site in only a few hours. Pages can be dynamically generated from a standardized template file (as these pages were generated), allowing updates and additions to be done with a minimum of time and labor, and quick and easy changes made to the site’s overall layout and “look and feel.”

In general, people use the web either to be entertained or to become informed. Those who want to become informed will generally have some specific information in mind, and will want to get to that information as quickly and efficiently as possible. They will be inclined to use whatever equipment is readily available at hand, even if it is old and antiquated. (In computer technology, “old and antiquated” can mean anything over one year old.) They are more likely to use slower internet connections, and are likely to become impatient with and pass by sites that take a long time to download because of too many pictures, animations, and the like. They are more likely to be using older, downlevel versions of software.

People surfing for entertainment will likely not have a specific goal in mind, but will be looking for sites with lots of pretty pictures, video clips, real audio, and all the fancy “bells and whistles” that have become standard features on entertainment web sites. They will quite likely have newer and faster computers with more features, and the latest software, and will have fast internet connections so that entertainment sites will download more quickly.

Mashwebdesign.com specializes in web sites that inform — sites that are neatly laid out, download quickly, are logically organized, easy to navigate, and… informative. We try to avoid “bells and whistles” except where absolutely essential to the information being presented, preferring instead to focus on the clear and logical organization of material. This allows us to offer more information at a significantly lower cost. (Bells and whistles, fancy graphics, animation, and the like are why web designers make the big bucks.) Rather than spend our time (and your money) on features that only serve to wow and amaze visitors having the fastest computers and the latest software, we prefer to make our information accessible to the widest possible audience, including those who simply can’t afford to upgrade their equipment and software every year.

Why not “Bells and Whistles?”
Most of the things that move, or that change on the screen after a web page has been downloaded, require little programs, called “applets,” that must be either imbedded into the web page or downloaded along with it. These applets are then executed by the processor in the visitor’s machine, and can consume computer resources that older and slower computer systems can ill afford to spare. Some of them — Java applets in particular — can carry viruses that can infect your computer in a variety of harmful ways. For this reason, some sophisticated computer users, like me, operate their browsers with Java disabled, thus blocking many of the fancy features that webmasters charge so much to provide.

In some cases, these programs can cause an older computer, particularly one with limited memory, to crash or lock up, requiring that the system be rebooted and the visitor to log onto the internet all over again. This is a sure way to loose potential visitors.

A web site is one of the most inexpensive forms of advertising that any business can employ. However, web sites do not advertise themselves. You must first make your customers aware that you have a web site. Always include your web site address on your advertising flyers, business cards, and newspaper or other media ads. Added to your existing advertising, a web site can offer numerous additional features not available from conventional advertising.

• Product or service listings can be posted once, and will need no further attention, and no per-insertion charges.

• Product specifications and feature comparisons can help your customers decide which of your products is right for them.

• A map to your facility and a photograph of the building can help bring visitors to your door.

• A web site can provide application information about how various products can be used, or how your company’s services can benefit the customer.

• Technical support, in the form of operator’s manuals, service manuals, or lists of frequently asked questions (FAQ’s), can be made available for customers to browse or download to their printers.

• A customer information request form can be provided to allow visitors to direct queries from the web to your email account.

If you are not sure what features you want on your web site, you can always start small, and add additional features as the need arises. Mashwebdesign.com can work with you as your requirements grow, and can even suggest functionality that may not have ever occurred to you.