Let us answer you web-related questions.

Why do I even need a website?
If you are a retailer, wholesaler, or anyone who has a business that offers anything for sale, then the answer should be obvious. Why would you not want your products and or services offered to anyone in the world? Are you satisfied with your current sales figures? Are you happy doing business with just anyone who happens to 'find' your physical location?

If you would like to be accessible to anyone anywhere in the world at anytime, then this is why you need a website !

Isn't web design expensive?
It can be, but then again it could be relatively inexpensive - it just depends on what you need and who you commission to get it done. Also, by trying to cheap-down in the beginning, it can actually make things extremely pricey in time and money to correct. Web design isn't going to cost you pennies, and you should be wary of anyone offering their services for unreasonably low fees.

To find out how we make web design economic and affordable, check out our information on 3dotmedia.com/phased-design.

I already have a website. Why do I need to change it?
There are a lot of reasons why you may want to change up your website, or rebuild it from scratch even. People often get bored with stale content, or not enough content. Search engines too may get tired of the unchanging state of your site, and may list you lower (or not at all) in the search engine results pages (SERPS). What's more is that it is important for your website to change with the times. Think of it as a wardrobe for your website - at some point when the trends change - you have to update in sync as well, if you want to stay on the cutting edge.

The Web is a big place, how do people find my site?
This is a legitimate concern. Why pay money for a site that no one will ever find on purpose? True, you could make mass promtional materials to mail and distribute, send out Emails galore pointing people to your site, or other word-of-mouth tactics. But the real answer lies in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Management, or SEO and SEM respectively. This is another reason why you'll want to choose a web design consultant with great care and research.

A good developer knows how to design and plan a site that will be in tune with the way search engines work. Even after all of that, the work is still not done. As a matter of fact, it never is a job that is a set up and walk away tactic. SEO and SEM is an on-going task that needs constant monitoring and modification.

If you want to keep your website on the top or near the top of the search engine results, you'll need to have someone who is knowledgable, clever, intuitive, and skilled in SEO & SEM to stay on top of your findability efforts.

How do I choose the right web designer?
When you need a proper website designed, or if you need a feature or component of your existing site redone or established, how do you know you're choosing the right web developer? There is no easy way, but it can be done. Many people won't work with a developer if he or she has no portfolio, which is understandable since you would really want to know what kind of work someone does before you hire them. However, there are more aspects other than the visual appeal or functionality represented in one's portfolio of past work that you'll want to consider.

Professionalism and ethical standing is something that you will undoubtedly want to be front-and-center in your developer. You will also want someone who understands your needs as they relate to your business or organization and how that ties in with the web, and ultimately your website.

You'll also want to avoid making the mistake of cheaping-down by hiring just anyone who knows at least a tid-bit of HTML. In other words, web development is a task that you'll only want to place in the hands of someone who specializes in it.

You want to ensure that the web developer that you choose is capable of providing a sound and visually appealing layout that compliments the spirit, nature, and image of your organization, in addition to understanding what it takes to mold the content into a viable form for visitors to be able to take in and digest. If you're looking for an all-in-one web developer/designer, then you'll want them to be proficient in SEO & SEM, as well as the practices and design tactics that will keep your site secure and with maximum up-time.

Once my site is built, who's going to maintain it?
Once again, a great question. Also, website maintenance is a daunting task in many cases - one that is not to be taken lightly. The case may also be that you already have a site up that needs no changes or redesigning of any of the elements, yet the content and security of it is so imperative that you will want to have someone who is highly skilled and knowledgeable in what it takes to keep a site in tip-top shape.

Another solution to this issue is to install a content management system, or what is commonly referred to as a CMS. This allows virtually anyone with even minimal technical knowledge to easily maintain a website, even large websites, with streaming media, image files, applications as well as regular text-based content.

How is a website built, and how much work goes into it?
This depends upon the complexity and nature of the project. Many times, a web project is nothing more than establishing a single web page with some text-based information, and other times is a large site of 50 pages or more with all kinds of integrated multi-media and interaction with the web server.

There are even times when a website project is an ongoing process to construct, and can even necessitate non-stop maintenance. The degree of artistic design can play a major role in the complexity of the project as well. If your web-site needs custom-graphics, or if you need high-end visually appealing images on your site, then it will require even more skill, knowledge, and effort to bring your project to fruition.

This is also why it's important to select the right web developer for your project.

How do I keep people coming to my website?
Conent, content, content! That is the simplest answer, and sometimes only answer. As a matter of fact, all other answers have it as their bottom line. Unless we're talking about a site displaying a masterpiece of artwork ro literature, or some other creativity, very few people will return to the same web page or site if the content remains unchanging.

If you're in the business of on-line business then you will want to change up prices to offer discounts to your web-based customers, offer products or services that are available exclusively from your website, or some other form of online marketing.

You could do a number of visual and layout changes to keep vistors coming to see new and fresh looks, however you'll want to be wary of changing too much so as not to confuse your vistors or have them lost to the navigation of your site.

RSS feeds, social media bookmarking and campaigning could also do the trick. Basically you want to keep visitors wondering and wanting to see what's new on your site. SEO & SEM also play a big part in attracting visitors. For this reason also is why you'll want to not only maximize, or more appropriately - optimize your website - for search engine indexing; which increases your rankings in search results and ultimately brings more visitors; but you'll also want to keep your content fresh so as to remain in high results with search engine engines.

This is the easiest and usually the most cost-effective way to keep visitors returning to your site and, hopefully, spending money on your site.