According to Internet Live Stats, the number of active websites on the internet will be consistently in excess of one billion by 2017. It’s impossible to visualize such massive numbers, and it’s difficult to conceive of how this affects you personally, as compared with a situation in which there are only 100 million or one million unique websites.

And yet, intuitively we all understand that such a spectacularly high number designates a tremendous level of competition for people who are looking to enter the field with their own informational website or e-commerce business and beginning a campaign of web marketing. Companies can reasonably be expected to make more serious up-front investments of time and money than would have been necessary at any prior period in the history of the internet.

This isn’t just because of the sheer volume of websites from which yours will have to stand out. A web design and development company also has to contend with much more diversity in how that website will be viewed, as well as in the types of tools that are available to produce a different browsing experience and visual impression. This calls for close coordination between the owner of a new website and the web design and development company it’s partnered with, in order to understand and act upon the likely preferences and characteristics of that site’s target audience.

Furthermore, the volume and diversity of the modern web necessitates similarly close coordination between the web development company and either global or local web marketing services. In fact, it is helpful for your local web design and development company to also double as a provider of internet marketing for small businesses like yours. These two elements of your late entry to the web are really two sides of the same coin, and they ought to work together, actively targeting the same audiences and improving the online experience for them.

These considerations should give you, the site owner, a lot to talk about with your web designers and online marketing services. But the process is complicated even before you sit down with them, and the volume of the internet has something to do with this.

The proliferation of websites also means the proliferation of web design companies, especially in tech hubs from Charlotte, NC to the San Francisco Bay Area. And as with any in-demand field, the pool of new entrants are not all on the same level; some are merely attempting to exploit the demand without supply the skills that are really needed.

It’s more important than ever for you to carefully choose your web design and development company, as well as your web marketing services. You have many firms to choose from, with many different levels of experience, and only the best of them will catapult you ahead of your competitors among the more than one billion sites on the web.

So be sure to get in direct contact with web design and development companies in Charlotte or whatever city you’re based in, and then broaden the search from there. Sit down with them before signing a contract, if you can. And continue reading this blog and others like it to get a better sense of the sorts of things that you should bring up to test their skills and collaboratively develop a web marketing strategy.

When the consequence of failure is getting your entire brand lost among a billion others, you can’t afford not to go the extra mile.