When your business is ready to make its initial foray onto the Internet in the form of a business Web site, your first thought may be, "Wouldn't it be cheaper to just hire the kid down the block to build my Web site?" If your goal is to publish a basic Web site with only a few pages and no special features, you might indeed benefit from paying a student or a novice to create your site. Hiring "the kid down the block" certainly would save you money in the short run.

For more advanced projects, however, cut-rate Web developers may not be able to do the job. Large Web sites require developers who understand how people will use the site and how best to set up the site's navigation tools. Scripting, multimedia and other advanced features can wreck a site if they aren't used carefully — for example, a script that works perfectly on one user's machine might crash another's. Graphic design issues raise another challenge: It is surprisingly hard to prepare images that download quickly but still look good, or to select color schemes that make your site attractive and easy to read.

Don't forget your competitive situation. If your competitors offer sloppy, thrown-together sites, you've got a great opportunity to wow customers with a professional design. If you're competing against first-class Web efforts, can you afford to offer anything less?