For many new small businesses getting their first website is a confusing and often frustrating adventure. DYI or professional design? Which hosting service? How much should I pay?
For personal service businesses, DYI is a good option. Services like http://www.weebly.com/ offer a wide variety of templates and design options. You still need to pay to register your own domain name, but the fee is very reasonable.
If you are doing online marketing or selling online a professionally is your best option. There are a number of things you should do before you hire a web developer that will help reduce the cost and make the experience less onerous.
Decide What you Want The Website to Do
This will be one of the first questions your web designer will ask. Without clear direction from you the designer is just guessing about the function of the site. This can lead to wasted time, missed due dates and increase cost.
Web sites can serve a multitude of functions from giving simple contact information to huge online catalogs. It can be a marketing and sales tool. Giving information on your product and allowing customers to purchase your product 24/7.
Pick A Hosting Service
Some web developers offer web hosting as part of their service. We don?t
While most developers are honest, we have seen cases where the web developer has registered the domain name in their own name and blocked their client from moving to a different service. Register your domain name and hosting service account in your own name, this will avoid any problems down the road.
Shared Service
The major hosting services offer a shared hosting service. An Internet address, called an IP address, is shared by a number of different websites all hosted on the same hardware. This is the cheapest type of service and is sufficient for most small businesses. However, it does have some limitations.
While all the major services offer unlimited bandwidth (the amount of data you can send from your website) the speed the data is sent can vary. The hosting companies try to make sure that no one website can ?hog? all the bandwidth. This means that during high usage times, your site may load slower that ?off hours?.
Dedicated Server
As your business grows, a shared service may no longer meet your needs. The major hosting service offer a way to move to a dedicated server.
As the name suggests, you will be the only person using this is a piece of hardware and IP address. Moving from a shared service to a dedicated server by the same hosting service is relatively painless. Moving from a shared service to a dedicated server with a different service is much more complex.
Linux vs Windows
Linux is the most commonly used operating system on the Internet. It has the advantage of having a wide selection of ?Free Open Source Software? (FOSS) for managing your website. This is the best choice for most small businesses.
Windows is best where you need to integrate your desk top system to you website.
If you are not sure, pick a Linux system, they are usually cheaper and you can change to a Windows system should you need it.
How Much Will It Cost
By far the biggest cost in doing it wrong is lost sales. The classic case where getting the design wrong is called the the $300,000,000 button where changing a single button resulted in an increase of $300,000,000 in annual sales.
Make A Budget
Web designers like to develop long term relationships with their clients. They will often give small businesses a break on the price of the initial site if they know you will be hiring them to continually update and upgrade the site. The designer a will be able to tell you what he/she can deliver within your budget.
Be Realistic
Expect to pay between $2,500 and $3,500 for a small, five page, non e-commerce site. Add another $1,500 to $3,000 for a small, less than five products with no size or colour options, e-commerce option. Expect to pay extra for videos and hiring a professional photographer for product images. Most designers will do some limited image enhancement for free, many will either require you get better product images, or worse, put in the images you supply, no matter how bad they are.
Ongoing Support
Most designers will use a Content Management System (CMS) that will let you manage your website without any programming knowledge. The most popular are WordPress, Drupal, Modx and Joomla. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Your designer will be able to explain which is best for you. However, none are fool proof.
Each of these systems have regular security updates. Depending on your computer skills and the CMS the updates may be something you can do or you may want continuing support.
Don?t Pick On Price
No one will be as interested in you business as you ? but your web designer should be a close second.
Ask a lot of questions:
- Does the designer understand your business and be able to help you with you online marketing?
- Are they familiar with the trends in Social Media?
- Can they setup site analytics tools such as Google Analytics?
- What training do they offer?
- How much free support do they offer?
Finally, get recommendations. Friends and other small businesses with websites you like can help in finding a designer.
Finally ? It Is A Business Decision
This is one of the biggest businesses decisions you will make ? ?Do Your Homework?.
There is a lot of information available online, but don?t forget you local library. There are hundreds of books available on starting your online business. But check the dates. The rise of Social Media and changes in the way search engine operate has made anything published before 2011 out of date.
Google made HUGE changes in their search engine on 2012. Fortunately, are also putting a lot of information on line check http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.ca/. Also, check the sites lites in our ?Blog Roll? to the right.
Contact us to find out how TIMR Web Services can help your business
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Source: http://timr.ca/seo-vancouver-island/2013/03/08/your-first-business-website/
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