How Much Should A Website Cost?
What Should a Website Cost?
One could answer "How much should a car cost?" The answer has such a broad range, based on so many variables that arriving at an answer may be difficult. Still, no one wants to hear an answer like "how much can you afford?" because we all fear paying too much and getting too little.
Advertising
Advertising should blend with your other marketing efforts so that your "Yellow Pages" ad feeds your website and vice-versa. Newspaper ads stimulate prospective clients to confirm your validity on your website. The other media all talk "at" the customer. With a website the customers talk to you, either directly or indirectly by choosing someone else.
Therefore, the cost questions concerning the advertising aspects of your website would be:
- Do they already know you?
- Who else might they know?
- Why should they pick you?
- What problems will they solve by choosing you?
- What other choices could they make?
- What happens if you don't do anything?
- How important to you is it to do something now?
Generally speaking, the Advertising portion of your website will be the place you need to budget for first. Without an effective advertising component there probably won't be many transactions.
Transactions
The transaction aspects of your website can be as simple as placing a free PayPal E-Cart button on your site or as complicated as becoming your own Merchant Account Manager. The cost difference is considerable and should be carefully analyzed before committing to a particular structure.
We can schedule a time to speak with you about your needs as soon as you contact us.
Analyze Your Website Before You Rebuild It
Analysis
Many people already have websites that they are not happy about. The websites are ugly, dysfunctional or both. They seem tired and apathetic. Throwing money at a search engine to get more people to the website will only increase the number of people who dislike your website.
We can help you by analyzing your website on several levels. Is there an organic flow? Does the underlying structure help the search engines find you?
Something the client was searching for put them on your page. What was it? How do you measure it? Now that we have them what do we do with them?
In the 15 seconds that most website viewers give an initial viewing was there anything compelling that convinced them to stay? It could be audio, animation, streaming video, beautiful artwork or a combination of all of those. But without them, they will be gone quicker than a politician's promises.
Design
Website Development and Website Design are two different ideas that need to work together. Development encompasses your color scheme, philosophical ideas, functional ambitions and focused ways to measure your success.
Design is all about the mechanics of executing the developer's ideas. Be careful that you don't let the two work at cross purposes or you can wind up with a "camel." As everyone knows, a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Managing the Cost of Website Ownership.
There's not much point in spending a lot of money on design and development if your budget stops before the website goes on-line. Tell your website developer the budget you want to work with and see if it is feasible.
On average, most design firms charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 to $85 per hour. It takes about 10 hours to make a small website that you wont' be ashamed of and about twice as long for one that really sings! And that's assuming they are drawing on a standard library of components. For a full website made from scratch, using custom photography, copy writing and market research it is possible to spend upwards of $10,000. The major corporations can spend 100 times that. But then, they buy jets for CEO's, used politicians and tickets to Wimbledon.
In the website business, size matters. Most pages require photography, style sheet development and thematic execution. Additional pages are somewhat cheaper to produce, provided you already have written the copy and refined the pictures. If not, you may need to look for more succinct ways of expressing yourself.
A well focused 5 page website can do much more for you than a 30 page tome that rambles without direction or purpose.
In the end, it is all about having the viewer contact you.
How to Attract Customers
Because the internet is a user driven medium and not a broadcast medium the rules are different for getting users' attention. There are whole arrays of important aspects of website development that many people ignore because they they either are unaware of the power of certain choices or are unwilling to spend the money to build a site that will really make a difference in how their viewers think of them.
Here is a checklist of subjects that you can use to determine whether your site is operating at maximum capacity.
- Has your site been tested for W3C compliance?
- Has it been tested for cross-platform performance for the major browsers?
- Do your efforts for a better search engine ranking include an analysis of your keywords and the way the clients you seek will use them?
- How would a stranger that is looking for what you offer, but is totally unaware of you and where you are, find you?
- What have you done about audio development?
- What have you done about animation?
- What kinds of database development have you built into your site to track visitors, record client purchases and develop a rapport with the people who visit you?
- Do you have a Blog? Why not?
- What about the instantaneous nature of internet communication makes you a better choice when people are considering your services? What about it makes you look worse?
- Who in your organization is responsible for your internet site security? What have they done this year to make sure you are a Hacker Free Zone?
- What outside content input do you have, such as RSS Feeds, that automatically provide new content to your site?
- What medium do you see as the primary focus for your advertising and marketing dollars? Where do you see that in 3 years?
- Are you planning on using affiliate programs? We can show you those that work.
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If you would like to get paid when people visit your website
try ShareASale.com
- If you are looking to bring traffic to your site on a pay for performance basis see ShareASale.com
If you have only considered a few of these important questions then we need to talk. Contact us.
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Someday they may pay us for saying so.
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Looking to ad video presentations to your website? Try CamStuioIM
Already using VideoWebWizard? Upgrade to the new version at our discount.
Another really slick idea is to add video to your presentation.
Enhanced audio can add a real dramatic moment to your sites.
Moving on into video publishing? Here are some ways to optimize your videos. and enhance your visual opportunities.
Josh Anderson has a wonderful new video component that does it all. Check it out, now.
Looking for a way to speed up your videos on You-Tube?
Prefer to build your own website from template? See the designs at templatemonster.com.
Get Customized Templates With Your Hosting..
Yes, the expression is an oxymoron. But, if you have ever tried to use one of the complex templates available over the internet, you have discovered that they defy the average user. Each component needs tweaking. Often, what looked fabulous as a demo becomes banal when finally presented.
Let us fix them for you. We can make the presentation crisp and keep the copy from bleeding all over three different browsers.
We can remove the music that sounds like it escaped from a bad disco.
Call to discuss the idea that has excited you and let's see what it will really cost for your to be able to use it.
Want to see some good starting places? Check out the goodies at Template Monster.
We can customize FLASH for you.
We can enhance your WordPress Themes with plug-ins like Thesis.
We can show you how to create your own logo
We specialize in tailoring Joomla! templates to your specifications.
So, here's a strategy for you to consider.
1). Our development rate is $65.00 per hour. Our Analysis rate is the same with a two hour minimum.
Hire us to analyze your current web profile and suggest to you changes that will make it better. Then ask for a "capped quote" on getting those changes done.
It's a way that both of us can use to develop a mutually beneficial business relationship.
Do it Yourself Websites
Prefer to build your own website from template? See the designs at templatemonster.com.
If you get frustrated because the templates use the old tables methods of formatting or you can't figure out how to fix the FLASH animation, then contact us.
 FEATURED WEB TEMPLATE |
And if you really want a better way to do WordPress Blogs, look at Thesis.
We can't make all the internet a better place, but we can help you keep your piece of it pristine, if you contact us.
What Should Web Hosting Cost?
This is very much a "you COULD get what you pay for" kind of industry. Everyone promises the most up time, unlimited storage, fastest response time and greatest service for the least possible price.
It doesn't work that way. Getting a clear view is a challenge. The quickest way to test whether you can count on your web hosting company is can you speak with their technical support staff without a 20 minute hold time. When you finally get through, will the support person be on the same continent with you?
Will they be able to offer technical advice that impact how your website performs? Do they offer specialized services?
All of these things have enabled us to narrow our selection of ISP's to two primary companies: Bluehost.com and 1&1.com.
There are technical reasons why we might guide you towards one or the other, but both get the job done.
Our standard web hosting fee is $120.00 per year. Additional services are available at our standard rate of $65.00 per hour.
For that we provide website integrity monitoring, site backup, database backups, domain name registration and more.
