Shop around long enough for a website design and your sure to come across any number of pre-packaged solutions (websites-in-a-can).

If you are shopping for a new website and have come across these products you probably have the following questions.  Are these products valid, will they satisfy my needs within my budget?  What is the differences between buying one of these pre-packaged deals and having a custom website built by a professional firm?

First of all you must understand that “pay for what you get” also applies to technology.  Cheap website-in-a-can solutions often are cheap for a reason.  Often they lack flexibility, design-ability and are nearly impossible to properly configure for Search Engine Optimization.  That being said, if all you need is a website to post some information about your organization and you don’t care how it looks or how it ranks in the search engines then some of these packages can be of value for you.

Here are several website-in-a-can solutions I recommend for building a simple website in a night.

-Homestead - easy to use w/ decent design templates

-Godaddy - cheap, cheap, cheap, need I say more?

-Google - stable platform combines with nice email services

On the other hand if you plan to build a website for ecommerce, corporate branding, professional representation, lead generation or inventory listing save yourself some serious pain and embarrassment and don’t even consider the website-in-a-can products.  Instead, call a professional website desgin company.  Trying make a professional site with one of these pre-packaged website products would be like trying use a “do it yourself” dentistry kit; painful, ugly and unproductive.

A big frustration many organizations have is managing content for their websites. Often Word Docs are passed along a chain of 3 to 4 people before the content actually gets posted to the website and by the time the content goes live it may already need to be revised.

“Why can’t we just update our site whenever we want” seems to be the million dollar question. We’ll I’m happy to announce that there is a solution for this question. Enter the age of Content Management Systems (CMS).

CMS come in many different sizes, shapes and colors but in the end they all serve to help organizations directly edit the content on their websites without having to get a tech person (IT) involved.

Some of the most popular CMS softwares are:

• Xoops - www.xoops.org
• Drupal - www.drupal.org
• Light-N-Easy - www.lightneasy.org
• Adobe Contribute - www.adobe.com

No matter which CMS solution you choose you will need the help of a competent web design firm to install/configure the software and train your staff on how to use it. Once the software is installed and running your organization can benefit from the increased speed and efficiency of managing it’s website content without calling IT.

So your located somewhere in the middle of nowhere USA (lets say, Cincinnati OH:) far from the tech capitals of the world. You know the web is gaining more and more traction and will someday most likely outrank all other forms of media for marketing.

What will the plight of your organization’s marketing be in this new age of media? How can you get a foothold in this market without traveling far and wide to find a reputable Internet Marketing firm.

Good news….many tech firms are cropping up all around the Midwest to meet the growing demand for Internet Marketing Services. These firms are often well suited for servicing the “conservative” Midwest market and provide a full range of services such as Website Hosting, Email, Website Development, Shopping Carts, Search Engine Optimization and Intranet Software Development.

So next time your thinking about revamping your website, doing search engine optimization or building a shopping cart look no further than your local yellow pages. If you want to be really high tech just Google the “name-of-your-city, web developer”.