Try to put together a professional Website for less than $3,500. I dare you. Odds are, you can’t. The state-of-the-art in Web design today, although rapidly evolving, is one dependent on the time and skill of individual craftsmen, each working individually to build a site from the ground up, and starting from scratch with each new product.

Although this is the method that’s been used to create professional websites for years, it’s horribly inefficient. If we were forced to buy cars the same way we shop for websites, most of us would be walking. In a sense, each custom built site can be compared to an expensive, hand-built Italian sports car: a high-performance machine, but time consuming and costly to produce. The world’s still waiting for the Henry Ford of Web design, but it may be that he’s already arrived: a local design firm is using the same concepts of automation to make efficient professional websites at a fraction of a custom site’s cost.

Pensacola based Coco Design Associates has been in the business of Web design since it opened its doors back in 1994. Over the next several years they gained a reputation for building creative professional websites using state of the art technology for business clients across the nation. But Coco president Jay Massey says they were constantly forced to turn away business from small businesses reluctant to invest in a custom site.

“We realized that because of the nature of Web design of the time the market was ignoring small and micro-sized businesses, or those businesses who needed a low-cost, rapidly deployable Web-presence,” he says. “So we began looking at ways we could implement a product for those businesses who needed a professionally designed site when it wasn’t cost-effective to pay custom-site fees.”

The result was 1DotNow, a Web authoring service that uses innovative modular technology to streamline the processes of Web design, maintenance and marketing. Launched in March of 2000, 1DotNow has allowed Coco Design to sign on businesses looking for low-cost Web sites by passing on the savings in design and implementation to their customers.

1DotNow straddles the middle ground between professional custom design and the inflexible templates that make up the bulk of the tools available to businesses looking for low-cost, rapidly deployable sites. It’s the way the service bridges the gap between the two that makes it unusually powerful.

1DotNow integrates professional Web designers with a set of modular components that enables Coco Design to quickly develop high-quality, professional sites. The modular design of 1DotNow sites is the key to development speed. Once the client’s basic requirements are understood, the designer can quickly plug in the components called for by the client’s specifications, then tweak them to accommodate any special requests. Modules include pages listing company contact information, history, products, images, and a variety of other specialized components. Depending on the nature of the site, modules can be linked to a database, providing a great deal of versatility.

Once the site’s infrastructure is complete, it can be turned over to the client for launch. 1DotNow uses a unique Dynamic Content Administrator that allows the client to perform tasks that would normally require the assistance of a designer. Clients can thus quickly and inexpensively update and maintain the site on their own-it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks in the DCA. The site design also incorporates marketing tools that maximize chances of being found on the major search engines, so that 1DotNow sites can perform effectively as a marketing platform, again without the recurring input from a designer or marketing house.

The end result is that the cost of producing, maintaining and marketing a professional quality Website is slashed dramatically. Most 1DotNow sites run from the $550 to $1550 dollar range-less than half of what most custom houses will charge for the most basic of sites. Of course, as versatile as they are, 1DotNow sites can’t compare with custom designed and maintained sites for true flexibility and power, but for the purpose they’re designed for, 1DotNow offers an excellent value.

“We created 1DotNow so that we could have something to sell to very small businesses and businesses requiring rapid deployment of smaller Web sites,” says Massey. “And within that market, custom designed sites, even our own custom designed sites, just can’t compete. With 1DotNow, our clients receive a professionally designed, user-maintained site-not a site built off a template, and not a site that requires a lot of technical knowledge to use effectively. And on top of that, we give them the secrets of how to be found by the search engines.”

Coco Design began developing 1DotNow in early 1999, after several years of turning away small-business customers. They took existing technology they had developed for their custom designed sites, and began looking at ways to maximize efficiency while retaining flexibility and utility. They quickly realized that a modular approach was the best option. Each module was developed to be a stand-alone component that could be plugged into a site as needed, and could to a certain extent be customized. The modules, when grouped together, form a complete site. Depending on the modules used, 1DotNow sites provide platforms for e-commerce, product promotion, marketing, or as simple brochure sites. More modules are constantly in development.

“We knew there was a better way to design sites for rapid deployment,” says Massey, “and we’re happy with the response we’ve gotten.” They should be. Although 1DotNow was designed with the local market in mind, companies from across the nation have jumped on it. Currently, 1DotNow users are split about 50/50 between the Southeast and the rest of the country. To Coco Design, that’s a sign that the future in Website automation is just around the corner.

For more information about Coco Design Associates, Inc. visit http://CocoDesign.com. For more information about 1DotNow visit http://1DotNow.com or call 800-640-7197.