Web design for a competitive business isn't easy, especially when you add e-commerce (the buzzword for buying and selling online) to the mix. Thankfully, many service providers have basic web hosting templates available to their customers at little to no cost depending on your package. More complex templates can be quite expensive. Companies that provide hosting with templates make setting up and maintaining an e-commerce website possible for people without the expertise to do it themselves and without the money to hire a professional to design their site from the ground up.

When purchased separately from your web hosting package, a template can run anywhere from $20 for a basic, simple web template and well into the hundreds of dollars for a more complex, custom design. For the majority of small business owners, basic templates designed for businesses are usually a safe bet.

An e-commerce template may include basic pages, search and navigation tools such as a virtual shopping cart, but it will be up to you to find your own online payment processing - most often through a third party provider such as PayPal. A web search for "online payment processing" will provide you with several options.

As an alternative, you might want to consider a turnkey solution such as eBay Stores or Yahoo! The designs of sites like these make e-commerce solutions for small business accessible to everyone. Be sure to read the find print about transaction fees and other costs before you decide.

Questions to Ask about Functionality

1. Does the shopping cart accept debit cards and online checks?
2. Is there a limit to the number of products, services or categories you can set up?
3. Does the site offer automatic notification of orders and transactions?

Questions to Ask about Cost

1. What are the basic monthly fees?
2. Are fees charged on a per transaction basis?
3. Is there a setup fee? If so, what is it?
4. How are taxes handled?

Talk to other business owners about their choices and do your homework. The right solution is out there for you, you just have to be willing to do what it takes to find it!

The very fact that you are reading this article indicates that you have something in mind that you wish to achieve. Your goal more than likely right now is to connect the dots. When it comes to inventing anything it begins with an idea and then you seek out ways to make it happen.

I do not know exactly what your ideas are but whatever they are you need to put them on paper. This will help you to stay focused. So for example let's say you love dogs. So you have decided you want to build a site all about dogs however right now you do not know how to go about it.

The first place I recommend you start is with article directories. Punch in the keyword dogs and see what people are writing about. Then pick an article and see how many page views it gets.

Then look for articles in this category that get the most page views. This will tell you that a lot of people are reading about these topics and as a result are seeking information which is what the internet is all about.

Once you find a topic that you like that generates a lot of page views then head over to google and type in the keyword associated with this content and along with the keyword type forum. On the forums look for relative topics that receive a lot of page views and see what people are looking for.

Then take the keywords and go to wordtracker and use their free trial. What you are looking for are keywords that have a high KEI that is at least above ten. Once you find the right combination you now have the foundation upon which to build your site.

Next up get a domain and you can if you want include the keyword in it but you do not have to. Then get a hosting company that is reputable that provides good customer support.

Finally you need a html editor so that you can structure the pages properly so that the search engines can understand the content. Once all this is in place you will now be ready to build your site. You will also have lots of information to help you write articles and get traffic to your site immediately.

To learn how to build a site that works select any of the following links.

For better managing your custom design website, there are two types of Content Management Systems that you can choose from: the paid CMS and the open source CMS that you can have for free.

There isn't necessarily any best CMS in the online world today, there are only popular Content Management Systems. Here are some of them:

• Drupal

Drupal would seem to be one of the more advanced open source CMS available for download today. Being open source, thousands of people contribute to its development, and you will find no trouble at all finding a web programmer who knows Drupal, or finding a community of programmers who can troubleshoot your Drupal CMS just in case.

• MamboServer

Mambo is another popular open source CMS that is free for downloading and extremely easy to set up. Its main edge is that its system is scalable and you can actually incorporate it into the whole spectrum of custom web site design - from the really simple sites to the large company-owned sites. You can use Mambo to manage your advertisements or syndicate your content, among other things.

• Open CMS

• Joomla!

• Typo3

Typo 3 is another of those open source systems, although it is designed more for enterprise-level applications like corporate intranet. It addresses issues like branding, version control and maintaining templates in an application.

In choosing which content management system to incorporate to your website, regardless if it's free or open source, one of the key things to keep consider are your custom web design needs, and nothing else.