Is it expensive to have a website?

It doesn't have to be. There are two costs involved with your website:

1. Designing and creating the site (hiring a web designer or finding a program to do it yourself)
2. Hosting the site and registering your domain name

Costs can vary quite a bit from one web designer to another. It depends on whether you want a cookie-cutter site, with limited number of pages, or a custom designed look that really fits your company.

The cost of designing the site can be a bit up front, anywhere for $300-500 for a small and simple site to thousands of dollars for something more complicated. Once the site is created it depends on whether you want to keep it updated or make changes to it on whether there will be ongoing costs.

Hosting the site and registering your domain name is relatively inexpensive. This usually runs around $40-60/yr. more or less, depending on who you choose to host your site.

What is web hosting?

To have a website on the internet, you need to have a web server which is connected to the internet. Web hosting companies own these servers and rent space out where your web pages can be stored. They provide all the equipment and technical knowledge to handle all this for you. These days the cost of web hosting is relatively inexpensive, running approximately $40-60/year, so if you're paying any more than that you might want to shop around.

What's a domain name?

A domain name is the URL for any given site. In more simple terms it is the "mybusiness.com" or whatever name you choose where people will find you on the web. Being very much like an address or telephone number, it is often called a "web address".

The internet is vast, and connects all over the world. Each domain name has to be unique. The way the internet has insured that no one tries to use an already existing domain name is through "registering" the domain.

When you go through the process of registering your domain you will have to check to make sure the name you want to use hasn't already been taken. If it has, you will have to come up with something else.

Many common names are already in use. If you have a unique business name, you may be able to just use your business name. Otherwise, you may have to be more creative. It's best to:

• Keep it simple and short. People don't want to type out long URL's.
• Use the name to describe the business. This will help you be found, even helping your ranking on search engines. It also helps people remember you.
• It's best to use the "dot com" extension. There are other extensions available such as .org, .gov, .tv, .me and more. People are more likely to remember the .com.

The domain registration is renewed annually, although many have options for every 2, 5 or even more years. The cost of registering your domain name shouldn't be more that $10/yr and is also available without additional cost through most hosting packages.

Some web designers suggest registering your domain with a different company than you have hosting your site as it keeps more control over your domain registration.

What can a website do for my business or company?

Depending on your business, a website can help you in a number of ways. The clearer you are on what your website is doing for you and your customers, the better it can serve you. Here are some ways it can help:

• Marketing to prospective customers or clients
• Provide a lot of information about your business, much more than you can put on a brochure.
• Photos of products
• Examples of your work
• Descriptions of your services
• Prices and fees
• Current schedules of upcoming events
• Hours of operation
• Contact information, phone numbers, emails, etc.
• Experience of the owners and other key employees
• How to order or get more information
• Build stronger relationships with your customers
• Provide incentives to visit your store, buy from you, or hire you like offering online sales discounts or coupons
• Increase referrals by making it easy to refer friends
• Free up your time by answering a lot of questions customers may have (things they may have called you about)

Will having a website automatically get me clients?

No. Your website is only a part of your marketing of efforts. It will not draw clients or customers on it's own. You may get some business directly from search engines, but generally it takes a lot more than that to get people coming to your website.

My monthly newsletters will give you simple ways to market your business and your website, and how to integrate your website into your regular marketing efforts.

What's important in web design?

This is another big subject, in which I will write about in a future newsletter. For now, here are a few simple tips:

• Have clear goals or ideas of what you want the website to do for you.
• Simple is better. Keep it simple and uncluttered.
• Keep pages short and to the point.
• Write copy that is easy to scan. Use bold headings, bulleted lists, and short paragraphs to make it easy for people to read.
• Make menu bars that make sense and make it easy for people to find what they are looking for.
• Keep choices to 5-7 at a time. When people have too many options they feel overwhelmed. Keep navigation choices to a minimum, or break up the navigation into separate areas, or group it. Then lead them to another page where they can make more choices.
• Home page should always have as much copy as possible "above the fold". This is a newspaper term, with the idea that people see what is above the fold first, then they may look further. All important information should be on the screen when they first pull it up. Home pages should be kept short, and only show the highlights. If they want to read the full story about something, they should have the option to link to another page.

What about flash, animation, and music?

In general, flash and animation often distract from the page and are more of an annoyance than an enhancement. They can slow download times considerably. Music that comes on automatically can be blaring and loud, depending on how the person has their computer set.

Music and audio is strongly discouraged when it comes on automatically. People should be given an option to listen to it when they choose to. There should always be an option for turning it off.

Video is the same. You Tube clips can add dimension to your site, but they should only be used if they are professionally done and are something people will appreciate watching. Otherwise, they may give people a worse impression of you, rather than a better one.

How do I design my site to be found by search engines?

Search engines work by sending out "spider" programs that scan websites, looking for information. They pick up sites that use the key words that people are searching by. Before designing your pages, you should make a list of words you think people will use to find you. What do you think they will be looking for? You should do this individually for each page. Each page can be searched for and each page should have different search terms. With these lists of search terms, it's easy to find a theme for each page.

Another way to do this is in the opposite. That means write and design your page, and from that the theme of the page will emerge. Then you can determine key words the fit that theme.

Once you have these key terms identified, you want to include them throughout your page. There are metatags in the header section of your web pages (in an area that no one sees) that have a title, description, and key words for each page. You will include the key words in each of these. You will also want to include them on the page in areas like:

• Navigation and links
• Headers
• In the body, as close to the top of the page as possible
• In hidden areas like names of photos and alt tags for photos
• Keep in mind to use each key word at least 3 times on the page

Your web designer can help you get these key terms in the right places, but it's up to you to identify which terms you think apply to your business.

In general, you want to have 3 main key terms per page.

There will be much more on optimizing you site for search engines in a future newsletter as well.