Building an online presence with style and efficient design is not an easy task. Many factors come in to play when designing a website aside from the actual fonts, graphics, and layouts. A good webmaster must also consider search engine friendly design strategy, website load time, and overall site effectiveness. For many webmasters wanting quality website design there is a big decision in order- should you do it yourself or hire a professional?

Using Templates
The alternative to professional web design is using alterable website templates to design the website yourself. If a webmaster cares about the design of their website enough to seek out a professional designer we will assume he/she has an appreciation for nice looking websites and would not be satisfied with a homemade FrontPage job. For the artistically aware webmaster there are templates. Website templates are premade website designs with alterable fonts, colors, logos and images for personalizing design.

Custom Web Design
Using a custom web design can set your business or website apart from (and above) the rest. Custom web designs are generally much more professional looking and incorporate technology's finest in multimedia integration- Video/audio streaming, flash and animation, and pleasant navigational experience.

Time and Money
The big motivation behind hiring a professional designer is actually to save money. While that may seem a bit paradoxical as custom web design is quite pricey, consider the phrase "time is money". Sure we could all take courses on becoming a web designer, learning flash, content management systems and the like, but that may take years and a lot of money. Webmasters can save valuable time and money by hiring someone else to design the website that has experience, skills, and practice. (This is like you needing surgery so you decide to study up on medicine so you can do it yourself. Sure, if you knew how you could save the cost of a surgeon, but wouldn't you feel safer with a pro?)

But How Much?
Let's crunch the numbers. You can expect to pay about $50 (US) to pay for a good looking web design template. On the other hand you can expect to pay at least $500 for a custom web design (and more if you have an ecommerce or large business website.)

Making the Choice
If you decide to plow ahead and create your own website, save yourself time and effort and use a website template. If you choose to use a custom web designer obtain quotes from multiple designers and  examine web design packages closely. Some web designers may offer valuable extras like website monitoring, web hosting, domain registration, copy writing, logo design, search engine submission, etc.