Social media is not enough for the growing marketing needs
of your business and you need a tangible solution to sustain your future so you
are interested in creating a website for your business. But like every other
business person, your main concern is the costs associated with website development.
How do you know how much it costs to make a website? What determines the
website? What makes one website different from the other and most importantly
how to you recoup your investments after the fact? In this post, we will
discuss this and other questions that you might have if you are thinking of
getting a website for your business.
Why should you have a website to begin with?
Let us start with the most fundamental question of all; why
should you have a website to begin with? The benefits of a having a website are
numerous. Key among them are the fact that a website opens you to endless
opportunities to prospect for clients on the internet. With over 4 billion
people directly or indirectly using the internet, having a website puts you in
prime position to tap into this market.
Like a physical office does to show physical evidence of
your business, a website is the virtual evidence of your business existence
online. It goes without saying that once this presence is established then your
clients and prospects tend to see you in a more professional light. Confidence
and trust in your offerings is also increased with a website for your business.
A website if employed well can serve to drastically reduce
the cost of doing business. Not only are the costs of maintaining a website
relatively affordable with its annual commitment but a website can be a good
launching pad for a company looking to embrace e-commerce platforms in its
operations. With e-commerce costs associated with holding inventory, delivery
and ordering costs can be highly mitigated.
Steps in creating a website:
Now we know the benefits of having a website and the next
step is understanding the process of getting a website. Though not set in
stone, website development basically follows a certain structure with the
components at times interchanging.
Register a domain name:
A domain name is the word that is followed by a .com or a
.co.ke. They are the addresses used to find websites on the internet and they
will allow your website to be identified by users on the internet as it is your
online identification plaque. A domain name needs to have your business
name in order to maintain the consistency with your offline branding (signs,
posters etc.)
Get web hosting:
This is the platform where all your website information,
configurations, files and storage capacity is held. The hosting plan should
complement your website size and expected facilities.
Content preparation:
This is the most important part of the website development process.
Creating engaging content that will be really useful to your clients will be
extremely important in getting them to make a purchase decision whether online
or offline. Thinking about what type of content your clients would be looking
for when they come to your website will allow you to create content that is
both engaging and useful to everyone that will read it.
Build your website:
Also an important step in getting a good website, this
involves the actual build up of the site. There are many platforms to create
free websites on your own or you can contract professional web developers.
The choice to create your own website yourself or involving
a designer will be hinged on your skill level with basic design and whether you
have the time to learn how to create a website yourself.
I would advise that you get someone to build the website for
you since they will be adding their years of experience to your website. We
have been designing website for our clients for a while and here is our
extensive portfolio. We will guide you on the steps you need to take to create
good content for your website then design your website with up-to-date tools
and techniques to ensure that your website is speaks to your audience
Promote your website:
now that the website is up you need to attract traffic to
it. One of the faster and easier ways of accomplishing this is leveraging on
your social media community and other aspects like Search Engine Optimization.
Website maintenance:
Every car needs a garage check-up, every website needs
constant maintenance for peak performance. Routine security checks, information
back up, software and content updates are some of the ways to ensure your
website is functional and in tip-top condition at all times.
What determines the cost of a website?
Once you understand these steps you can actually start
grasping the various aspects which might influence the costs of a website. But
just to be clear let us break down the components of a website that drive the
cost.
Type of website:
We can use a simple analogy to explain this. Two people want
a car, one buys a saloon car the other gets a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) they
both have cars but you agree the features and needs of these cars greatly
differ. The same can be said of a website. A three page website has different
needs from a 6 page site, a simple blog is more demanding than an online shop.
Know the purpose of your website before committing on a type to avoid incurring
unnecessary costs for features you might not need.
Type of domain name and hosting:
There are different levels of domain names key among them
being top level domain names which has the .com suffix and second level domain
names which are added to the top level domain names such as .co.ke the ‘co’ is
the second level domain name.
Hosting as defined earlier is the platform essentially housing your website.
Key categories in hosting are; shared hosting which involves using your
platform with other users, adaptive hosting solutions which combine the
features of shared and dedicated hosting with cloud technology, and the final
hosting option is dedicated hosting where there is only one hosting platform
for one website as the name suggests, dedicated to you.
Hosting and domain names like most features of a website are determined by the
purpose to be accomplished by the website.
Type of software/basic technology:
Websites are run by a variety of software in the background.
These software include pure HTML or PHP files, a content management system such
as word press or any other choice of software available.
Again depending on the software agreed upon the costs associated with the
website development will be influenced.
Components and plug-ins:
Some websites need to be able to perform some special
specific tasks. For example a movie awards website will need the capacity to
handle voting activities for the event. In such instances extra component
called plug ins need to be incorporated to allow performance of such tasks.
These extra features co relate to extra costs.
Content creation:
As highlighted earlier content is one of the key pillars in
developing a website. Depending on the type of content, this is one component
you can decide to either handle yourself or outsource to professional content
creators. Of course doing it yourself will save costs but there are
professionals for a reason. *wink *wink.
Maintenance:
A mostly recurrent aspect of costs in running a website,
maintenance cannot be overlooked. In order to achieve performance security,
software and content updates need to be done periodically and frequently. This
is one of those components you cannot easily handle by yourself hence it cannot
be avoided.
How to reduce the costs of website development:
Now that you know what determines the cost of a website I am
sure the next question becomes who do I reduce them?
Do it yourself:
Well the sure fire way of reducing the costs is by
determining which component of website development you can do on your own. Factors
such as content creation and building of the website can be done by individuals
through software and online platforms. Other technical aspects however like
domain name registration, hosting services and maintenance need to be handled
exclusively by professionals.
Website functions:
Another way of reducing the cost is by having a clear
understanding about the functions you want your website to carry out. This will
ensure that your website is not only created as per your specifications but
also to avoid incorporation of features which you may not use but will increase
overall costs.
Get bundle services:
Costs can also be reduced by negotiating bundle prices with
service providers. For example the hostpoa platform offers hosting, domain name
registration and website development as a package. Outsourcing these services
separately may be costly.
What makes a good website?
Despite the endeavour to save on costs you should ensure
that you get a minimum good website. So what are some of the few things that make
a good website?
Ensure your site has been incorporated with google analytics. This will enable
you to monitor and track your website activities, understand trends and take
corrective measures where required. With the analytics platforms you will be
operating on guess work and literally shooting in the dark.
Integration of your website to your social media handles is
also a key consideration when designing any type of website. This enables you
to take advantage of your already established social media communities to for
the primary source of traffic for your website.
Website should also be easy to navigate. Ensure your tabs
are clearly labelled and visible to guide your visitors. Use appropriate images
and texts which offer information to your users as they move through the site.
It is important to also ensure that your colour scheme and
font types or sizes are also uniform and clearly legible by the site users.
Nothing turns off visitors like having to put extra effort in understanding
your site. The colour scheme will make the site attractive to the eye hence
captivating.
Measuring website Return on Investment:
You have incurred the cost of making a website and like
every business person you need to justify your return on investment.
One of the aspects of R.O.I on websites is the total traffic
generated within a period. Like any other marketing or advertising venture
which a website can be said to fall under, the major point to look at is the
number of people reached. The same can be applied for website where the traffic
attracted to it can be used as a measure of return.
Knowing the sources and channels through which people find
your website can also give a glimpse in to the amount of return the website is
generating. The main categories of sources are either organic sources or
referral. A 40% total for organic traffic is commendable and 20%-30% for
referral traffic is ideal.
Landing page conversion rate refers to the number of people
who take a desired action such as purchasing once they access the site. This is
a good unit of measure since it directly depicts the effectiveness of the
website.
When a visitor opens your page and leaves without taking any action or clicking on any other part of the website this is called a ‘bounce’. Monitoring the bounce rate can provide a look into the return on the website investment.