06/ 12/ 2002
by Dan Rafter
When the Internet initially burst onto the scene, only large businesses featured their own Web sites. But today, owners of small businesses are finding it's affordable to stake out a home on the Internet.
How affordable? Lynn Bukur paid $300 to have a Web designer build www.lynnsgardengifts.com for her Chesterton, Ind., company Lynn's Garden Gifts. She pays $18 a month to her site's hosting company (a company that provides the server that the Web page runs on), proving that business owners don't have to spend a lot for simple, but effective Web sites.
"I really like my site," Bukur said. "People I meet at festivals or other events pick up my fliers and business cards and see my Web address right there."
Business owners looking for inexpensive Web sites should realize that the simpler a site, the less it costs. And a simple site can be effective too.
"We get a lot of calls now from people starting their own businesses who want us to create a site for them before they even have their business cards printed up, because they want to be able to put their Web addresses on their cards," said Matthew Carson, president of Site Whirks, a Web-designing company based in Warrenton, Va., that creates seven-page business Web sites for about $695.
Besides running his own Web site, www.paintingsbywolfe.com, Tom Wolfe also runs a side business designing inexpensive Web sites for other local merchants. The Schoharie, N.Y.-based painter charges $10 an hour, and says that it usually takes him from 60 to 80 hours to finish a Web site. His work tends to be information-intensive but light on graphics and animation.
"I do meat-and-potatoes Web sites, which is all a small business owner usually needs," he said. "Sometimes I'll open a Web site and see flashy introduction pages that have a lot of moving figures on them. When I design a page, I try to remove all these labor-intensive tasks."
Business owners who opt for such a site can usually find designers willing to build them for anywhere from $300 to $800. They can then expect to pay anywhere from $15 to $30 a month to a hosting company.
Frills add to these costs. Business owners who want an electronic shopping cart feature, which allows customers to order products directly online, will pay more, as will those who want their sites to be on dedicated servers, a server devoted solely to their business.
But crafty merchants can pay even less than $300 to have a site built. Pieter Konink, owner of Arcata, Calif.-based Web design company 7bc Worldwide, says that business owners should look to their local colleges to find designers willing to work cheaply.
"There are a lot of college students who want to freelance their Web services," Konink said. "All you really need is someone who can use Photoshop and some other basic programs."
Web Site Must-Haves
Too many small business Web sites frustrate their visitors by not including essential information. Be sure your Web site includes all of the following:
- Complete business name
- A one-sentence description of what your business does
- Business address, including state and country
- Business phone number, including area code
- Your email address, if you have one
- Your operating hours, including time zone
- Directions to your business, or a map
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2002 issue of MyBUSINESS magazine.
