You know your business, you know you need to be online to succeed and grow, but what do you know about websites? More importantly - what do you have to know?  Do you need to become an ubergeek to communicate with a good web design team?  We don't think so.  But we do believe that the more you understand the choices, and maybe just a couple of bits of jargon, the more confident you'll feel about getting your website started right.

Websites essentially do one thing - they communicate information.  But that's a bit too general to be useful, so let's break it down into something practical;  will the information change a lot or stay the same?

If the information mostly stays the same - for example on a small website for a well known local plumber that's mostly searched for specifically by name, with some details on services, rates and contact information - then you don't need something so complex and expensive that it would run a small country - you probably need a small static website.

If you're in a wider, competitive & dynamic market, you probably need a dynamic website.  This isn't one that jumps up and down, but one where content can be easily updated and one that ranks highly on the search engines.  These websites are often Content Managed Websites (CMW) - one where non-technical authors can control and change the information on the site. By the way, by 'non-technical author' we mean you and your people rather than us at our hourly rates! This means you control all your own news, offering, services, products and all other information via an easy to use administration panel.

Whilst static sites still have their place, most websites today are dynamic because they're simply a more useful and more powerful business tool. Below are a list of different functions websites can perform.