So you're finally ready to take your Bob Saget fridge magnet company to the next level: The Web, you've heard, is going to be big, and sagetmag.net is going to be huge right along with it.

The only thing that stands between you and your very own piece of the Web pie is one, small hurdle: You still need a Web site.

Of course, you could teach yourself how to build your own - why, everything you'd ever need to know about site building, from the basics of HTML to advanced e-commerce techniques, can be found right here at Webmonkey. But, outrageously successful business person that you are, you know for a fact that time is money. And in the many hours it'd take you to learn the Web ropes, you could have rolled out a legion of Bob bodies plus an array of cute little magnetic outfits to dress him up in.

No, you need to hire someone to build that site. But do you have the money, honey, to bankroll such an undertaking?

How Much for that Site?
While it's entirely possible to create a site for the cost of a happy meal, if you want your site to attract users and crush the competition; if you want a slick, unique, bells-and-whistles site; or if you want to actually sell products online, you may need to pay the hefty fees of a professional Web designer.

The cost of a professionally designed Web site is getting steeper all the time. These days, big-name Web design firms won't touch sites for less than US$200,000 (yes, that's five zeros), and even small design shops start the bidding at $10,000. You can even drop a cool $15,000 simply to figure out what kind of site your business needs.

While you may not need or want to spend 15K before you even get started, there are costs above and beyond the core site-building costs that you need to work into your budget.

In the movie business, it's standard practice for the money spent making a movie to be matched, dollar for dollar, by the amount forked over to promote the movie. On the Web, your marketing-cost to site-building-cost ratio can be even more pronounced.

As the Web continues to grow in exponential leaps and bounds, the Web landscape is becoming increasingly crowded. As a result, the hunt for the wily user has become fiercely competitive -- which means you have to do a lot more than just register your site with the usual search engines to get the traffic you need to stay in e-business. Now you need to lay out some serious dough to get the word out, either by way of traditional advertising (radio, TV, print, bus/cab/sandwich boards/billboards) or via the Web itself, by using banner ads, purchased keywords, or even by buying search results.

Beyond the cost of advertising, you also must budget for the monthly costs of running a Web site: the maintenance (updates, improvements, and fixes) and monthly site hosting fees or, if you're running your site off of your own servers, the cost of employing someone to watch over the server to make sure things run smoothly.

All in all, a Web site can present a serious financial commitment. So, before you start searching for a design firm in earnest, make sure you've got enough capital to both build and support your site.

Lucky for you, your Saget magnets are selling faster than naked David, so you've got plenty of green to set up your site. But where do you find qualified Web designers? And how do you make sure you get the right designer for your needs? Well, before you can start talking turkey with Web design firms, you need to figure out just what kind of site you want.

Click and Learn
First things first: Before you sink your hard-earned dollars into the Internet, you should know a thing or two about what it has to offer. Do you understand the difference between chat and threaded discussion? News feeds and newsgroups? Do you know your front end from your backend? Your TCP/IP from your ISP? If you don't, then spend an hour or so boning up on the basic concepts of the online world. You don't need to become an expert, just get the general concepts down.

Next, take a look at some of the best sites the Web has to offer to figure out what you like, what you hate, and what kinds of things are even possible. Do you like flashy sites (which may alienate people using older browsers or slower connections)? Or do you want to keep things nice and simple?

After you have an idea of what's out there, see what the competition has to offer so you know the height of the bar you're shooting for. Note what features it offers. This way you'll know what your users will be expecting. Then start thinking about how you can improve on what the competition has done and how you're going to differentiate your site from theirs.

Next, use what you've learned both from your tour of award-winning Web sites and your competition to generate a list of the key features you need and want on your site. Now take that wish list and generate a request for proposal (RFP), which is what you'll be sending to potential site-design firms to get them to submit a proposal, or bid, to you for your project. Then run through Webmonkey's Business Rules work sheet to make sure you cover all your e-business bases. Finally, you can use this finished RFP as an example of what you're shooting for. Once you have your RFP firmly in hand, the next step is to find some qualified site designers to send it to.

Locating Able Designers
What's the best way to find a Web designer you like? Figure out who sits behind the curtain of the sites you admire.

Cheryl Downes, senior producer a high-end site design firm, says that "as a starting point, if you have seen a site you like, it doesn't hurt to contact the company and find out who designed and built its site." And, even if the design firm responsible for the site you admire is outside your price range, it can still be an excellent resource: "Most shops are willing to answer a few questions on Web development and many agencies, like vivid, have referral lists, so if your project is out of their range, they'll give the name of a company that could help you." In other words, if your budget is too limited or if you don't need their high-end capabilities (avoid the "jackhammer for a tack" syndrome), fancy firms can be a great place to start looking for a designer of your own.

Another way to find a site designer is to look through a list of developers in your area. Because you'll be working closely with whatever firm you choose, you probably don't want to pick a company that's out of your range, geographically speaking. The Firm List, NetMarketing's Developer Directory, and H5 Firms all should have enough design-firm listings in your area to keep you busy.

Now that you know where to find a designer, let's take a look at what you should be looking for from each one.

What to Look for in a Developer
The most obvious place to start your evaluation of designers is with their sites. If, with any particular design firm, you find the site colors are hideous, the design confusing, or it takes seven hours for the first screen to load, run - don't walk - to another company.

If you like what you see enough to click past the first page, the next step is to see what kinds of services the firm offers. E-commerce enablement? Logo design? Database development? Content generation? Animation? User testing? Site hosting? Promotion? Keep in mind that just like the rest of us, design firms tend to excel in some areas and lag in others, so make sure it can do the things you really need it to.

Then take a look at its clients; do you like the sites the company has created? Do the sites it's designed have the functionality you need (i.e., having tackled a functional e-biz before)? Does it have experience creating sites for companies similar to your own? Try contacting a client company to see what it has to say about its experience with this Web designer. And finally, View Source; do you see slap-dash coding or, sweet Jesus, a <!--Built with FrontPage-->? Next!

Once you have a nice, manageable list of companies you're interested in, contact their new-business representatives and send them your RFP. Remember that not all the Web-design shops you send a RFP to will actually submit a proposal to you. They may be too busy or they may not do the kind of work you're requesting. So make sure you send out enough RFPs to cover the no-goes (if you send out five or six, you should be fine).

Now sit back and wait for those proposals to roll in. You should have at least three different proposals with three different bids to choose from. If you don't get enough proposals, go ahead and send out more RFPs until you do.

Once you have your proposals, it may be time for a little checking and balancing.

Selecting a Site Designer
If you're lucky, the bids you receive for your site will fall right within your budget, so you'll have the luxury of simply selecting a site designer based on which style you like most.

You may, however, find that your bids come in a couple of zeros above and beyond your bank balance.

If this happens, fear not. First of all, some Web designers are willing to negotiate. Bruce Falck, CEO and founder of Phoenix Pop, a design firm, that has worked for clients like Nike and Levi's, says that his company is "focusing on enabling small businesses to have an identity online." Phoenix Pop is especially interested in businesses that are really "serious about doing something with the Web" (perfect example: recent client Sparks, a Web-based greeting card company). Better yet, if it feels your product is well-suited to take advantage of all the Web has (and will have) to offer, it may be willing to give you a break, price-wise, on first-round development in exchange for equity (the promise of future work with you).

Another way to cut corners is to use a budding design firm, one that, in the words of Lesley Taylor (key player at What Media, a design firm that recently made the leap from up-and-coming to established), is "experienced, but still excited as a puppy about new business."

The main drawback to this approach is that you'll be working with people who are still learning, so the process may take longer and you may have to suffer through the kinds of problems that first-timers run into. On the other hand, they'll be as concerned as you are about getting everything right, because the only way they'll make money off your site is to use it as a showpiece for future business.

Another thing: Nothing saves you dough like being prepared. According to Noel Franus, Web-design veteran and co-founder of fledgling Web-design shop Carbon IQ, "you could have a simple site for as little as $5,000 if you have your act together, you're organized, you have portions of the planning and writing done ahead of time, and you're open to your vendor's suggestions." So get as ready as humanly possible before you call in the experts; you don't want to pay those steep hourly rates to have them attend, say, endless brainstorming sessions. Use them only when you're ready for them.

And finally, if you can't afford to do everything you want with your site right now, consider spending the money you currently have to lay the ground work for a first-rate, but bare-minimum site. Then, in time, you can add extra functionality or glitzy baubles.

While less likely, it's also possible that some bids may actually come in lower than you expect. Before you get all wide-eyed over the things you could do with the surplus cash (fuzzy Olsen twins for the rear-view mirror?), think for a minute about the hidden costs of amateurish site building. Are you sure that this low-baller will be able to do the job right? Or will you just have to pay someone else to redesign shoddy workmanship?

This isn't to say that you should automatically go with the highest bidder. In some cases, you may simply be paying for a big name, not big talents. But heavy-weight design firms don't necessarily mean squat to the people who really matter: your users.

If you're having trouble deciding which design shop to go with, try visiting a few. Meet the designers. Do they seem competent? Capable? Do you like them? Can you stand the thought of working closely with them for the next three months? Do they share your passion for Bob Saget?

Because, really, that's what it comes down to. Do these people have what it takes to reach your users? Before you sign on the dotted line, listen to what your gut tells you. And then get ready to work your hindquarters off.

Now Build that Site
Remember: You don't just hire a Web design shop, leave it alone for three months, and then presto, your site goes live.

To make sure you get the site you want - and that it comes in on time and on budget - you need to be there every step of the way. Your job as a client is to make decisions and to stick to them, because the developer's deliveries depend on your timely sign-offs and vetoes. Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do to keep things moving right along.

Nothing slows down the decision-making process like a committee, so the first thing you should do is select a point person, someone who can be trusted to keep track of what's going on and who can make the right decisions throughout the site-building process.

Once your point person has been established, have him or her work with the design firm to establish a delivery schedule that both your company and the design firm can comfortably adhere to. Before approving this schedule, the point person should make sure that the CEO gets a crack at the site before the week it goes live. Last-minute changes can cost more than almost anything else, so the point person must make sure all the company's key players understand their individual roles. And if the CEO will be vacationing in Bali during the crucial design finalization period, the delivery schedule should be changed, up front and before any work begins, to accommodate the big cheese.

Once the delivery schedule has been finalized, the point person should do whatever it takes to stay on track. If the sign-off on, say, a design comp, is postponed for even just a week, the post date of the site cold be moved back more than a month. You see, most successful, talented design firms (as if you would hire anything less!) have more than one client, so their time is tightly scheduled and delays on your part may mean waiting until the design company has time for you again.

Finally, don't promote your site before it's actually live. Even the most well-considered and artfully planned schedule can't foresee the kinds of random disasters that plague the Web, which, after all, is still a medium in the early stages of its infancy. And you don't want hoards of users going to your site when, for some strange reason, the homepage suddenly refuses to load.

In fact, you may want to plan on having a "soft launch," in which your site goes live without any fanfare whatsoever, giving you time for a final, dress-rehearsal round of user testing.

So when that flood of customers finally comes clicking in to satiate their thirst for Saget-related merchandise, they'll find exactly what they're looking for: that glorious Add to Shopping Cart button.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evany Thomas  Webmonkey's former managing editor and the author of The Secret Language of Sleep from McSweeney's. She encourages you to discover your ideal sleeping position.