Creating an effective website from scratch is no easy feat. Anyone can create a basic web presence using off-the-shelf software, but for something that’ll deliver the marketing results you’re after, you’re going to need to get a little more technical.

Here at Sizzle Media, we love ‘technical’. We live for technology. We’re nerds. We know how the Internet works, and we know what does and doesn’t work in terms of web design. Your site might be funky looking, but if you don’t know what you’re doing on a technical level, it could be less than useless.

Search engines hate sloppy code, and if your site wasn’t written by nerds like us, it’s almost guaranteed to be built on a sloppy base. And if search engines don’t index your site, nobody’s going to find it. And if nobody can find your website, why have one in the first place?

Sleek designers might be able to wow visitors once they’re on your site, but it’s the geeks that got them there in the first place. At our Manchester-based studio, development nerds and design jocks work in harmony, creating very cool websites backed up with solid, un-cool code. We use xHTML and CSS for our sites - xHTML pages for content, external CSS files for design. This combination has a few major benefits and tonnes of minor ones.

Firstly, unlike its precursor HTML, xHTML is a ‘strict’ language with no ambiguity. A well-coded XHTML site will look the same on your PC as your Mac, and will even look good on your mobile phone or PDA. It can even be easily interpreted by non-visual devices, like screen readers for blind people.

Secondly, CSS is really efficient. Without going into too much boring detail, using a CSS file means the site’s design only has to be defined once, rather than the old-fashioned method of including the style alongside the content of every requested page. This makes each page smaller, and small pages download faster.

Thirdly, search engines love it. Search engines aren’t interested in style, only content. By separating the two and adhering to universally-accepted web standards, you ensure that search engine spiders aren’t going to get confused or lost when indexing your pages.

If your site is nice-looking, fast-loading, and easily indexed by search engines, you’re all set for web success. Don’t get complacent, though! This is only the beginning. Unless you’ve got a really stunning idea, a website alone isn’t going to catapult you to superstardom. For real business glory, you’re going to need some sort of marketing campaign, online or otherwise.

Fortunately, you’re already on the website of the best web development and marketing team in the North West and maybe the world – Sizzle Media! Whether you want a basic web presence, a full e-commerce site, or you just need someone to help you get some business cards printed, we can help. And, as a final treat, our ingenious 'Pay Monthly' scheme means that even the fanciest websites can be developed with a minimal financial impact!

We loathe Internet Explorer here at Sizzle. Not only is it insecure (i.e. you're more likely to get spyware or viruses), slow, and non-customisable, but the browser also has a history of being non-compliant with web standards. This means when we build a website using nice, neat, and well-structured code, Internet Explorer often fails to render it correctly, despite us doing nothing wrong. This means we have to resort to complicated hacks and time-consuming workarounds to get sites displaying properly.

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, this wasn't too much of a problem. Websites were simple, uncomplicated affairs, and so displaying a site in a cross-compatible way was fairly easy. However, it's now 2009, and websites are often dynamic, graphical behemoths compared to their svelte, simple ancestors. Creating lean, adaptable code is the name of the game, and Internet Explorer's stubborn refusal to display such code correctly often significantly extends development time. And with almost 50% of web surfers using IE as a result of it being installed by default on every Windows PC, they're too big a crowd to ignore, much as we'd love to.

That's why we welcome today's 'Release Candidate' download of Internet Explorer 8. For the first time, Microsoft seem to have realised that progression is important, and that proper rendering of websites is essential to the development of the web as a globally-useful commodity, and so they've focused on standards compliance and proper rendering. While IE8 is still nowhere near as flexible as alternative browsers such as Firefox, Opera, or Chrome, it's an awful lot better than their previous editions.

We urge all of our clients, and every reader of this blog, to either update or switch browsers altogether. The more we can abandon the use of such antiquated browsers as IE7, 6 or the abysmal-but-somehow-still-in-use 5.5, the sooner the web can begin to evolve as it properly ought to!

Here at Sizzle, we create 'pay monthly' websites. The idea's as simple as it sounds - rather than pay a hefty lump-sum, you spread the cost over a two-year period, in monthly increments. This system gives even the smallest businesses the ability to afford professional-quality sites. To illustrate this point further, here's a list of things which pay monthly websites will and won't do for your business!

• Pay monthly websites WILL help generate interest in your business by attracting new leads
• Pay monthly websites WON'T steal your girlfriend or scratch your CDs
• Pay monthly websites WILL give your existing customers an easy port-of-call for the latest news from your business
• Pay monthly websites WON'T sell your credit card information to the Russian mafia
• Pay monthly websites WILL ensure that your business presents an attractive, modern image
• Pay monthly websites PROBABLY WON'T make you a millionaire overnight
• Pay monthly websites WILL help you on your way there, though!