Building/creating a professional website?

Yodajo

Does anyone have much experience with this?  I am thinking of approaching my boss (a dentist) and asking him if I could create a website for our office.  Is it very difficult to do?  My husband has done it before and he says its easy, but I just wanted to hear about it from someone else before I approach him and commit myself to it. 

If you have done it, I'd love to hear anything you have to say about it!

co18co

Do you know HTML?  If not, do you have access to a copy of Dreamweaver?

I don't know that I'd say it's easy to create a good looking website without some experience.  There are a lot of templates out there, but they're just that, generic templates, and very few of them (specifically in the healthcare industry, which is what I know best) actually look all that professional.

That said, you can get a pretty simple-level site done for not that much money if you've got the project all laid out an aren't doing a lot of back and forth on the actual planning portion.  I've done a few sites for physicians (who were my company's client), and it got expensive when they didn't know what they wanted.

The web is very different than it as when I was doing this three years ago, though, and my skills are not up to par with what a great site in healthcare needs to be anymore.

Yodajo

Thanks for responding, co!

I don't really know much HTML, but I'm sure we could get Dreamweaver if we decide to do it. 

I know what I want the site to look like, but I'm just not sure how to go about getting it there.  I want it to look professional and not hokey.  That said, it is for a small office and not a large group practice with lots of different locations, specialties, etc, so that should make it a little simpler. 

I've just started mulling it over and I really want to be sure it is something I could do well before I bring it up.  I'm completely type-A when it comes to this type of thing and f I can't do it well and be proud of it, I'd rather not do it. 

femmegem

I do HTML for a living and work for a large company where someone else designs our web pages, and then I go in and make the design into HTML. I really don't know how expensive it would be to do something like that freelance since I've never done any freelance work myself. But I can give you my 2 cents.

I desgined and coded my DH's website and I HATE it. I think it looks really hokey. I mean, it's not horrible- it's easy to navigate, it's pretty clean and simple, but I'm not a designer by any means and I just think it needs.... something. But I don't know what. If my DH got a grant for a pro designer to come in and redo it I'd do that in a heartbeat.

As far as the HTML itself goes, writing it yourself is not easy or intuitive in any way, shape, or form. I've been doing it for 4 years now and I'm still learning. I know you can use Dreamweaver, which kind of does it for you. But if you want a site with great search-engine opitimization so people can find you on google it would be better to go with a professional. You can also ask me. I'd give you some SEO advice if you want some help.

IDK. If you're a perfectionist, I'd say don't do it. But that's just based on my own experience from doing my DH's website. It would be a great learning experience, I'm sure. And A website, even if it's not THE BEST website, is better than none.

Yodajo

Thanks for the input!

I'm going to give it some more thought and see how I feel about it then.  I found a website that had the content that I'd like ours to have and looked pretty good, but I'm not sure I can do it.  I showed it to my DH and he said it would be easy, but I'm really doubtful now.  Plus, if we did it together, we'd be constantly bickering over it.

Thanks again!

co18co

Send me an email at co18co at gmail if you want to talk about this offline at all.