Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

13.3. Hiring a Professional Web Designer

The tools currently available make it much easier to design and maintain your own web site, even if you want to include complex features such as discussion boards and shopping carts. However, if you do not have a moderate amount of technical aptitude, you may find yourself in some frustrating and time-consuming situations when the tools fail to work as smoothly as intended. For this reason, I recommend that salespeople hire someone with the required skills to design and set up the web site. A highly skilled web site designer can have your site up and running in a matter of days, and your site will look better, run more reliably, and be much more secure than if you were to do it yourself.

The cost of designing and setting up a web site varies depending on the complexity of the site and the graphics, but a high-quality design and installation of a site typically costs between $5,000 and $10,000. Of course, you can find numerous companies offering design services in the range of a few hundred dollars, but you generally get what you pay for. Hosting services rarely offer help with web site design and setup, but they usually have affiliates who can assist you and are experienced working with the hosting service you use.

Look for web site design and hosting companies that specialize in creating web sites for salespeople in your industry. If you ...