Depending on your site needs, budget, and internal staff capabilities, your project can involve any combination of web site design services, professional web designers, and your own employees. Here are three options:

• Keep it all in-house. If your needs are relatively simple or if you have design and programming skills in-house, you'll save quite a bit of money- at least on the surface. Professional web designers activities can quickly become a drain on productivity if you don't keep careful track of the resources they require.

• Farm it all out. If you want interactive tools, complex e-commerce functions, or just don't have technical staff available, you can easily outsource your entire site development project. Remember that you'll always need at least some internal resources to work on content and to guide the professional web designers.
• Mix it up. Your third option is to do some of the work in-house, and outsource the tasks your company can't handle to professional web designers. This is a very popular way to achieve some cost savings while not overtaxing your staff.

What to outsource?

• Design - Simply put, if you don't have professional web designers on staff, look to a vendor. Having someone who is somewhat familiar with Adobe Photoshop is not enough.
• Development - If you're planning a basic informational site and have an IT staff, you can probably handle the development in house.
• Hosting - An in-house IT staff can set up a basic web host very easily. However professional hosting companies provide guaranteed uptimes of over 99% and high-quality backup and security policies - for a relatively low monthly cost.

Take caution if your staff is already spread very thin. Even if you can do the work in-house, that doesn't mean you should. Web site development projects are notorious for "scope creep" - gaining complexity as they progress. It may make sense to use contract web designers and let your employees focus on the day-to-day work of running the business.

If you decide you need outside help, as most businesses do, there are two different types of providers you can turn to: all-in-one development shops, or freelancers.

All-in-one web site design services
Many web site design firms provide all the services you need, from initial design to development and maintenance. These companies may have professional web designers, developers, and IT professionals on staff, outsource one aspect to a partner company, or work with a number of freelancers who provide different specialties. No matter how they manage the job, they provide a couple of key advantages.

First, by providing you with one point of contact, they ease the management of the entire project. Second, because all the key players work together, there are fewer integration problems or communication hassles. Third, having one company manage all aspects of the project can allow them to focus on understanding and addressing your business needs, rather than simply following a checklist of development tasks.

Many larger web site design services offer other marketing services, such as email campaigns, search engine marketing, and more programs to help drive visitors to your web site. They can be the best route if you're outsourcing your entire project or aren't familiar with web site development.

Freelancers
The web development industry supports a large number of freelance web developers and web designers. If you're taking a "mix it up" approach to your development project, it's often cheaper to hire a freelance web designer or developer than to hire a larger company and only use one aspect of their services. Working with freelance web designers can also give you more control over the project, although that comes at the price of requiring more project management work on your part.