Leveraging the web to cut down marketing cost

Your first website: Get your business online quickly and cheaply.
Nowadays, your website is as much a part of your business as your logo, letterheads and business cards. With the correct approach, it can be one of your most effective marketing tools. Before you even start thinking about how your site will look, consider what you are going to use it for. Is it just going to be a one page 'business card' website, or are you going to tell your customers all about your company and its products and services?

Do it yourself?
Having outlined what you want your website to do, you should decide what pages you need and how they will interact with each other. You may wish to get a professional copywriter to write your page copy, or do it yourself. Once you have a clear idea of what the content of your site is going to be, you need to decide whether to build it yourself or use a professional design company. The choice may be simple. If you know you do not have the skills to do it yourself then it may be wise to give the job to another company. Alternatively, you could do some of the work yourself (e.g. writing copy) but outsource the rest. When choosing a company to help with your website, try and get a personal recommendation and be sure to check out their previous work.

If you look for templates then remember: some of the best sites out there are beautiful in their simplicity. It's all too easy to go overboard with the graphics and animations but it's unlikely that your visitors will be impressed. It's easy to be clever for the sake of it - but that won't impress anyone.