Download the free guide and save big money on your website cost
Invaluable insider information!
We’re talking about a solid, world-class website for a small business. Not hack jobs or basement bargains. In this 46-page e-book meant for businesses that want a serious, professional online presence there’s a lot to learn and apply, including:
- How to save big money on your business website
- The features that are common to all modern websites and how much they really cost – like basic pages, responsive site, e-mail id’s and SSL
- Special features that you may want for your site – like a blog, image gallery, e-mail marketing and more – and what they should cost you
- Recurring costs that you have to pay annually like web hosting, plugin subscriptions, maintenance, etc.
- Worked out examples of sample sites that total up to exact dollar values as the true price
- Why you need a copywriter for your website (probably)
- How an e-commerce website is costed
- How much to pay for Google Analytics, social media links and appointments feature
- And a whole lot more!
Calculate the true price of your website. It’s much cheaper than you’ve been led to believe. Download now.
How to get yourself agency-level quality at freelancer rates!
(Excerpts from the e-book)
Why you are already willing to pay a cheap price
Because that’s what you’ve been told time and again. And you are wary of being overcharged.
Recurring annual costs
All about domain name, hosting, subscriptions and maintenance
Regular build costs
Cost of the basic features that all web sites need
Features you want for your site
Cost of what makes your web site different from others
True cost of e-commerce
It’s all about the number of products and the variations
A true price summary
Get the 30,000-foot view for an informed opinion
Chapter 3
6. Cost of e-mail accounts
It’s always a good idea for business owners and associates to have a professional-looking email address that’s connected to the web site’s name.
Something like john@familybusiness.com speaks well of John as a professional in more ways than something like claptonrocks_0969@gmail.com does.
Some web builders offer packages of 10 email addresses as part of their build for an extra cost. It appears like a service they are being magnanimous about but the truth is that the big hosting companies usually offer email addresses for free when you buy their hosting!
Not all of them – notably Blue Host which charges per email address – but most of them, including Dream Host and SiteGround, offer unlimited email id’s for free.
The web builder’s role is limited to asking you the names of the people you want the mail id’s for (and a couple of extra, impersonal ones like info@familybusiness.com and admin@familybusiness.com) and entering these names into the boxes on the hosting platform.
In about 15 minutes of form filling this job is done. About $100 for the effort of typing in 10 mail id’s? Ample, if you ask me.
7. Cost of a responsive site
A modern theme – which is a piece of decorative software just like a plugin is functional software – in WordPress today comes with responsive features out of the box.
‘Responsive’ means the website automatically responds to the device it is viewed on and shapes its dimensions to suit the device.
In today’s world where more and more people check out the web on their smartphones, a responsive web site is a must. Also, it is relatively easy to do from a technical standpoint. Today’s themes make it easy for a builder to make your site responsive.
But it is a fiddly job, full of little tweaks here, there and everywhere as well as constant checks on small screens to see if it’s all going well. $100 is about fair for taking care of the responsive nitty-gritty.
8. Cost of a CMS
CMS stands for content management system. It means non-technical people (you and your team) can add or delete or revise content without knowing how to write code. If you can do email or write a Word document, you can edit a content management system. Guess what, the biggest content management system in the world happens to be WordPress.
In fact, you can’t even not use it as a content management system if you try. So watch out for spin about “we are also giving you a content management system” for which you have to pay extra. Since you are already paying for WordPress-related skills in many little ways (how to make your site responsive, how to integrate social media, etc.) there is nothing extra to pay for the fact that WordPress already happens to be a content management system.
On a related note, you are also likely to hear about and get charged for something called ‘database integration.’ WordPress is a database-based system for sure – it stores all your business 24 and design related information on your site in a database.
But this is simply the default way that WordPress functions. Most web designers (as against programmers) know nothing about databases and design hundreds of web sites over time without dealing with any ‘database integration.’ Nothing to see here, folks. Move on.
So the cost of a CMS is, you guessed it, $0.
Chapters
Pages
Each chapter goes into great detail about every aspect of a small business web site. There is a running count of the total cost as more and more features get added. Page after page deals with real-life charges you can expect for different categories and what the true prices should be in contrast.
World-class doesn’t have to cost the earth
About the author
Narayan Kumar has been in the digital world for more years than he cares to remember.
Although he created an elaborate job-tracking, internal system for his earlier ad agency using the Ruby on Rails framework, Narayan is absolutely at home with and extremely fond of making WordPress web sites.
He says WordPress sites, when built by someone who understands both graphic design and business needs, are truly world-class, secure and cost-effective for virtually anyone.
As he reminds us in the e-book that is worth every second of your attention: “Remember, you are looking at a solid, world-class site. Don’t let the inexpensive costing lead you to any other conclusion. And rest assured, your web designer will be happy to have done a great job for a good price. No one is going home sad and broken.”
