At the initial sight or sound of the two-word terms “web design” and “web development,” it is understandably easily to assume that they are one in the same.  Or at least similar, for that matter.  But really, the two major parts that go into the creation of a website are substantially different from each other.

How about a few comparisons that help to explain web design vs. web development:

• Web designers are artists; Web developers are geeks (in a good way, of course).
• Web design is an art; Web development is a science.
• Web designers are architects; Web developers are builders.
• Web design is creative; Web development is technical.
• Web designers are right-brained; Web developers are left-brained.

The list could on, but these examples will probably suffice for now—and hopefully provide some initial clarity on the relationship between web design and web development.

What Does Web Design Involve?

Web designers basically practice a unique brand of graphic design.  Great web designers are creative artists that know how to bring design together perfectly with goals and desires in order to “paint a picture” that draws the visitor’s eye.  Web design is all about getting the colors right and getting the shapes and sizes right; it focuses on images, fonts, and where they should be on the page.  And naturally, it combines all of the elements found throughout a website into one cohesive look & feel.  Web design really is an art!

What Does Web Development Involve?

Web developers take the graphical web design—the look and feel, if you will—and make it work.  Web development is all about coding, software programming, and making the technical aspects of a website work exactly the way they should.  It also typically involves the ensuring that security and web hosting are setup and implemented just the way they should be…and that everything works well together from a functionality perspective. Your web developers are the mad scientists behind the scenes that bring the designer’s vision to life.

Now, For The Kicker…

Some web designers are also great web developers; and some web developers are also very proficient at web design.  If that sounds confusing, just remember, like anything in life, sometimes the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain work together in perfect harmony.  As a full-service web firm, here at Sleepless Media, we happen to be harmoniously proficient at both the art of design and the science of development.

Why Is Balance Between The Two Practices So Important?

You’ve probably seen websites that come across as way too technical and logical.  On the other hand, you’ve surely run across websites that theoretically look fantastic—but then they don’t work correctly or jam up your entire computer.  Either of these scenarios can happen when balance between design and development is off-kilter.

The bottom line is that in order for a web design to work, in order for it to achieve and carry out the goals expected of it, a fine-line combination of both web design and web development must be implemented with great care.

Fact:  At first glance, design looks easier than it really is.

It’s true.  Think about the last time you saw a picture of something in a magazine—maybe it was a gourmet recipe or something similar.  You might have said, “Hey, that doesn’t look so hard…I can make that!”  And then you did, and well…it didn’t exactly turn out quite as great as you had planned.  Maybe it’s not just a science of following the steps…maybe there is an art to this after all.

Sound all too familiar?  Well, maybe you are a great cook and that’s your forte, so the recipe turned out even better than the magazine picture promised.  And of course, we know that there lots of incredible graphic designers and web designers out there…who naturally create truly awesome designs.  Everyone is good at something, but sometimes it’s best to really be honest with ourselves and admit we might not be the best person for the job if that is indeed the case.

Unfortunately, for those out there who are not designers, then one thing is certain—those good folks are definitely not web designers either.  Best to leave it up to the pros for expert quality results.

It’s no secret that web designers (and for that matter, designers of all kinds) tend to be a little bit finicky.  And when you think about it, it’s hard to blame them really.  After all, they spend countless hours each and every day looking at designs and figuring out what really looks great and works well at the same time.  Just another day in the life of a professional designer…

Advice:  When it comes to designing your website, trust your designer.

You’ve spent a good amount of time and due diligence making sure you are working with just the right web designer to best achieve your unique goals.  Now it’s time to step back and put some confidence in your well-vetted decision.  Trust your web designer’s advice by all means.

• Ethical, professional designers will never borrow, copy, or otherwise steal someone else’s work to use on a site design they’re working on (even if their client asks them to).
• Expert web designers know what works, especially for the niches they specialize in.
• They are well versed on the latest technologies and upcoming web design trends.
• Good web designers work with your goals to ensure your site’s design will achieve its intended results.
• Continuous scope changes or other diversions from an agreed upon path to design completion will inevitably lead to spiraling project expenses—however, pro designers always prefer to avoid this scenario even if they ultimately won’t charge as much.

Web designers want to create the site to perform and function correctly—each new site is their next potential masterpiece.  Their professional reputation is at stake here and the last thing an expert web designer wants to do is violate the principles of good design.

Bottom Line:  Once you’ve selected a designer you trust, it’s best to just sit back and let them work their creative magic!

If there is one thing about investing in a quality website that’s built upon solid web development, it would probably be the fact that once the initial site is done, future improvement and expansion is a breeze.  Let’s start this blog post off with an analogy:

Think about it for a minute—when you buy an older house that needs some modernization, do you tear it down and start over, or do you remodel it and return it to the modern livability it deserves?  Well, most of the time, the scenario follows the path of remodeling—it’s usually less expensive and less time consuming to produce perfect results this way.  Of course, sometimes, the renovations required would be extreme enough that starting over from scratch on a clean slate is the best approach to creating the dream home you have imagined.

The moral of the story?

Well, usually homes designed and built with quality in mind from the beginning are more future proof than those that are simply thrown together for a quick profit.  Both will need facelifts and updating in the future—that much is inevitable.  But the expenses and time required to keep up a well-built home are clearly less than the alternative in almost every case.

The bottom line here is that websites are really no different than homes.  Build them right and continued development is possible.  Yes, facelifts are necessary from time to time to keep things fresh, but the hard work will have been done upfront.  Now back to the original question for a few minutes…

How often should you give your website a new facelift?

The honest answer in short form is probably just a little bit more frequently than you’re comfortable with.  Web technology changes from day to day—most sites can weather these intensely short term changes well when they have been designed with a forward-looking approach to begin with.

But even then, the realty is inevitable.  Sites do need to be updated and modernized from a development and technology standpoint just to keep on functioning well with current software and hardware (and also to remain attractive from an SEO standpoint).

And even more important than the behind the scenes technology outlook is the fact that current graphic design standards change even more rapidly.  Think about your favorite looking mainstream website for a minute…do you remember the last major design facelift it’s had?

Chances are, you’ve just answered, “probably not.”  After all, the mainstream sites change so gradually and so frequently to keep up with the latest trends in design and marketing that it’s difficult to notice abrupt improvements (but try an internet archive search for that same site 3 years ago, and you’ll most definitely find that an extreme facelift has indeed taken place over the years).

Same goes for your favorite magazines and other media—look at a current issue and then pull one from the archives, just a few years in the past.  While the main subjects and topics remain the same, major design and style changes have taken place over the years.

Your website visitors do have an eye for design (even if they don’t realize it).  Seriously, in the design and marketing driven world we all live in today, constant exposure to commercials and advertising—all featuring cutting-edge graphic design—is completely the norm.  We’re programmed to recognize and expect certain design components and trends even if we don’t realize its taking place.  It’s just subliminal.

So in an ideal world, if the time and financing permit, giving a website a new facelift needs to take place frequently, little by little, making gradual improvements and updates.  Every different industry and niche permits growth at a slightly different pace; you’ve got to be in tune with what your competitors are doing to stay sharp.

And even though in the real world, most of us aren’t able to refresh and give our sites facelifts on a day-to-day, or even month-to-month basis (like the top online players are doing), we still need to look at our websites at least once a year to give a them a solid review and determine if it’s time for a good facelift.  If there are any doubts, then the answer is, yes…a facelift is in order.

Remember, your website should be a ROI-building tool.  Keeping it fresh and up to date in the eyes of your visitors is an important investment that simply must be made.

Building a house and building a website are surprisingly similar in concept.  For example:

• Both should be based on a solid foundation.
• Both need to be created from the ground up, not from the top down.
• Both take a lot of hard work and attention to detail.
• Both are created with a particular group of features in mind.
• Both are based upon a design and building budget.

The concept is indeed very much the same.  So here’s the thing—you wouldn’t start building a house without blueprints, would you?  So why try to start building a website without planning it out first?

To start building a website without a well designed plan is a surefire way to produce chaos and drive the development expenses through the roof.  The final results may or may not turn out, but getting there in the first place is practically impossible without a plan.

So, what should a website blueprint consist of then?

Well, the plans for your new website need to encompass all of the components and designs to be used throughout the site.  These will normally include:

• A specific keyword use plan;
• The navigational structure to be used;
• A wireframe layout of the “schematics” of the site;
• Detailed design drawings;
• Sub-plans for additional website components like CMS or E-Commerce;
• Specifications for SEO functionality to be built into the website;
• Provisions for the code structure and hosting platforms to be used;
• And many more details.

Architects & Engineers

Architects—or in our website case, web designers—are naturally responsible for the overall design work and making it aesthetically correct.  The architects of a website are also on the frontline when it comes down to ensuring usability and providing for a first-rate visitor experience from the time they enter the site until the time they leave the site.  Just like designing a quality home, there’s a lot of work that goes into the design phase of a quality custom website—it’s a vital part of the overall project.

And then there are the engineers.  Engineers are typically called in to get the structural components of a construction project under wraps.  Just as they’re a significant part a the technical prowess that goes into traditional construction, engineers—in this case software engineers or programmers—are the ones that make sure the designer’s plans are structurally sound.  It is these programmers that figure out how to code and implement the design of the website and turn it into a functional, usable product.

Website Plans Pay Off

Planning first, and only then building a website according to the precise blueprint, is simply the most logical way to undertake a complex, multi-faceted project.  Precise planning pays off in countless ways—most prominently when it comes to ensuring a project will be completed on time, according to schedule, and on budget.  Remember, you wouldn’t start building a house without blueprints, so why try to start building a website without planning it out first?

From the initial stages of planning, to a complete finished product published and live online, how long does a web design project usually take?  Hmmm…a good question indeed.

First, the short answer: Depending on the complexity and type of the project, designing a new website usually takes anywhere from about 6 to 12 weeks from start to finish.

Now, in reality, it’s not always exactly this simple.  And since that’s kind of an ambiguous answer, let’s take a deeper look at the details and timelines of a typical Sleepless Media web design project.  Ready?

Weeks 1 – 2:  Lead Time

During the first week or two, we strive to get the project organized and all set up so it can correctly roll through the following project phases without a hitch.  When we say lead time, this means we’re planning and organizing the paperwork, collecting the deposit, and making sure we fully understand your project needs…all while gathering your logos, photos, and all other particulars for your unique project.  It is proper planning and mutual organization that ensures smooth projects.

Weeks 3 – 4:  Graphic Design Phase

This is the true “design” part of the project.  During our standard design phase, we’ll create up to three separate design mock ups.  Once the initial design direction is chosen with your consultation, we’ll begin doing requested revisions to get the design fine tuned to perfectly suit your organization’s desires.  Naturally, there is usually a reasonable amount of back and forth during this process to ensure that everything is just right—so the exact time frame for the design phase can vary quite a bit from one client to the next, all depending on the specific needs.  It is always our goal to be as transparent as possible and keep you fully up to speed on the progress and time estimates.

Weeks 5 – 6 Weeks:  HTML Coding

This phase of a web design project is where we take the finalized graphic design and “slice” it into individual components that will all be tied together with code to make a cohesive HTML site.  This typically involves all static HTML work, CSS programming, and adding all basic JavaScript functionality as necessary.  Sounds complicated, but in simpler terms, this is just taking the visual design and coding it to work for the web.  The last step of this coding phase is extensive cross-browser/platform testing to make sure the site will work perfectly with all major systems.  Finally, once the HTML coding process is all complete and there is now a basic working website to interact with, we’ll ask for your review and complete a round of revisions at this time if it’s needed.

Note: For basic static sites, the process is more or less complete after this phase, some final testing, content addition, and launch.  As we continue, we’ll be referring to additional functionality beyond the most basic static sites.

Weeks 7 – 8:  Custom CMS/PHP Programming

If you’ve chosen to have a CMS-enabled site (Content Management System), we’ll get to right to work on the programming required to accomplish this functionality just as soon as the static HTML Coding process is complete, tested, and approved.  Once the CMS programming is complete and tested, we’ll work with you to plan the addition of all of the content to be added via the new system.

Weeks 9 – 12:  E-Commerce Creation / Additional Features

For more complex web projects—such as those featuring full E-Commerce shopping cart and payment systems, we’ll usually need up to three more weeks to implement all of the required systems and for setup and testing.  If additional features above and beyond the norm are specified for a unique project, it is also during this final phase that we’ll work to complete these features.

Wrapping It Up…

So basically, each major phase of the Sleepless Media web design project takes about 1 to 2 weeks, making the entire project length anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks total—again, depending on the complexity and feature set of the particular website.  The timeframe is not always set in stone—in rare situations, we’ve even been able to complete full e-commerce projects in just 2 weeks and full static website in only 4 days.

However, it is very important to remember that there are a lot of moving parts that must be finely tuned to work together in creating website.  Doing it right does take time.

One thing is certain in all cases.  Web design projects always go more smoothly when all necessary materials, approvals, and feedback are received in a timely manner.  A great two-way stream of communication is key and we’ll always do our best to ensure a well-organized project for you!

Getting a web design project launched down the right track is really about half of the entire project.  As different as one website is from the next, one thing stays static for all different kinds of web design projects—big and small, simple and complex—better planning always equates to better end results.

Here are 6 questions you’ll want to give some serious thought to (and discuss with your designer) before proceeding with the production phases of the website design project:

1. What’s the difference when it comes to pro vs. amateur web designers?

It’s always a good idea to go through the vetting process with each of the designers you’re considering working with.  You might get a few lowball bids by developers that would seem to have some knowledge of web development, but when push comes to shove, simply don’t have the experience or professionalism to ensure a smooth project from start to finish.  Ask all of the right questions to weed out the amateurs from those experienced in producing better-than-satisfactory results for projects similar in caliber to yours.

2. What is the price and how do payments work?

If you think a web designer is being a little bit forward by wanting to discuss payment details and amounts quite early in the process, please know that they’re just trying to keep you up to speed in that department so there’s no sticker shock or surprises later on.  Experienced developers can usually get really spot-on when it comes to estimating the scope and price of a project, but there needs to be a contingency plan in place if the scope should need to be escalated along the way.  Make sure you’re on the exact same page as your web pros when it comes to pricing and payments before ever thinking about beginning production.

3. What is the purpose of the site?

You’ll want to really think about this one and ensure your designer grasps it very well too.  Unfortunately, it happens all too often that an organization decides to create a new website just for the sake of needing a new website.  But what goals should the site encompass?  Who should it attract, how will it bring visitors in, and what will the site do for the visitors once they are there?  By nailing out these essentials before going any further in the design process, the site can be custom-developed to accomplish these extremely important goals—rather than trying to address the concerns and retrofit the site once it’s too late.

4. What features and content will the website offer?

Once goals of the site have been carefully planned out, the next step is understanding and setting up a precise plan of action to accomplish them.  This is where the site’s features and content come in.  What needs to happen in order to achieve all of the goals set forth?  It might be writing a well thought-out section of quality, SEO-optimized content; it might be adding relevant maps, databases, or subscription forms.  It’s all about fully understanding the feature set required to make your site perform the way it should.  Working with your knowledgeable, experienced designer, really sit down and get these aspects of the site right…right from the beginning.

5. How will you bring in your visitors?

Every site has its own unique approach to visitor acquisition.  Some sites will be more like online brochures that serve as a place for offline referrals from phonebooks, offline advertising, and similar sources to land.  Other websites will be developed around a philosophy of attracting a ready-to-purchase, niche-oriented audience from the search engines.  Whatever the case may be for you, just be sure to figure it out upfront.  This way, the developer can work in all of the necessary components from the ground up.

6. How does ongoing site maintenance work?

Maintenance is sometimes the very last thing you want to think about before the website is even designed to begin with.  But it’s still important to ask the question here.  After all, maintenance can play a huge role in how you’ll want to create your site.  For example, if you’re building a new e-commerce enabled site, would you want to have the ability to go in and manage your portfolio of products yourself…or will it be necessary to pay your web developer to add, edit, or remove products from your online shopping system?  Same goes for adding or editing website content—do you want to pay hourly developer fees just to add a new article; or would it be better to integrate a content management system (CMS) in to the site’s structure right from the beginning, so you can make your own updates and changes with no additional developer fees required?

Getting these details, along with all potential wrinkles, completely ironed out at the conceptual phases of the project always makes for a more efficient and more smoothly-implemented project.  Remember, it’s inevitable that better planning can only lead to one thing—a better website for you!

From start to finish, there’s a lot more that goes into building a complete website than meets the eye!  To say that web design is simply a matter of designing a website leaves out a lot of the important facts.  It’s really a multi-faceted process—one that takes quality planning and expert implementation to get right.  Let’s take a look at the major components of a comprehensive web development project…

One:  Planning

First things first, every website must be carefully planned.  Here at Sleepless Media, we usually start right away when receiving a quote request.  We’ll look at all of the information provided and conceptualize a better feel for how the overall project will flow and what details will entail.  As we evaluate projects, we maintain an ongoing dialogue with our customers to ensure we completely understand the goals and gather all of the right information.

Two:  Project Management

Once the details are all rounded up and put in order, the next step is sending over a detailed formal proposal.  After an agreement is reached and the deal is inked, then it’s time to start taking care of business.  This is where it’s integral to have an efficient, organized project management system in place—without proactive project management to track and guide the web development project over each phase through realization of its full scope, there’s really very little chance of putting all of the pieces together so they actually form a desirable, high-performance finished product.  Project management is just that vital.

Three:  Copywriting

It’s always a good idea to know going into a new web development project that copywriting is one of the most essential components of a good website.  It truly is the lifeblood of the site when it comes to SEO and drawing visitors’ attention.  The thing is, it’s not automatically a part of web design (even though the best websites are designed to work hand-in-hand with their copy).  Many folks choose to supply their own site copy—we can work with this and will even be happy to give you some pointers.  We can also help you produce compelling optimized copy; just ask us about our copy and content process.

Four:  Creating The Look & Feel

This phase is the artistic process—the graphic design, if you will.  Usually done by expert professional graphic designers using industry-standard software like Photoshop, the look and feel must be both attractive and thematically appropriate for the subject of the website being designed.  The look and feel can make or break a website.

Five:  Production & Development

Once the visual design of the site is complete and agreed upon, then the next phase of the web development process is to “slice” the design.  This is kind of a reverse engineering process where the visual and style elements are broken down into optimized pieces and tied together through standards-compliant web code.  Doing this right is really an art of its own!

Six:  Web Programming

With the front-end of the website in place now, the next phase of the web development process is building the systems on the back-end that make it work.  The cogs of the machinery include E-Commerce systems, dynamic databases, and content management systems (CMS), along with other detailed programming work.

Seven:  Testing

After the programming phase is complete, all of the components are put together in their intended final form and the quality assurance phase kicks into full gear.  Extensive testing for standards, functionality, and compatibility are very important to making sure full satisfaction is met.  After all, all of the prior phases of development would go to waste if the finished product simply didn’t work right.

Eight:  Launch

Only once comprehensive testing and debugging is complete will the site be ready to launch.  But once it is, this is the most exciting part…putting your new website creation on to the web after extensive planning, development, and testing.

So, would you agree that building a great website is a little bit more detailed than just patching together some code and content and calling it finished?  It’s true—quality web development requires significant planning and preparation; but as the project wraps up, it becomes very evident that the attention to detail is definitely worth all of the effort!

Let’s cut right to the point today.  Unlike opening up your word processing software or graphic design program and creating exactly what you have in mind, selecting from a plethora of hundreds of different attractive fonts to use, the way fonts work for your website is quite bit different.  In order to maintain compatibility across the widest variety of web browsers and devices possible, there are strict standards, rules, and guidelines that must be followed on the web.

This Current Practice Is Here To Stay.

Basically, even though new technologies for using different fonts in web design are on the brim of reality, for the near future, best practices will still demand the use of just one of a few web-safe fonts.  While the list is slightly different depending on PC vs. Mac use, the most commonly utilized web safe fonts include:

• Arial
• Helvetica
• Courier
• Georgia
• Lucida
• Tahoma
• Times
• Times New Roman
• Verdana
• And a few more…

Again, it’s slim pickin’s, but these fonts are considered to be universally safe to use in web design—meaning that they’ll render reliably (or at least similarly to how they’re supposed to appear) on almost all web browsers and devices.

The Upcoming Promise Of CSS3

There are some cool new features and capabilities coming forward with the advent of CSS3, including the ability to use a wide variety of fonts; the future of fonts in web design looks bright indeed!  But again, there’s a catch.  It’s great technology, but until it goes completely mainstream, which could take years and years, it’s not really all that reliable.

Of course, there are also a few other tools and techniques that can be used to “implant” a certain font you’d like to use onto a website.  The thing is, they’re just not going to work for everyone—in fact, they very well might not work for most.  For the time being, in order to be compatible with mainstream web browsers, it’s important to specify and design around the standardized list of fonts.

This isn’t to say that it’s not impossible to present new fonts on the latest compatible web browsers, it’s just that you’ve still got to use backup.  A designer doing so will have to plan, design, and fully test the compatibility of using a cutting-edge modern font option with ensuring scaled-back compatibility with older generation browsers.  It’s more work, more time, and naturally, more money.

Isn’t There A Better Way?

Unfortunately, right now there really isn’t.  Some will use graphics to present the fonts of their choice—and appearance-wise, this works great.  However, even though it’s perfectly okay to do in some circumstances, there are also several caveats to using graphic-based text components on a website.  Two of the main fallbacks include causing significant problems with Usability and SEO.

Fonts are important.  Typography has been a staple of graphic design (and the field’s ancestors) for hundreds of years.  Make it attractive and don’t clash by overusing fonts in your design, but also, keep it as simple as possible to be on the safe side.

You’ve probably run across several web designers who insist on using Flash to create websites.  Most have good intentions, but are just not fully aware of the pitfalls that come along with relying too heavily on Flash web design.  Others are probably just really bad web designers altogether.  Enough said about that.

But one thing is true.  Regardless of what you’ve heard, using Flash on the web has some really great applications and some that are, well, just not very good at all.

For example, a couple of good possible uses might include:

• Using Flash for video. Flash-based video has more or less become the iron-clad standard for streaming video on the web.  It works very well.
• Using Flash for image libraries or other “widgets” or “apps.” Flash works nicely as a sub-component in many photo sharing slash portfolio types of website applications.

That said, it’s still probably best to use Flash components on your website as sparingly as possible.  And it’s all for very good reason.  In fact, Google themselves has even laid forth the shortcomings of using Flash on websites.  They spell it out very concisely and clearly here on their Webmaster Central Blog:

As many of you already know, Flash is inherently a visual medium, and Googlebot doesn’t have eyes. Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in our index, it might be missing some text, content, or links. Worse, while Googlebot can understand some Flash files, not all Internet spiders can.

Now when talking about ranking well in the search engines, it’s hard to argue that Google’s position on Flash isn’t pretty much definitive.  The more you use Flash as a component on a website, the less the search engines are even able to recognize it—let alone effectively rank it.  Search spiders are getting better at understanding Flash, but there are still severe repercussions that can be completely avoided in entirety by choosing to use a more universal web design platform.

In Summary

Even though many web designers insist on using Flash-based websites, it’s just not a good idea if you plan on attracting organic traffic from the search engines.

• Flash effectively prevents search engine spiders from recognizing and understanding your site correctly.
• Without being able to understand your website, the search engines are not able to rank or list it appropriately within their search indexes.
• Flash can also be non-compatible with certain web browsers and mobile browsers (meaning visitors using these browsers will see a blank space or error message instead of the site as intended).

Don’t become overly afraid of using a small Flash component or two on your site.  But just don’t fall into the trap of using it for the entire site…unless you’re trying to prevent visitors.

Static websites and dynamic websites—what’s the big difference (and the big deal) anyway?  It’s a fair question, and while dynamic sites are definitely more popular these days, there’s still a time and a place for static websites too.  But before we go any further, let’s slow things down a bit and take a look at what the terms “static” and “dynamic” actually mean anyway when it comes to web design.

A static website is one that’s hard-coded, generally in the HTML language.  In other words, what’s written in the code—and this includes both text and graphic elements—is exactly what’s shown in the web browser each and every time that web page is accessed.  It’s kind of like what’s written in the code is “locked” just like when you print a document on paper.  What’s there is what it is.

On the other hand, with a dynamic website, content is regenerated each time a page is visited or refreshed.  Using a coding language like PHP, dynamic sites look for changes—perhaps from a separate database—every time a web page is loaded.  Even a dynamic site will often still use some static features though, such as wrapping the dynamic coding with specific fixed HTML elements.

Okay…enough of the geek speak already!

It’s confusing and pretty much irrelevant for our purpose here anyway.  Let’s get down to business—what’s the real difference between a static website and a dynamic website when it comes to creating a new site for you?

Static Websites

Well, static websites are almost always less expensive and faster to develop.  Static HTML is often used these days when creating a basic “brochure-type” website.  You know…the standard 5 page kind of site that usually includes a home page, about page, contact page, and maybe a services page or two.

When the content—text and pictures alike—is just fine remaining the same for long stretches at a time, a static site might just fit the bill.  Thing is, if you’re not familiar with code or any of the other behind-the-scenes components used to create a website, you’ll probably have to pay a web developer to make changes and updates each time they’re required.  This can get very burdensome and expensive over time.

Dynamic Websites

A dynamic website is naturally going to be more expensive to develop…initially, anyway.  After all, it takes much more work and customization to make it all happen.  But the good news here is that with certain added features that dynamic sites enable, like Content Management Systems (CMS), it’s really easy for anyone to log in and make updates and changes without the need for expensive web developer fees in the future.

This alone makes it a win-win proposition for many—but there are many, many more benefits to going dynamic.  Interactivity with your website visitors is probably the most notable plus here.  Dynamic websites enable features like photo galleries, blogs, forums, and many additional web “apps” for your site.  They can also be coded to be smarter, for lack of a better term, than a traditional static site.

The Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a site that is easy and affordable to maintain, dynamic is for you.  Plus, the features that going dynamic opens the door up to are what most savvy visitors demand from a website these days.  On the other hand, if you’re simply looking to get on the web quickly and at the most affordable upfront cost—without regard to really developing an interactive platform—a basic static website might be just the answer you’ve been looking for.

Have additional questions?  If so, please just let us know…we’re here to help!