Webpro, Durban

The days of putting up a copy of your product brochure and waiting for thousands of eager customers to come battering down your doors are long gone. But most sites are still being designed on that premise! These flat product displays add little value to a visitor's experience, they usually have no marketing intelligence gathering capability, and they do nothing for your company or products. Simply put; you'd be better off donating your website design budget to charity and getting some philanthropic mileage in the local press!
The market is still essentially naive and if you don't understand some of the basic elements of internet marketing then you're a prime candidate for breaking down on the Infobahn. Everyone seems to know some spotty whizzkid who is an internet boffin who designs webpages for next to zip and who can even arrange complimentary hosting. Better book the tow truck now! Successful websites are the end result of effective marketing strategies which require a lot more than a set of pretty pages. Remember that the proliferation rate of new websites is staggeringly high, and the resultant competition for site visibility is fierce. You need to build the right type of site, get focussed people visiting in healthy numbers, and then maintain that visibility. And, most importantly, you need to achieve the objectives that motivated you to commission the website in the first place.
Your choice of supplier is critical. Most of these concerns will be addressed if you select a competent web design service with a proven track record of successful site establishments. If they claim that then they must have reference sites, and plenty of them. It is also important for the web designers to maintain and control their own servers as that is the only way to effectively exploit site interactivity with the visitor. Analysis of server access logs will reveal telling statistics about visitor behavior.