Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6 |
Part 7 |
Part 8 |
Part 9 |
Part 10 |
Glossary
Part 4
What's this going to cost? |
Advertising |
What am I paying for? |
Design |
Database |
Programming |
Hosting |
SEO |
Maintenance |
Transactions
Let's get down to brass tacks here; making a website isn't cheap. With websites, like most things in life, you get what you pay for. If you spend $300.00 and let a high school student make a website for you, the website you get will be one that a high school student would make. It all really depends on how important you think it is to have a professional looking and functional website. I can't put a price tag on your website, because there are so many factors that go into even quoting a website job. What I can offer you is a guideline as to what to expect for typical products services. This will prepare you for what to expect and hopefully prevent the sticker-shock most people experience when they get a website quote.
As mentioned earlier, traditional advertising venues like phonebooks are going into obscurity. People just don't want to deal with the hassle of lugging a huge book with thousands of pages around to find a phone number for a Widget maker. They would much rather pop open Google and look up Widget makers in your city. In today's online economy it's much better for you to spend an equal portion of advertising dollars for online venues like banner ads and a fantastic website that you would for print ads for phone books. We are not advocating to not advertise in the phonebook, just perhaps downsize from that full-page multi-color monster that's eating away at your revenue every month to something manageable like a 8th page single color advertisement.
Most people don't realize all of what goes into making a website. There are lots of things that go on behind the curtains, which may seem superfluous to someone like a CEO or Marketing Exec, but are crucial to the success of a website. Let's discuss a few:
This is the part of the website that you will probably have the most input into. This deals with the logos, colors, copy, touchy-feely, artsy stuff. This portion of your project may be handled by a web programmer or a design firm independently. It all depends on how fantastic you want it to look. It's important to spend a healthy amount of time and money on design. Because it's the first thing that people see, and the last thing that you want to pay to re-do. The stand-alone design portion of a website is often a separate phase in the development lifecycle. You should expect to spend anywhere from $500.00 to $2,000.00 for this by itself. This money will purchase your graphics, Flash animations, basic HTML layout, clean CSS integration, royalties for any stock art and commissions to graphic artists.
This is probably the most easily overlooked, but yet most important aspect of a business website. The database is the nerve center for the information you work with on your website. This is where you will store information about Customers, Vendors, Orders, Invoices, Purchase Orders, Credit Card Transactions, Menus, Support Information, and many more things that there just simply are not to space to print in this guide. Suffice to day that your website's database is an extremely important part of your website. What's also important is that the database be powerful enough to support you and your business needs, as well as keep up with the volume of traffic that will be present on your website.
There is a number of fantastic database server platforms available including: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase DB2 and Access to name a few. Each server platform offers its own strengths and advantages over the others. Price can certainly be prohibitive with database solutions, so if you are planning to use a database for your server, make sure that you understand the ramifications of each one. On the other hand if you are simply using the database for your website, most web hosting companies do offer databases and database connectivity included with their hosting packages.
If your website will require a database on the backend, be ready to spend a fair market price for database programming. While it is a form a programming, not all web developers are great with database programming. Often times web programmers will contract out to a DBA (database administrator) and have them create the database objects. Naturally it will vary depending on the complexity of your website and what information you want to store, but you can expect to spend anywhere from $1,000.00 - $3,000.00 on the database portion of your project.
The term "Programming" is a very commonly used word in the web design community. Though the definition can seem a bit nebulous at times, what it really means is "Putting it all together". The programming aspect of your project is the part where you tie the database and design into a functional web application. In a way, the web programmer is very akin to the musical conductor. They must know each piece of the orchestra, know what the capabilities of the instruments are, how to layer ensembles, and make it look easy to the audience. This can also be a very time consuming process, as often times a web programmer is in a constant state of waiting, for other players to finish their work. Depending on the skills and experience of your web programmer, you can expect to pay anywhere between $25.00 and $150.00 an hour for their time.
Now that you have gotten your website written, you're going to need to put it somewhere. You will need to contact a professional web hosting company and make arrangements for them to host your website on a powerful enough server. In case you are unsure what web hosting means, let me explain. A web host will setup a special computer called a web server, which is a highly specialized computer that shows web pages. When your web browser goes to www.google.com, your computer is actually talking to a web server that hosts the google website. So when your customers go to www.yoursite.com they will actually be talking to a web server located in the data center of your hosting company. Web hosts also offer many other valuable services like email, domain name registration, file backups, website statistics and analysis, high-speed connectivity and database access. Depending upon the type of website you are making, you can expect to pay from $25.00 to $100.00 a month for hosting alone. You can find hosting with some companies for lower prices, but you really need to be aware of the limitations of their services and bandwidth.
The phrase Search Engine Optimization of S.E.O. really became popular around the year 2005. It basically means making sure that your website is written in such a way that best lends itself to being seen and indexed by the big Search Engines like Google, MSN &Yahoo!. Search Engine Optimization is really split into 2 camps. In camp 1 you have a strategy for making the code on your website as easy to read as possible by search engines. This includes using web standards and weighing keyword density. Web standard is merely a way of authoring web pages where the search engine spiders can quickly understand what your webpage is about. Keyword density is method of summarizing your website's contents for search engines. The other camp of SEO is the advertising and marketing camp. This camp will spend time tuning the way your website is seen by other websites. For example tuning keywords in Google Ad Words, or buying up banners on other websites. The duties of camp 1 should be included in the cost of your website. The duties of camp 2 will be an ongoing investment into the marketing and branding of your website. Simply put, this will be as expensive as you let it get. A practical suggestion is to not go off the deep end with marketing and advertising until a few months have passed since your initial launch. This will give you a chance to work out the bugs of your website and have a good understanding of who is looking at your website already.
So, the good news is that you have finally finished your website. It's perfect in every way, and is going to make you tons upon tons of money. The bad news is that you will never be done with your website. It will actually be under a perpetual state of maintenance from here to eternity. But this is perfectly normal. Websites have the disadvantage of being a living document which is listed on the on demand media of the internet. You will always need to do things like update graphics, change the welcome message of your homepage, or update contact data. These types of changes are normal, and should not be very expensive to make. You should plan for at least one hour a month of maintenance, whereby you can backup your database and files, make changes to your pages or even add new pages. Some web developers offer a bundles maintenance package, where you will get a discounted price for maintenance hours. So be sure to ask.
If you decide to sell items or services on your website, and accept credit card payments, you need to be aware that your payment processor will charge you a fee per online transaction. Be it Authorize.net or PayPal. These fees will vary depending upon the volume of transactions you perform in a month and your ability to negotiate a great deal.
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6 |
Part 7 |
Part 8 |
Part 9 |
Part 10 |
Glossary
-Rossitter Consulting is a Shreveport-Bossier City web design firm that offers affordable web design and hosting. Click HERE to read more