Hot Internet Network™, Inc. creates unique custom professional business websites that will keep your customers coming back.   Our custom designs will distinguish your business online and offline.  Our affordable custom professional business website designs are developed for all kinds of small businesses. But before we tell you about our custom designs, we think you should know what to look for in a custom built website design?

What to look for in a custom built professional website?

When it comes down to it, you need a web site that does what you want it to. Talk to several web design firms to see which is the best match for your needs.  Compare and see what can or can not be done with your website now and in the future. You want to make sure all of the questions below are addressed.

• does the site take long to load?
• can you tell where to find all the important information?
• does it look appropriate for the type of business?

You want to make sure you get results, not just a flashy design. Remember, flash and certain designer scripts will not work on all browsers and usually detract from a web design.

Why should I turn to a pro to build my custom website?

Turning to the pros for custom web design is usually a smart idea.  A lot of people can use Photoshop, many can create very professional looking pictures or artwork, however, this doesn’t mean they should design your new custom web site!

For a website to be successful, your web site design should:

• be easy to understand and navigate
• represent your business well
• be relatively easy to upgrade
• focus on information and action, not splash and sizzle

Achieving all these goals requires experience in designing for the web.  Hot Internet Network™, Inc. has just that experience!

Couple Items To Remember…Before Taking the Leap

Creating or redoing a web site can be great for business – but it comes with a lot of challenges, too. There are many components to manage and multiple, sometimes-conflicting priorities to balance.

But remember this, the most important part of your web site is the content and functionality: what it says and what it does.

You should decide what you need out of your site before choosing a web designer.  Know what the website will say and what it will do, start with a basic plan.

You certainly don’t have to have every word written or every button planned out.

Here are some of the things you will need to decide.

• What major sections will the site include? What pages in each one?
• Will you sell products through your web site or not?
• Will the site collect information from visitors?
• Do you want to have an email newsletter to go along with your site?
• How are you going to advertise your site?
• Does the site need to connect to any existing databases?
• Do your website need to be social networking capable?
• Is your website upgradable in the future without a total rework?

Finally,let us talk to you about what we consider the most important area in a website project.

Who will maintain it?

Before deciding who’ll build your site, you should consider who is going to maintain it. Whether your site needs updates daily or only a few times a year, an ongoing maintenance plan is important.  This is where Hot Internet Network™, Inc. is different than the rest of the design firms out there today!

Remember, once a site is created, it doesn’t take much technical skill to make simple edits to text or images with our custom built websites. Many businesses simply choose someone inside their company to handle this very basic maintenance. If you don’t have someone on staff who can take it on, we have a combined hosting and maintenance package for you. For a  small monthly fee, you get a certain amount of edits based upon which package you chose.

More complex edits, such as adding to the navigation tools or changing the design, requires more of an understanding of the workings of the entire website. For those types of changes, we offer an hourly fee based upon complexity and your desired changes.

Finding your price point

Your web site will be the first experience many potential customers have with your business, so it’s worth spending a little extra money to get the best site you can. Don’t let cost be the primary consideration as you compare one provider to another.

Small to mid-sized projects

There are two main types of pricing for web site design work, depending on the size and scope of your project. For small to mid-sized projects, fixed-price package deals are the most common.

A 5 page site with a straightforward design and no ‘extras’ might cost $300 to $400; a 10 page site with a more customized design and some extras like a search engine or streaming video might be $600 to $800. E-commerce sites are more expensive, starting at around $700 but more commonly going for $1,200 or more.

With our package pricing, you’ll scope out the entire project up front. The price will include a set number of updates allowing for the customized look that meets your needs.

Larger projects

For larger or more complex projects, you’re more likely to pay hourly rates. By scoping out the project beforehand, you should be able to get a good idea of how long it’ll take and therefore how much it will cost.

Hourly rates make it easier to adjust the project as it goes along. If integration with your customer database is trickier than expected, or if halfway through you realize there are 10 more pages you should add, it doesn’t throw the whole project off. Changes like that will impact your budget, but at least the project can proceed.

You can expect to pay anywhere from $70 to $100 per hour for web site design and development work in the United States. Basic HTML coding will fall at the lower end, web designers towards the middle, and experienced programmers (for integration or custom database connectivity) are the most expensive.

For a larger project, get a detailed proposal/estimate that breaks down how long the vendor expects each step of the process to take: initial design, reviews, coding, testing, implementation.

For medium-sized sites – 10 to 30 pages, with some advanced features – you can expect to pay $1,500 to $5,000, depending on the technology extras you need and how many rounds of design revisions you go through. Larger sites with more pages and extensive links to other databases can reach $10,000 or more – the more features and functionality you add that requires custom programming, the more you can expect to spend.

Make sure you budget for extras like hosting, too. Hosting may not cost too much — $20 to $50 a month for shared hosting at a data center is fairly common – but if your site gets very heavy traffic, you may want to upgrade to a dedicated server, which can run $100 to $200 per month.

Why is Hot Internet Network™, Inc. your Design Firm Of Choice?

We think this is pretty simple choice when you look at what you are getting.  We pride ourselves with ability to provide you with a high quality and advanced website design.  We design all of our custom websites with the latest advanced technology.  We work with global businesses to develop a better website for your company.  Don’t follow what everyone else does, be bold, make a splash with your web site business design.

We offer three packages for your custom web site design.  All of our packages are started from scratch, not from a template.  All of our packages include the ability to intergrate social networking into your custom business web design.  Though not widely utilized today by most businesses, social networking is not a fad and isn’t going away!

The smart businesses today are using it to rank better with search engines, get great exposure among their existing customers, drive new customers to their websites or online promotions, and build a higher online reputation and public exposure.

In addition, all of our professional custom websites are designed to be user friendly with maintaining the web site.  Most people want to make a simple change or two every now and then. With all of our packages, we offer you the ability to update the website with a windows based update tool.  Change the content in seconds, without the need for understanding Html or any programing involved.

More importantly, we offer you the ability to start with a basic custom website and be able to upgrade to a higher level package with ease.  All of our web sites are designed with upgrade ability.  We have a strong business relationship with one of only 4,000 Google developers and know what the future holds for internet technology.  We use this to drive what we add into our future releases of our web site designs.