1. Types of Websites

The first step in estimating the cost of a website is determining the type of website you need. Here are some common types:

• Small Business Websites: Typically feature a few pages, such as a home page, services, and contact information. May also have a News or Blog section.
• Personal Blogs: Generally the most affordable, with basic designs and limited functionality.
• E-commerce Sites: More complex, allowing for product listings, shopping carts, and payment processing.
• Custom Websites: Tailored solutions that require extensive design and development, suitable for businesses with specific needs.

2. Design Costs

DIY vs. Professional Design

• DIY Website Builders: Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and WordPress.com allow users to create websites using templates. Costs typically range from NZD 10 to NZD 50 per month, depending on the features and capabilities you need. Your bigger cost here will be your own time. It will take time to do the research and learn about the different platform options so that you can choose the most suitable one for your needs. Then it will take time to learn how to use the platform to build your website and to do the actual work of putting it all together. May be worth trying if you enjoy working on computers and have the time.
• Freelancers or Agencies: A simple website can start at around NZD 1,500 to NZD 3,000, while more complex or custom websites can exceed NZD 10,000. Expect to pay more with larger agencies compared to freelancers and smaller outfits. Get a few quotes and compare not just the bottom line price but what they are actually offering at that price.

Design Complexity and Amount of Content

The complexity of your design also affects costs. A more intricate layout with custom graphics and animations will increase expenses, whereas a straightforward design will be less expensive. It takes time to lay out the content on each page so the amount of content that you have to present will be a major factor in determining costs. Professional copy writing will typically incur additional costs (see below under item 6. – Other Optional Costs)

3. Development Costs

Website development involves coding and technical implementation. Costs can vary based on:

• Features: Basic websites with standard features are cheaper, while custom functionalities (like online payments, membership websites, speciality websites) can drive costs up.
• Platform: Developing on popular platforms like WordPress is often more cost-effective than building a site from scratch.

Typical Development Costs

• Basic Websites: NZD 1,000 to NZD 3,000
• E-commerce Sites: NZD 3,000 to NZD 15,000
• Custom Development: NZD 10,000 and up, depending on requirements.

4. Ongoing Costs

Your website is built and launched online and you’ve paid the web professionals for their work. You may think that your done with your website expenditures but your not!

Domain Registration

A domain name usually costs between NZD 20 and NZD 50 per year, depending on the registrar and the type of domain (.co.nz, .nz, etc.).

Hosting Services

Hosting costs can range from NZD 10 to NZD 100 per month. Factors influencing hosting prices include:

• Type of Hosting: Shared hosting is cheaper, while VPS or dedicated servers are more expensive.
• Traffic Levels: Higher traffic websites may require more robust hosting solutions.

Maintenance Costs

Ongoing maintenance is vital to keep your website secure and up-to-date. Expect to budget:

• Do It Yourself: Cost your time! But you would you would need to spend time anyway directing your web person on what content updates you want. So do doing it directly yourself could be a good idea if you are comfortable doing it. Some training form your web agency/developer after they complete your project would be helpful in this regard.
• Basic Maintenance: Many web developers/agencies offer maintenance packages typically ranging from NZD 50 to NZD 200 per month (or sometimes per quarter) for updates and minor changes.
• Comprehensive Support: We are getting into ‘how long is a piece of string?’ territory here but expect NZD 300 and up (sky’s the limit) for more extensive services, including SEO, backups, and security monitoring.

6. Other Optional Costs

Content Creation

Do It Yourself: You know your business best, so you may actually be the best placed person to write the copy for your website.

Hire a Content/Copy Writer: Hiring a content writer can cost anywhere from NZD 50 to NZD 300 per page, depending on the complexity and research involved.

SEO Services

Search engine optimization is all about getting your website to perform well in searches on Google and other search engines and getting people to see and interact with your website. SEO services can range from NZD 500 to NZD 2,000 per month, depending on the level of service and competition in your industry. Some small businesses do not put any investment into this and that may be fine if they are already running at full capacity, but if getting found by people searching for your products or services is important to your business then it’s worth investing some time, effort and/or money into SEO.

Marketing and Advertising

If you plan to promote your website, budget for online advertising, which can vary widely based on your strategy. No point in even putting a ballpark figure on this here, it really does depend.

Conclusion

The cost of a website in New Zealand can vary significantly based on your specific needs, the type of website, and the level of professional help you require. For a basic online presence for the typical small or medium sized New Zealand business, you might expect to spend around NZD 1,500 to NZD 5,000. For more complex sites, particularly e-commerce or custom solutions, costs can escalate to NZD 10,000 or more.

It will help big time to do a bit of planning before embarking on your web development journey. It’s a good idea to write at least a basic brief to quantify what type of website you want and what support you need in creating it. Then when you engage with web professionals to find someone or a team to build your website, it will be easier for them to provide you with an accurate quote to accomplish your goals. Get at least three quotes and compare

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Why is Google My Business so important?

Google search is the number one way that businesses get found online and Google My Business is an important part of Google search.

Consider a search in Google for ‘Nelson Plumbers’. In the image below you can see the results:

Right at the top you have the pay per click ads – those business are paying Google to get shown at the top. But next we have the local search results – before the regular search results! Typically 3 local results are shown. If you can show up here that could be as good or better than the paid ads! The 3 businesses that get shown in this valuable area are determined by Google’s sophisticated algorithms. But even if your business is not one of the 3 that appear here, it’s still important to have a Google My Business listing because many people will click in to the map and search around an area on the map because they want to visually see what’s close to them (or maybe they just like maps!). If you don’t have a Google My Business profile, then you simply won’t show up on a maps search.

Ok, you’ve convinced me, how do I set up a Google My Business profile?

• Go to https://www.google.co.nz/intl/en/business/ or just search for Google My Business.
• Click Manage Now. This will bring you to a Google log in screen. Log in if you already have a Google account. If you don’t have a Google account you will need to sign up for one.
• Click on Add a new business link (or similar). This will take you to a search. Assuming you don’t already have a listing it will indicate that business was not found and give you the option to create a listing.
• Continue through the steps for adding the information for your business listing.
• After you enter the basic details, you will be asked to verify your details. Usually you will verify your address by having a postcard with a code posted to your physical address.
• You will have options to enter more details such as business hours, description, photos, etc., which you can do now or later.

The post Why a ‘Google My Business’ profile might be more important than a website appeared first on Web Design Pros.

Misunderstanding of Goal: This is the first and foremost problem that comes forth. Needless to say, in most cases, when people think of creating a website, they just contact a website designer and provide the task to him. The website designer charges a remuneration and that’s all. The work starts. But, although delivering everything, people often forget to deliver the main key point and that is the “Goal” of the website. When work finished, the main goal of the website already gets drifted so long from the proper goal of the website and that becomes a real pain point for both the Owner and the designer.

Lack of engaging target audiences: Yes, this is also a related point to the above. As the exact goal of the business has not been properly delivered to the designer, the website becomes so different from the owner’s exact need (as per designer’s perception of the business) and that results in, the website can’t reach the target audiences.

Website is more than just “Coding & Cool Design”

A website is not just a bunch of codes or a canvas filled with nice scenery. A website is an entity on the internet which reflects someone’s character. There are so many things that are so important in order to build a great website like SEO, engagement, ease of navigation, etc. When I’m saying a great website that means it is not just a good looking canvas, it attracts targeted traffic, provides information and of course showcase the proper character of the owner. So, instead of just delegating the work to a website designer, if someone can create a website structure, content and UI/UX idea and then delegate the work for developing, the result will be that the exact need of the website will be fulfilled in a much more methodical manner.

There are several things that can be done in order to understand the exact need of the website and thereby create a website that will be actually beneficial for the business as well as the targeted audience.

Creating a skeleton for the website

There are many tools that can help one to go forth and systematize the overall procedure of creating the website. One can use draw.io for creating a flow chart of the website. draw.io is an online tool that is free and comes with so many features which is very much helpful. It’s very easy for beginners as the learner can easily create and save the diagrams in your system. After successfully creating the flow chart one can go to the Balsamiq application to create the UI (User Interface) according to the diagram and also he/she can check the UX (User Experience) part as well. One only needs to make an easy diagram and then use a wireframe for creating a blueprint of the website. And, then simply hand over the blueprint to the website designer so that the designer can relate with the idea of the client.

Choosing a Domain name

In several cases, I would rather say in most cases, clients haven’t chosen and domain names and even the designers don’t try to discuss with the client related to the domain. A Domain name is like the identification of a brand and for getting the target audiences attracted to the website, the most appropriate domain name is very important. So in that case, if the owner selects the domain then it will be the best fit for the brand which he wants to promote on the internet.

Making the Ideal Content

The most important part of the website is the content because it is the content that attracts the eye of the targeted audience. The business owner or the website owner can chalk out the content and then it can be further developed on the website. This is primarily important because nobody can elaborate on the business and the reason ‘why the website is important’, better than that person who owns it. The clearers the website’s vision and mission will be, the more one could attract a targeted audience and engage the traffic. The main matter of the website needs to be sufficient enough to benefit the web owner as well as the targeted audience.

On another note, the effectiveness of a website depends on how it is showing up on the search engine and for that, SEO is the key ingredient. This is not strange anymore that Content is the key element of the SEO. So, needless to say, how informative and clearer the content will be, the SEO score of a website will increase that much.

Making an outline of Design

Designing is as important as others. Designing is the part that attracts the eyes of traffics. In current times, there are lots of websites existing in the same business. But, every business owner has a catchy expression for their target audiences which attracts them to their businesses. Now, the owner can create a unique expression with a design that makes the work for the website designer so easy and so the website becomes great in terms of its look.

Correlation with the website designer is the key

The business owner needs to have a good correlation and coordination with the website designer. It is very important to have a discussion and have verbal as well as written communication between the business owner and the website designer. This will make it easier for the designers to fulfil the exact need of the website and thereby satisfy the client as well. Website building is a continuous and cyclical process. The businessperson cannot just specify the requirements once instead of that he/she needs to continuously review and provide feedback. The more this communication is done, the more effective a website becomes.

It is very important to showcase the proper concept of the business via the website on the internet and that’s why one needs to have the proper knowledge of the tactics involved in creating the best website other than delegation. Building an ideal website is a difficult task. But by using these methods one can easily build the ideal website.

About the Author
This article is by Sameer Khanal from Nova Web Solutions, an Auckland based web design company

The post Hiring a web designer is not enough to build that perfect website appeared first on Web Design Pros.

The stalwart – WordPress
For the better part of the last decade WordPress has been the ‘go to’ for both website designers and business owners when it came to creating their first site. It’s a tried and tested platform that has a huge array of plugins and templates available to be bolted on when building your site. In years gone by it was also seen as the ‘easy option’ when it came to website editing – letting you build a site without any real coding experience. Nowadays the game is moving forward a little bit around WordPress. While it remains the go to if you have specific functionality in mind, it is no longer the ‘easiest’ website editor in the market. This, coupled with the need to make sure all your plugins are kept up to date, has seen a few ‘new kids on the block’ start to become more prominent.

The newbies – What You See Is What You Get
For those business owners that aren’t too tech savvy, the latest round of website content management systems are all designed to be easy to use for everyone. They rely on a drag and drop interface and what you see in the editing mode is what you get on the published site. Wix is the mainstay in this space, but Weebly and Squarespace have quickly jumped into the mainstream. They all offer slightly different ways of doing things – Wix gives you a ton of customisation, Weebly let’s your designer have a bit of creative and coding freedom, and Squarespace keeps things simple.

The ‘ultimate’ – a fully custom approach
Beyond the website editors mentioned above, there is always the opportunity to custom code yourself a site from scratch. This will inevitably be the most time consuming and costly approach, but if you have a really specific functionality in mind, you may want to head down this path. Be sure to make sure you bring someone (or a company) with design flair as well as technical software skills into the mix. A good designer is not necessarily a great programmer…and vice versa.

Anything else?
This is just a really brief overview of the CMS’ available. There are a HUGE number we haven’t mentioned, from Magento to Silverstripe, Joomla to Django, you’ll find a vast array of Content Management System’s in the market. Ultimately there is ‘no wrong answer’ when it comes to picking the CMS for you – it is a horse’s for courses decision. Take your time, speak to a website design professional, or do a bit of your own research to find out exactly what you would like your CMS to do.

About the Author
This article is by Jamie from 543 Design.
543 Website Design can build in a number of CMS platforms but personally we like to use Weebly. It offers our clients the easy to edit experience they are after, while providing us plenty of code access to customise our client’s sites.

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How long should you wait before updating your web design or rebuilding a website?

By Rachel Alexander, Christchurch web design agency Alexanders

Whilst it varies as to how often blogs and content are updated, most companies update their web design look every two years.  However, in terms of re-building the underlying platform, it’s usually around three to four years when the old look starts to look jaded, and the back end may be hard to update.

In the last twelve months though, even sites that are just 18 months old have got the chop or been earmarked for a rebuild in the next 12 months.  This is because the last few years has seen an accelerated rate of change in what is required for a website to perform well on mobile phones.  

Google first demanded that websites be “responsive” so they would at be readable on mobile phones.  Fair call Google.  Right on the money with the big swing to using the internet on phones.

Next Google came out strongly saying that because mobile conversion (people who turn into a lead or sale off a mobile device) increases by 15% if pages download within 3 seconds, that all sites should download in this time frame.  And that speed would become a ranking signal.

The current movement is called “Mobile first” i.e. websites should be built not only to present on mobile, but to consider the mobile experience first, before designing the desktop version.  Think speed (fewer photos), larger font, shorter more meaty chunks of text, ability to scan quickly for millennials but easily clickable to read more (more mature audiences). Maybe even room to click using a thumb…

The problem is that most websites that were built before 2017 were created with platforms that weren’t designed to be shown on a mobile phone, and as a result are both painfully slow to download and render poorly in terms of presentation.

Even in the last two years, many web designers have been continuing to build websites using attractive WordPress templates that are heavy and slow, despite Google’s clear guidelines.  This is because the designs look pretty sharp, so you save on coding time.  Some of these small design firms are not aware that what they produce is miles off meeting Google’s speed requirements.

Most phones, when downloading such a theme, download both the mobile and the desktop version, then work out which version is for mobile, to display it.  They also download the whole theme, even the bits that have been switched off in the background.  This makes the code really heavy, and slow.

The newer platforms like Oxygen for WordPress, download only the mobile version on a smartphone, and only pull the code required to display each band – not the extraneous content or bands hidden behind the scenes.  Photos are often loaded in two sizes on each page – one for mobile and one for desktop, so only the mobile version is pulled.  This, along with new image condensing software, reduced use of multiple font families, and some clever hosting/caching techniques that cue the server to download multiple elements at once, or render things in a viewable order, have helped many progressive business owners to meet the speed guidelines.  They’ve often been rewarded with better search ranking as well.

Whilst clever web developers can make older sites perform faster, to get the big increase in speed that Google stipulates is best practice – and that helps you rank much higher – you need to build on a very recent platform.

So I would say 90% of our clients have rebuilt their websites in the last two years or have it on their radar to re-do in six months.

And yes, that means some are grumbling.  Including myself – my own website was built only 18 months ago and I have known for months that already I have to rebuild using new technology.  It’s not a project you have spare resources to be in a position to rebuild every year.  So I relate to clients who despair at the merry-go-round.

Building a professional website can be a significant investment.  Can’t you just keep the underlying platform up to date?

To a certain extent, yes.  But some of the older code used pre-2016 is pretty clunky.  On average, more than half of our clients’ users access their websites from mobile devices.  There is only so much you can do to make these old sites look acceptable on mobile. 

The reality is – so my developers tell me – that it’s faster to make a website look good on mobile using modern code.  Most web platforms have completely re-written their code to work well on both desktop and mobile environments.

One client said to me last week that he is concerned that it’s a never-ending cycle – on a treadmill to appease Google.  Certainly, if you are in a competitive industry and you need to rank well on Google, having a site built to be fast will give you a ranking advantage. 

On the other hand, if you have multiple sources of new business, or an established client base that doesn’t need a lot of replenishing, then you can afford to rest on the laurels of your older site for a while longer – until it suddenly looks so antique that you are embarrassed.

Perhaps embarrassment is the better signal that a website needs rebuilding!

For the ultimate objective test for those who do need new business, search for the “Google developer speed test”.  If your site scores under 50% for the mobile version, then that’s the cue that no matter when your site was last built, it should be on your radar to build again.

The post Web Design Dilemma – How often to rebuild? appeared first on Web Design Pros.

Is building my own website the right option for me?

Most business owners will probably make best use of their time by spending that time on their core business and hiring a professional to build their website. But if you have an interest in web technology, want to learn, and have more time on your hands than cash, it might make sense to give the do-it-yourself option a go. It can also be a great exercise to help you work out what you really need in a website so that you will have a better understanding of your wants and needs when it comes to hiring a professional to build your website. Here is a list of some reasons for doing it yourself:

• You are interested in internet technology and want to learn more
• You have plenty of free time
• You cannot afford the cash outlay to hire a web designer
• You just need a basic website with a few pages of information about your business
• You have some skills and experience at building websites
• You are just testing the waters with your business
• You have a clear idea of what you want on your website

If a few of these apply to you, and the other ones don’t cause you any major concern, you might be ready to for the DIY website approach, so let’s get started!

Step 1: Register a domain name

This is a good thing to do yourself anyway, even if you get someone else to build your website, because, you will be in full control of what may become a very important asset for your business. You will need to decide what type of a domain ending is appropriate for your business, e.g. .com, .co.nz, .co.uk, .org, etc. For example, if you are in New Zealand and your website is targeting a New Zealand audience, a .co.nz or .nz domain is a good choice as it shows that you are a New Zealand focused company. If you are targeting an international audience, .com may be appropriate. If you are on a budget and/or you are trailing your business idea, don’t worry about trying to snap up multiple domains at this point. Just pick one good one. Having keywords in the domain can help with search engine optimisation but don’t get carried away. Go for something shortish and memorable. Often using your company name is a good choice. You can check domain name availability and register a domain name at a domain name registrar. There are many choices of registrars, usually with similar pricing so it doesn’t really matter which registrar you choose. For .nz domains, 1stdomains.nz and domains4less.co.nz have similar pricing. For .com and other domains namecheap.com is usually one of the better priced.

Step 2: Choose a platform to build your website on

These days there are many easy-ish website building systems available so you can build a website without knowing how to write code. It certainly helps to know some code so that you have an understanding of how the web builders work, how the search engines see the web pages and even to free yourself from the limitations of the web page builders. But we will work on the assumption that you don’t know much or anything about HTML (the language for structuring a web page), CSS (the language for styling the web pages), or common web programming languages such as JavaScript and PHP (used for adding functionality, actions or logic to your website). With that in mind, we will look at some popular options for building a website for people who don’t code. There are 2 main approaches that you can take:

1. Use an all-in-one website hosting and website building system such as Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify (for online shops). Wix and Weebly operate on a freemium model so you can start with the free version to try them out and upgrade to one of their paid plans when you are ready. You will need a paid plan to be able to be able to use your own domain name for the website and remove their advertising. If you are selling products on your website, be aware that they will clip the ticket on your sales so factor that in if you are comparing costs.
2. Get a separate website hosting plan and install a website platform. The most likely choice here will be the popular WordPress system as it is the most popular content management system and has the largest selection of themes and plugins (for extending functionality). You will need to purchase a theme that comes with a web page builder. There are many websites that sells themes, Themeforest is a popular one. Free themes are also available but these usually won’t come with drag and drop page builders and often won’t have much in the way of customisation options.

The first of these two options will be the way to go if you are just looking for an easy way to get up and running quickly. But if you are a bit more technically inclined and have plenty of time, the second option will give you more flexibility and you will have a website that you have more control over and can be moved to another hosting provider.

Step 3: Plan your website content

Plan and organise the content for your website. Focus on the messaging that is important to get across to your target audience and what outcomes you want to achieve, e.g. phone us, send us a message, order or buy something, make a booking, etc. Check out your competition and see how they are doing it, learn from what they do well and don’t do well. Put yourself in the mind of a potential customer/client. If possible, talk to some of your customers to find out what things are most important to them when it comes to your product or service offering.

Write up your website copy in a word-processor or start with pen and paper if that is an easier way for you to start getting your ideas down. When you are writing copy for your website, make sure to put yourself in the mind of your potential customers. Think about what they might search for to find a website like yours. Think about how you can convince them to go with your product or service instead of a competitors. Get other people to proof read your copy and make suggestions.

Gather your images, photos, videos etc. and select the ones that work best to tell your story, are of good quality and reflect well on your business. If your business is already established, get testimonial from your clients/customers.

Step 4: Build your website

Now it is time to get stuck in to the actual building of your website. If you are doing this for the first time, this may be something of a trial and error process, or even an exercise to see if it is possible for you to achieve a suitable result with the self-build platforms, without tearing all your hair out! But even if you come to the decision during this process that you need to call in a professional, you will be very well prepared by having planned, gathered, written the content for your website so you will know what you want or at least know what the gaps are that you will need more help with.

You may want to try more than one platform for the sake of comparison to see which is easiest for you to work with and which one produces the best results and provides the feature that are important for your website.

Once you have completed building the website, get a few people to review the website and provide feedback on any issues with the website and suggest any changes that could improve the website.

Step 5: Launch and promote your website

Unfortunately, in the online world it is not as simple as ‘build it and they will come‘! Your new website will be a desert island in the world wide web until you build some bridges to it and make it easily found by your target audience. At this point you should probably do some research and learning up on search engine optimisation, there are many different strategies and approaches to SEO. At the very least, you will need to make sure your website pages, especially the home page are suitably set up to be found in search engines for certain keywords or phrases; make sure your most important keywords are included in the important places such as titles and headings, link text. Get links to your website from other websites. Consider any organisations, networks that you belong to, to see if there are opportunities for getting links to your website. You might be able to get links from complementary businesses. Set up a business listing on Google if you don’t have one already and register with relevant online directories for your region or industry. Get active on social media networks promoting your website and your business. Building traffic to your website takes time. If you need to get traffic to it fast, look into investing in advertising such as Google Ads or advertising on Facebook.

Step 6: Keep working on it

Even once you have already got to the point where your website is working for you, you can’t rest on your laurels and leave it at that. You need to keep tweaking, updating and adding fresh content to your website to keep it current, relevant and competitive. Monitor the activity on your website with a website data analytics package – Google Analytics is the most obvious choice. Keep an eye on how you are coming up in search engines relative to your competitors. Make sure your content is up to date and fresh, and keep working on link building, keep working on growing your social media presence.

The post A Guide to Building Your Own Business Website appeared first on Web Design Pros.

However, if you do not have any experience with getting a website set up and/or little or no technical knowledge of the workings of the internet, you’ll probably struggle with how to evaluate a web designer. The purpose of this article is to give you some ideas of what to look for in a web designer and to get you thinking about matching up a web designer with your own particular needs and requirements.

Questions to ask a web designer

• What technologies do you use to build websites? e.g. static HTML, HTML templating system such as Dreamweaver, Content Management System, server side scripting languages
• Will I be able to make updates to the website myself without any special technical knowledge?
• What is your process for designing and building a website?
• What is your approach to search engine optimisation (SEO)?
• Do you provide training for managing the new website?

Questions to ask yourself about a web designer

• Does the designer design sites that are intuitive and easy to use?
• Does the designer do a good job of visually showing visitors how to take action?
• Do they explain issues in a way I can understand?
• Does the designer have the range of skills needed to build the website that I require?
• What credentials and experience does the web designer have?

Comparing pricing from different designers

Does the price represent good value for my money? Keep in mind that a well designed website for your business is an investment that will pay for itself many times over in sales, while a poorly crafted site will drive away potential customers. A cheaply put together website may seem like a bargain at first but in the long run it may damage your business.

Price and quality often (but not always) have a direct relationship, i.e. you get what you pay for. Designers who are overly inexpensive often lack experience, don’t understand much about online marketing, or don’t truly have a grasp of good web design techniques. A website from such a designer may cost your business dearly in the long run.

When comparing quotations from different design firms, be sure to look carefully at what each designer is offering for the quoted price. Examine their portfolio to see what type of work they produce and ask to speak to some of their clients.

Consider too what happens after the website is built, who will maintain the site and keep it up to date and fresh? What type of analysis will be available for evaluating the performance of the site?

A poorly designed website can cost you money, drive away customers, and hurt your reputation.

The post Tips for choosing a web designer to build your website appeared first on Web Design Pros.

A great starting place for getting links to your website is by listing it in the many free online web directories. In addition to improving your visibility in Google, a side benefit is that you may also get traffic from the directories themselves because some of the directories have good visibility for certain keywords. You can find web directories by searching for them in Google. Instead of taking a shotgun approach and listing in every directory you come across, it is better to take a more targeted approach and find directories that are related to your business and/or geographical region. For New Zealand businesses, you should try to get a listing in all the major NZ directories. To help get you started, below is a list of the leading web directories in the New Zealand market:

New Zealand Web Directories

• www.finda.co.nz
• www.hotfrog.co.nz
• www.neighbourly.co.nz
• www.zenbu.co.nz
• www.zipleaf.co.nz
• www.nzsbdirectory.co.nz
• www.kiwidirectory.co.nz
• www.nzdirectory.co.nz
• www.nocowboys.co.nz (for trades and service providers)
• yellow.co.nz (if you are in yellow pages you should automatically be here, but be aware that you can update and add details to your listing)
• www.yelp.co.nz (global but with NZ version)

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We have put together a list of common internet website terms that you you may hear when you are talking to web professionals about your website project. Here we aim to list the most important terms rather than create a long exhaustive glossary of internet/web terminology. If you are a website owner or planning to start a website, it would be a good idea to familiarise yourself with these terms.

Backlinks

Links from other websites to yours. Used to increase a site’s popularity with search engines and to get more people to visit your site.

Blog

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website typically in diary or journal format with entries marked with a date and displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Browser (Web Browser)

When you visit a website, you are seeing it on a software application called a browser. If your computer has Microsoft Windows operating system, it will come with Microsoft Internet Explorer built in. But there many other browsers freely available that you can install, such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari (by Apple) and Opera. Usually more technically savvy people often install one of these browsers because they regard them to be superior in some way.

Cache

Sometimes when you look at a web page in a web browser, it stores the page or parts of the page (such as the images) in memory so that the next time you try to visit the same page, it loads up the page faster because it can access the saved copy right from your own computer instead of having to retrieve it from the internet. The place where it stores all this is called the “cache”.

Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system is a website that has a built in administration interface that allows you to make changes to the website without having to understand anything about programming. If you are a non-technical person and want to update your website yourself, you will need to have a CMS. There are many different CMSes available so you should ask your web developer which CMS they are planning to use for your website and why it is suitable. Some popular free open source CMSes include WordPress, Silverstripe, Joomla and Drupal. Some web development companies build their own CMSes.

Directory (Online Directory)

A directory is a website that lists a large number of other websites, usually organised by categories. Some directories are free to join while other’s require payment. Some directories are general and list any type of website while others are topic specific. Web Design Pros is an example of a topic specific online directory. Adding your website to directories is one approach to getting backlinks to your website and increasing your site’s visibility.

Domain Name (Domain)

A domain name is the main part of your website address and can also be used for email addresses. E.g. this website’s domain name is webdesignpros.co.nz. In an email address, the domain name is what comes after the @ symbol.

Domain Name Registration

If you are starting a website you will need to register a domain name for your website at a domain registration company. There is a small annual fee involved to keep your domain name registered. Domain names can be country specific (e.g. ending in .co.nz, .com.au, .co.uk) or general international (e.g. .com, .org, .net)

Email Client

The software programme that you use in order to send and receive email from your computer. Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail, Thunderbird and Apple Mail are examples of popular email clients that are standalone software programmes on a computer. There are also online email clients that are websites where you can do your emailing e.g. Gmail, Yahoo Mail. These type of email clients are called webmail.

FTP

This stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is a system for transferring files over the internet. It is often used for uploading files to a website.

FTP Client

This is a software programme used to transferring files over the internet. It is often used for uploading files to a website.

Hosting (Web Hosting)

Web hosting is a service that allows individuals or organisations to make their website available on the internet. Web hosting companies are companies that provide space on a special computers called servers that are permanently connected to the internet so that the the websites can always be accessed.

HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is a type of programming language or code that is used for creating web pages. A simple web page can be created with HTML alone (this is sometimes called a static HTML page) but more complex pages or interactive web pages require a combination of other languages in addition to HTML.

HTTP/HTTPS

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is a method used to transfer information on the internet. You will notice that web addresses usually start with http://. In HTTPS, the S stands for Secure. This is a secure version of HTTP where the information sent back and forth is encrypted. This is usually used for protecting sensitive information such as credit card details.

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that connects billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

IP Address

IP stands for Internet Protocol and the IP address refers to the actual number that a web address name translates to. IP addresses appear as 4 numbers separated by dots e.g. 22.231.113.64. Often many websites share the same IP address but if you want to set up a secure website it needs to have a unique IP address.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language often used on websites to achieve interactive effects.

Keyword (Key phrase)

An internet marketing term that refers to the main topics or subjects of your web pages in relation to how people would phrase them when searching for your products or services on the internet. Your key phrases are at the core of any website marketing strategy and needs to relate to your target market’s thinking rather than your own. If you want to get your website found by people searching in the search engines, you need to consider what keywords or phrases they might be searching for and make sure those words are somewhere in your website.

Link (hyperlink)

Link on a web pages are words or images that you can click on to go to another web page.

Mail server

A special computer or server for distributing email. Often mail servers are coupled with web servers so that so that if you have a website such as www.mywebsite.com, your web hosting provider can also provide you with a mail server to handle the email for your domain e.g. me@mywebsite.com.

Meta Tag

Included in the head section of an html web page and is visible to search engines but not directly to human visitors. Meta tags provide extra information about a webpage, like the topic (title), keywords, description and also instructions to search engine robots and browsers.

Operating System

The software that runs a computer. The most common computer operating systems are Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux and Unix.

PHP

A popular programming language used for adding functionality to websites. Often used in conjunction with a database to retrieve and store information.

Plugin (module, add-on, extension)

A software application that extends the functionality of a content management system. Known as plugin in WordPress, add-on in Silverstripe, module in Drupal, extension in Joomla.

PPC (Pay per click)

A common term in internet advertising where you pay a small amount each time someone clicks on your advert.

Reciprocal Link

When website A links to website B and B links back to A and both link to the other on condition that they receive a link back, this is reciprocal linking.

Script

A piece of code that creates or enables a specific function on a website.

Search Engine

A tool for searching for information on the web. A search engine scans the entire internet for information contained in websites and creates an index of all the information it comes across. When someone is searching for something the search engine attempts to return a list of web pages that are the most relevant to whatever is being searched for. The most widely used search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a website more visible in the search engines. The search engines attempt to provide the most relevant results for a given search so an important aspect of SEO is making sure a website provides information related to certain target keywords and phrases that the search engines will interpret as high quality relevant information compared to what is available on other websites.

Web Server (Server)

Generally speaking a server is a type of computer (or more accurately a process running on a computer) that ‘serves up’ data to other computers. In web terms, a server or web server is a computer operated by a web hosting company that makes web sites available in the internet.

Sitemap

An index of all the content available on a website. A sitemap can be specially created for search engines to help them find all the different pages on a website or it can be created to assist human visitors to a website to find what they are looking for.

Spam

Spam is the use of email systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages, especially advertising. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: such a comment spam on a website.

Sub-domain

An independent domain derived from another domain e.g. website2.mywebsite.com is a sub-domain of mywebsite.com and can be a totally separate website and can even reside on a different web server.

Timeout

A timeout is when a connection is aborted because it is taking too long.

Traffic

Traffic is a term for the visitors to a website. i.e. if a website has a lot of traffic it means it has a lot of people looking at it.

Upload

Upload means to send a computer file to a website or web server.

URL

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is a web address. It contains all the pertinent information for finding a specific web page.

Webmail

Email that you can check from any computer anywhere by going to a website.

Web page

A single document (or page) on a website.

Website

A collection of web pages or other digital resources. Websites can consist of documents or can also be software applications that can be accessed on the internet using a web browser.

WordPress

The most widely used content management system.

WWW

WWW stands for world wide web (a.k.a. ‘the web’) and is the entire system of websites that can be accessed via the internet.

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1. You have good design skills and some experience
2. You are technically savvy and confident you can do a good job
3. You do not have a budget to spend on hiring a professional
4. You have knowledge of tools that can help you build a website
5. You have access to an expert that can guide you

5 reasons for hiring a professional:

1. It may not be efficient use of your valuable time
2. You may not have adequate graphic or technical skills
3. A non-professional looking website could do more damage than good for your business
4. You need to get your website launched within a certain time-frame
5. You need your website to be set up in a way that it can grow and evolve with your business

The post Website Design – Do it Yourself Or Hire a Professional? – 5 Reasons for each appeared first on Web Design Pros.