A basic requirement for an Internet marketer is a Website; and two fundamental questions related to it at the outset are whether to take on the designing of your website yourself or hire a firm for the purpose.
Both options have certain advantages (and disadvantages) but experience has shown that for most people (including people who have some knowledge of website design and development), hiring someone who specializes in web design and development can bring about much better results. The reason for this is that professionals working in web design studios not only have long experience; they also have a lot of resources at their disposal which would, normally, not be available to you.
'Website Design Services' may mean different things to different people and web designers working for different companies may perform different tasks. For example, for those working in large well structured web design companies, Web design may refer to the designing of a web page or a website, including the information and user interface design but excluding programming (programming, for such service providers, fall in the category of website development which is a wider connotation). In smaller web design companies where fewer people usually take on wider job descriptions, 'Website Design Services' may include the whole process of website production from start to finish. The brief outline of the process of creating a website from scratch, discussed below, will help to clarify the scope of 'Web Design Services'.
Briefly, the different steps that the Web designer goes through are, first, the 'Discovery' stage where the designer finds out as much as possible about the client company, its target market and the needs and expectations of the target group. The second 'Planning' or 'Pre-planning' step involves clearly determining what the website is expected to do (its scope, audience and goals) and creating project definition documents to guide the Web designing process.The third 'Information Architecture' or 'Information Design' step defines how the information is to be categorized and presented to users and also includes designing the website navigation to make it user-friendly. 'Graphic Design' the fourth step, is about creating visual balance and readable text, both critical to a user-friendly Web design.