FAQ
As a California webmaster and web designer, I would like to respond to some common questions for anyone considering a new or revised website.
Do I Need a Website?
I recently read that 88% of economically active Americans go online every day, and that 85% of users research products and services on the Internet before they purchase. The internet is where consumers go to find information, and more and more is becoming the place to conduct business and transactions. Although every business is unique, I think it is safe to say that most businesses will benefit from a presence on-line.
That said, lets explore in more detail some of the practical questions that can help define more clearly the value a website might have for you and your business. After that we will explore how a website is made, and what to look for as you head down the road of getting yourself a website.
And finally, I am assuming that you are asking this question for your business, as a business decision. If you want a website for another reason, and there are many other reasons, then you will likely still find valuable information below, but I am not specifically addressing your need here. If that is the case, feel free to send me an email and tell me what your situation is. - return to top
Will it be Worth the Cost?
For business purposes, a website is a tool that can serve your business in many ways. The question is, will the benefits outweigh the costs for your business?
Identify which specific ways a website can serve your business, what value you place on those benefits, and then compare that with the cost. And keep in mind that not only might a website increase your income, but it can also save you money in many ways as well. All fo this should be considered.
For many businesses, it can be worth the money and time spent if you keep your website project focused on serving the needs of your business. The cost is mostly in the up front cost to design and develop the website. From there you have minor hosting and content maintenance costs, and your website is working for you 24/7.
Below I have discussed some of the ways a website can serve your business, and then outlined some rough costs associated with producing a website, including the cost of your time. I have also provided a summary of the design and development process with some comments about how you can save money by helping the process run more smoothly.
With that said, let's ask our two questions. How much will a website serve and benefit your business? And how does that weigh against the cost? - return to top
How Can a Website Serve My Business?
As my clients are mostly small to medium sized businesses, the answer here is focused for that group.
The On-line Brochure
The primary function of a website for most small to medium sized businesses is to serve as an extension of your marketing efforts. In this way, your website serves as an on-line brochure. Since more and more people look on-line to serve their needs, a website exposes your business to a vast and growing market of potential customers and a clients.
As an on-line brochure, your website serves to inform about your products and services, your contact information, your business location and hours of operation if applicable; to legitimize the existence of your business; to present an image that represents the unique attributes your business; and to invite engagement by those who are seeking the types of products and services you offer.
Inherently Interactive
Unlike a paper brochure, a website is inherently interactive. This means you can engage not only with new potential customers but also with your existing customers. You can provide convenient on-line forms; provide updated information about your business, your products and services, events, and the like; provide informative, educational, entertaining or simply functional information via blogs, allowing your audience to comment back if you like to engage them in conversation and respond to their questions; provide a forum for your audience to communicate not only with you, but with each other; sell products and services through an automated shoping cart program; and the list goes on.
Accessible
And because a website is available 24 hours a day, it can be updated once and accessed simultaneously and conveniently by unlimited numbers of people. You can provide up-to-date information to your clients, customers and even your own staff inexpensively and with ease.
I have just touched on a few of the ways a website can serve your business, and of course there are many other ways as well. Let's move on and look at another important related question that will help in understanding the value a website has to offer your business. - return to top
How Do People Find My Website?
The volume of traffic to your website is based on your overall marketing approach. You can use traditional methods and advertise in papers, magazines, on billboards, TV, the sides of buses, and so on. You can hand out your business cards or place them around your local community. You can post flyers, tell your friends, tell your existing clients and customers, send out email campaigns. All of these approaches work to increase awareness of your business. If your website is an end in itself such as with an on-line store, then your goal is simply to drive traffic to your website. If you goal is to advertise your business, and your website is a tool to serve that process, then your website will serve as support for these traditional advertising methods, to drive traffic to your phone number or email address.
But if your goal is to use your website as a marketing and sales aid, then you will want to tap into the advertising and search engine optimization opportunitities on-line to let people know that you are what they are looking for, (when you indeed have what they are looking for). You can both advertise using traditional methods and also optimize your website for search engine queries if you like. And you can utilize the many ways that people are engaging in social marketing on-line to increase awareness about their businesses. How you choose to market your website will be based on your type of business, your type of clients, your budget and goals, and many other unique criteria specific to you and your business.
What I can tell you as a website professional is that optimizing your website for search engine queries makes sense and can be the most cost effective solution for building your business - and I can help you with that. As I shared above, I recently read that 88% of economically active Americans go online every day, and that 85% of users research products and services on the Internet before they purchase. That is a lot of people. The key is to have a focused campaign that is targeted at what is acheivable for your website.
So now that we have discussed the potential value of your website, and how people get there, lets look at the cost. - return to top
How Much Will a New Website Cost?
The cost of your website will vary depending on what you need, what you want, and what you can afford. You can start small and grow as your business does. (If you chose to go this approach, it is best to discuss your future ideas and plans with your website designer so that your future growth plans can be built into the current design for an easier transition.)
On the low end
On the low end, you can generally put up a basic website from a pre-built template or with very limited design needs for a few hundred dollars or more. If you have a small budget and the nature of your business is fairly straightforward and simple, and you have limited market competition, then this can serve your business well to start with. And as your business grows and you want to provide a more customized image for your business, more content, more functionality, or otherwise enhance your website, you can grow from there.
The middle ground
The middle ground is what I would recommend for most small businesses based on the cost to benefit ratio. The middle ground is for those businesses that can afford to or need to have a website that is customized for them, for their clients, for their products and services, and for their market.
The core factors that will affect your price will be the volume of your content, the complexity and nature of your business, the level of detail needed to set your business apart from other similar businesses, whether you have a logo and/or company image designed already, how much quality content (ie. images, graphics, etc) you have to use for your site, and how well you can make design decisions when options are presented to you.
As a starting base price, considering the factors above, you are looking at around $800 for a 4 page website, and about $200 more per page from there. If you want your website integrated into what is called a Content Management System (CMS) so that you can make changes to the content yourself once the site is built, you will need to change that figure to about $250 per page with a minimum of about $1400. And it is important to point out that a CMS is not for everyone. Be sure to discuss this with your web designer before embarking down that road.
And this does not include e-commerce integration nor other custom programming. There are many ways to approach solving the needs of custom programming, more than I have the time to go into here. In summary, there are many products and services already set-up to make the costs of your special needs affordable, as long as your needs fit into the parameters of those products and services - which they often do. And you can always head down the road of custom programming if you need, but often times this heads into a more costly website, which would take us to the next section.
The high end
On the high end, if your budget allows and/or your business plan requires or would simply benefit from any of the following, then you should consider spending what it takes to create a top-notch website for your business.
With regard to design, the extra cost spent on optimally assessing your needs and identifying creative and effective strategies and solutions to engage your customers and meet your goals means your website will be that much more effective in serving your business.
With regard to programming, creating and integrating any special design effects and adding special interactive functions such as eCommerce, membership authorization, blogs, forums, and the like all cost more to program but the end result is again a website that truly serves your business.
The cost of a high end website is simply above and beyond the cost of a middle ground website. It depends on what you need, what you want, what will serve your business, and what you can afford.
In the next section, I have outlined the basic steps of building a website and the variables involved in extending or reducing the costs. - return to top
What are the Steps Involved in Making a Website?
The basic steps of building a website are:
- The Design Phase.
Designing a website involves back and forth communication, design review, design feedback, design modifications, and design approvals. Communicating clearly what you want, responding timely to design drafts with clear communication and specific direction, and staying on course with the design direction you are heading will all reduce the time spent on this phase of the project. Doing some research ahead of time by finding websites that exemplify what you like or don't like will both help you clarify for yourself what you want, and will also help to facilitate clear communication with your designer by having specific examples to view together. - The least expensive option is to use a pre-built template as this can reduce the time spent by your designer working designs. But this option only saves time and money if you can find a template you like as is, which in itself will likely take you some time yourself.
- The Development Phase.
When the design is finalized and approved, then your website specialist will begin coding your website. Coding your website means using the coding language that web browsers read to describe how your website should be displayed. In most browsers, you can see an example of code used to create this page by clicking on View at the top of your screen, and then "View Code" or Page Code", of some other variation that differs for each browser. (Your browser is the program used to view your web page, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and so on.) - What determines the cost of coding is the complexity of your design and the technical requirements needed. For most brochure-style websites that are comprised of text, images, and links, the coding is fairly straightforward once the design is completed. More variations from page to page simply mean more code to specify how those variations will be displayed. More often than not though, there is a great deal of consistency between pages, by intentional design, as this makes it easier for your visitors to move about your site.
- Another factor that may add some time to the coding process is the amount of time spent optimizing your code for search engines. If this is something you want, and most people do, you should discuss this with your website designer. Having your website coded using tableless-layout web-standard XHTML and CSS will lay the foundation not only for search engine friendly website, but also offers other advantages that make it worth it for you to find someone who can do this properly. Read more on the value of web-standard coding.
- Once your website has been coded, then you can view your website as a working model on a computer to confirm that it works the way intended. Once your working model is viewed and approved by you, the client, then it goes into final testing.
- Testing.
Testing your website means testing all of the interactive parts of your website and confirming the integrity of your testing on multiple browsers. Testing on multiple browsers is important because there are still some inconsistent variances in how different web-browsers interpret the code made to display your website. Some variances are minor and are inherent differences of the web browser you may be using, such as how different web browsers display fonts. But other differences occur because the code is interpreted differently, which may completely alter the look of your website. Testing checks for this. - Hosting.
Hosting your website means establishing a means by which your website is available and working properly 24/7 when someone types your domain name in their browser. Hosting takes special technical expertise and equipment to establish and maintain, just like designing and developing a website does. Included with hosting your website is the hosting of your e-mail addresses. To learn more about hosting, visit my Hosting Solutions page. - Maintenance / Content Updates.
Once your website is up and serving your business, there will likely be changes that you will want to make as your business changes. Keeping your website current is important so that it can continue to accurately reflect and serve your business.
How Much Effort Will it Require from Me?
This depends on how involved you want to be. At minimum you need to share what you want for your website, provide or approve the content of the website, provide feedback on and approve the design and the final production, make a few decisions about your hosting and e-mail service, and pay the bill.
On the other end of spectrum, you can be involved in as much of the design and development as you like and as you have expertise. It is up to you and a good topic to cover when discussing your website project with your website designer. - return to top
Am I ready now, or do I need to refine my marketing goals, think more about what I want, prepare the content or plan it out first?
This depends on the outcome you want. If you need or want a website up now and you don’t have everything worked out, you can build for today, and make changes as you go along. It costs more to do it this way, but having something up now may generate enough business or income to make up the difference.
On the other hand, if you are in the middle of defining and refining your business and will be done in a reasonable amount of time, then it may be better to complete that work so you can bring more clarity into your website project. - return to top
How do I choose a Website Designer?
You are looking for someone who can do what you need done, whose design style you like, whose prices are fair and affordable to you, and who you feel you can have a good working relationship with. You can find website designers and developers on-line and by recommendation from friends and colleagues. And you can find them just as you found me, and quite honestly, I recommend myself.
Take a look at their portfolios and talk to them about what you want. Read my articles on the benefits of a good website design, and also on benefits of having your website coded or re-coded using web-standard XHTML and CSS coding practices.
Likely once you get started with one person or firm, you will continue to work with them over time, which is why I recommend at least having a conversation with them and considering a long term working relationship. - return to top
The Benefits of a Good Website Design
Your website is your company’s face to the world. New potential customers and clients will visit your website and decide in a moment what their relationship will be with your company’s products and services. Does your website accurately reflect the best of what you have to offer?
If you are an artist, is there creativity in your design? If you offer business services, does your website have focus, direction and clarity? If you are selling a product, does your website design reflect the specific qualities and attributes that make your product unique and valuable to your customers?
This is true about the quality of the overall website design and layout, and also about the appropriateness of design to what you are selling. If you are selling flowers, your website design needs to reflect beauty. If you are selling hammers, your website design needs to reflect durability and strength. Your website design is crucial to its success in serving your business.
The look and feel
of your website design impacts your visitor's experience and the actions they choose to make, as does the content of your website, and the ease and clarity of navigation. A good design attracts clients and helps them say yes
.
Visitors to your website will consciously evaluate your products and services based on the content of your website, but more importantly, visitors to your website will unconsciously evaluate your products, services, and your company based on the image that is presented in your website's design. Have you applied the same care and ‘attention to detail’ with your website as you have with your products and services?
To learn more about the benefits of good visual design, I recommend reading "Visual Decision Making" by Patrick Lynch, where he discusses how
- return to topresearch shows that the sophisticated visual content presentation influences user perceptions of usability, trust, and confidence in the web content they view
Why Web Standard Code?
Behind the curtain of your website is the code that makes your site look and function the way it does.
Within the last decade there has been tremendous progress in the development and adoption of web standards. Web standards were created to reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the web.
— the web standards project
What this means for you as a website owner is that your site can benefit from:
- Lower costs in the development, maintenance, and even complete re-design of your website;
- Increased access by all major browsers in addition to the growing number of alternate devises used today to view content on the internet, such as PDAs and cell phones;
- Forward compatibility, meaning your site will still work the same way long into the future;
Additionally, if your site is designed utilizing these standards in the proper way, the content of your website will benefit from being properly understood and categorized by search engines. Translated, that means higher ranking and better positioning in the search engine results.
If you already have a website, and your website was not created utilizing web standard coding, then you will not receive these benefits, and your website will be at a disadvantage in these ways. If you are not sure, send me an e-mail with your website name, and ask me to check and let you know. - return to top
I think I am ready. What is my next step?
You next step is to contact the designer you are thinking of working with to discuss your project. Every project is different. Your website designer can guide you through the process. Good luck. - return to top
Are you ready to get started? Yes