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Asheville Website Design for Small Business. Secure, Affordable, and Effective!

Hi! We're Joe Web, providing the best website design in Asheville, NC.

It's a pleasure to meet you!

sample website

One of our testing sites - AmazonFoods.com    

We've been producing secure, attractive, effective, and affordable small business websites since 1995.

Experienced web design

With nearly 30 years of agency and freelance experience, Joe Web produces the best website design in Asheville, NC. Our graphic design, programming, and online marketing experience and expertise ensure that your website will stand out from the competition.

Satisfied customers

Simply building a web site and handing it off isn't in our makeup.

As a small, wife-and-husband design company, we're committed to seeing that every client is happy and feels comfortable with their site. As with the hundreds of other small business customers who have trusted Joe Web site design with their online presence, we'll do everything we can to help you succeed.

Why we're the best web design agency for many small businesses in Asheville

At Joe Web site design, we excel in creating secure, low-maintenance, attractive, and effective small business websites.

How we're different than other Asheville web designers

Like many web design shops, we initially relied heavily on building WordPress sites. However, we quickly realized that WordPress was not the best solution for many of our small business clients. These clients often lacked 1) the interest or skills to navigate the WordPress dashboard and 2) the time to regularly maintain their sites to keep them secure. Here's why we now focus exclusively on designing and building php file-based sites:

WordPress requires time and patience to master.

Wordpress offers many features that, while great if they are used, simply complicate the dashboard and introduce security concerns when not needed. And keeping WordPress sites updated is crucial.

For instance:

Example #1) I recently heard about an interesting online marketing company. When I clicked on their listing on Google, I immediately encountered a security warning instead of their website.

wordpress virus alert
Fig. #1A - Phishing scam detected: where fraudulent web sites attempt to trick people into divulging personal or financial information.

The site was infected! Curious, I checked their latest site capture on archive.org and found that it had been four years since their last WordPress update.

wordpress outdated updates
Fig. #1B: The WordPress may not have been updated since 2022.

Example #2) A couple weeks later, I wanted to visit the website of an award winning design studio. Again, I was blocked by my virus checker.

wordpress virus alert
Fig #2A: Trojan horse detected, hoping to fool users into thinking it's a harmless file.

It's a different virus this time. When I looked up the site on archive.org, once again it's a WordPress site. But this one hasn't been updated in EIGHT years!

wordpress outdated updates
Fig. #2B: This WordPress site may not have been updated since 2016.

Example #3) A week or so later, visiting another website threw this error message. They apparently tried to update WordPress, but now their hosting account isn't current enough.

wordpress update error messagewordpress error message

Fig #3: This site's WordPress updates failed because server software may not have been updated since 2019.

It's no wonder that WordPress sites are vulnerable to malicious attacks. If web marketing and design studios can't keep their WordPress updated, it's not surprising that other small businesses struggle as well.

Updating WordPress isn't always easy

Unfortunately, WordPress isn't always stress-free or easy to update. Within the past month, two small businesses contacted us in a panic. They had encountered critical error messages while performing WordPress updates.

wordpress update critical error message wordpress update timeout error message

Fortunately, neither of these issues were serious. We were able to resolve them quickly and provide solutions that may help prevent them in the future. But such error messages are always stressful and not always easy to resolve.

Why our custom websites are better

For the above reasons, we often discourage our small business clients from using WordPress. Unlike WordPress sites, our custom, PHP file-based sites require no user maintenance or updates. They are more secure (with no database, third-party plugins, or themes to update), use cleaner code, load quickly, and are very search engine friendly.

(That said, WordPress still has its place. It is a great choice for eCommerce sites with dozens or hundreds of products, content-heavy sites that frequently add pages and update content, or sites that need to track user history. However, for most small businesses, we believe WordPress presents unnecessary hassle and worry compared to our PHP file-based sites.)

We are easy to work with

At Joe Web site design, we make the web design process easy and stress-free. Our friendly, supportive, and dedicated graphic designer and web developer are committed to helping your small business succeed online.

Now that you know a bit about us and the custom and freelance web design services we offer, we'd love to hear about you, your goals, and your online needs. Feel free to call us today at 828-551-9761.

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Joe Web site design

Website designer Asheville NC

Call: 828-551-9761 spacer EMail: info@JoeWeb.com

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828-551-9761 | info@JoeWeb.com | Asheville, NC

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