Every dentist needs a website, and it may be cheaper and easier to make a beautiful website for your dental practice than you think.
There are many do-it-yourself solutions for non-computer scientists on the market (four of which I’ve listed below), but only two provide truly beautiful designs.
Here are 4 do-it-yourself website solutions for dentists:
GoDaddy is one of the cheapest solutions available. In fact, you can have a five-page website online in minutes for only $1 a month. However, GoDaddy’s unparalleled pricing is reflected in their less-than-stunning themes and design options.
TypePad is a fun and friendly website builder, but their focus is on producing a reliable solution for a business’s blog page instead of a solution for an entire website. Regardless, the TypePad brand is trusted by hundreds of companies and respected writers, artists, and foodies such as Salesforce, Zynga, Seth Godin, and the Wednesday Chef. With this in mind, do not overlook TypePad as a possible solution for your business if you consider writing a blog an important aspect of your marketing strategy.
The two companies that provide the most beautiful designs and comprehensive services are Virb and Squarespace (this website was created with Squarespace).
Virb is affiliated with MediaTemple, a very reliable webhost responsbile for keeping many large scale websites online. Virb allows non-technical users to create beautiful websites from a variety of templates for only $10 a month. The two downsides to Virb are that you have to provide your own domain name (you have to register your domain name with another company and point it to your Virb account which may require some technical knowledge), and Virb doesn’t provide it’s users an email address associated with their domain – meaning, they don’t set up [email protected] for you, but it’s easy to set up an email address with your hosting provider or a Google Applications for Business account. Here is a brief introduction to Virb:
Squarespace is an amazing service, but also does not provide its users with an email address for their domain. However, if you purchase an annual plan (as opposed to a monthly plan), Squarespace will register a domain name for you and you will own the domain name. Ownership of the domain name is an important aspect of any service because if you decide to leave Squarespace, they will not hold your domain name hostage and you will be allowed to take it with you. Squarespace offers its users a variety of themes to choose from, and it is easy to drag and drop almost any design aspect into your template without any technical knowledge for as little as $10 a month. Here is a short introduction to Squarespace:
The All-New Squarespace 6 from Squarespace on Vimeo.
You can also take a silent tour of Squarespace’s layout engine:
Tour: LayoutEngine from Squarespace on Vimeo.
Deciding what to do and how to handle your practice’s website can be a difficult task if you are not familiar with the technical side of the web, but there are cost-effective solutions available to the layman as long as he is willing to put time and effort into creating and maintaining his website.
You can browse all of Squarespace’s website templates here, and you can browse all of Virb’s website templates here.
