"Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design."
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
Your customers expect you to have a website, and your competitors probably have had websites for at least a year. You realize that it's time to profit in the 21st century and get online, but how? There are three ways to get a website:
1. Hire a web designer
2. Ask friend or family member to do it
3. Do it yourself
The advantages and disadvantages to each option will be discussed in detail below (for a summary see table 2 at the end of this section). The first question most small business owners ask, however, is "what will it cost me?" This varies greatly (see Figures 12 and 13), and is determined by what you want to be able to do with your site, and how you have your site designed.
Source: NFIB.
Of course, the design costs of launching a website are just the beginning. The National Federation of Independent Business conducted a survey that asked about both upfront costs, and monthly operating and maintenance costs.
1. A web designer can cost more than $10,000 - The average cost for a professionally designed small business website is currently about $13,000, but a professional web designer can charge anywhere from $50 to $500 per hour, which can add up to $10,000s or even $100,000s for a complicated website (see Figure 14). A professional web designer is also more likely to talk you into fancy design features that she can charge more for, so she can use your website in her portfolio to impress future clients. If you want a site for less, skip to page XX to learn more about online website building tools.
Source: Internet Marketing Association.
The survey asked fifty Internet consultants and firms how much they thought it would cost to create a website (including development, graphics, etc.) for a small or medium sized business. The results were extremely varied because of different interpretations of what would be on the "hypothetical" site.
2. Ask friend or family member to do it and you'll get what you pay for - You could ask your nephew to build you a website (knowing kids these days, and get it for free, for a few dollars, or in exchange for the use of your car. That's not a bad deal, but will he really be able to give you the professional image you want or the features and security you need? Will he be interested in maintaining the site down the road? And if not, will he be using standard code that your next web designer can easily interpret and update? You might have to start from scratch when he heads off to college.
3. Doing it yourself can cost you anywhere from $25 per month to a fortune in both money and time, depending how you do it. You could enroll in programming and web design classes at your local college for a few hundred dollars, or try to teach yourself from books and online support. You will probably find, however, that the time you have to invest to become competent in HTML and programming the basic features that will actually make your website work could be better spent doing something else. Add to this the cost of software, security certificates, hosting, etc., and the do-it-yourself option could be as expensive as hiring a professional web designer, unless you use an online website building tool. New website building tools like the one available at www.citymax.com are as easy to use as MS Word, provide you with customizable templates and all the features you want on a secure, reliable, commercial website, and cost as little as $25 per month.
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