While professionally developed Web sites are usually more expensive to commission than those designed by friends or single person Web designers, the long-term benefits of a professionally developed site can far outweigh any extra initial costs involved.

While it seems to the untrained eye that 'a Web site is just a Web site,' nothing could be further from reality.

If all viewers used the same computers and browser, and everyone had high-speed Internet connections, the world would be ideal. Similarly, if search engines only indexed your site and ignored all of your competitors, you would be laughing all the way to the bank.

Of course, the reality is that almost no two people will see your site exactly the same way, and the search engines will show all the companies in the world who offer the same as you do.

As with any apparently easy profession, there are so many more disciplines involved than meet the eye, and all new developments in the industry, of which there are many, need to be kept up with.

Successful Web development depends on significantly more than simply placing text and images on a page and putting them onto the Internet.

In order to work, a site must be attractive, secure, easy to navigate, fast loading, compatible with all the different operating systems and browsers that your potential visitors are going to use (including the newer Smart Phone browsers), and, above almost everything else, easy to find online.

Each of these elements, even for an apparently basic site, involve a different thought process, from the artistic design to the programming ability and experience in new trends to make sure your visitors can see what they are supposed to see.

Such necessary disciplines are much harder to achieve if Web design is treated more as a hobby, around a full time job elsewhere, rather than a full time career. If any necessary elements are missing, you run the chance of either not getting visitors or losing any visitors who do stop by.

If your competitors have sites that were created in house or by less experienced designers, you could definitely benefit from hiring a professional company to design your site. In the long term, if your site has the necessary cosmetic and coding elements, it can not only attract, but also retain many more visitors than your competitors' sites.

Also, if you take advantage of newer technologies such as our extremely popular WebUpdate sites, you have the extra savings of free search engine optimization updates, saving around $1500 a month, and no ongoing site update costs, which can often amount to thousands of dollars a year.

Add to these the ability to mass email straight from your site, have video streams and Weblogs, and your site can compare or surpass anything your competitors have.

If you're ready for the next level of business, visit us at http://www.internetmark.com to read about our clients, and see first hand the remarkable results we bring to their businesses.

Remember, on the Internet, a Web Site is only the beginning.

Terry Young is the founder and CEO of Internet Marketing and Design. Since 1997,
his computer programming and graphic design knowledge have kept his company
at the forefront of the latest technology in web development.