DO YOU NEED A WEBSITE?

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YOUR OWN WEBSITE - ONLY £295!

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Do you want to buy a low cost website and have it online asap without getting involved in any technical issues?

You do?... .....well, you've come to the right place. Our prices include ALL of the technical work involved in getting your website on-line. We can supply websites for any type of business and specialise in creating websites for start-up businesses. All the website I show you below is available for purchase. We have more on our Packages page and even more in our inhouse library. Contact Us and tell us what business type you are looking for.

CONFUSED ABOUT WEBSITE OWNERSHIP?

ANSWER 5 SIMPLE QUESTIONS AND YOU'RE DONE!

1. Why do you want a website?

There are two main reasons to have a website:

1. To impress a potential customer your website must reflect the type of organisation that you are or want to be. I.e. the theme of the website must be trendy if you're a ladies fashion house or business like if you're a financial consultant. One scenario is that the potential customer is interested in your product or service and rather than spend 30 minutes bending their ear about how great your company is you gave them a one minute overview and asked them to check out your website for more details. Customers like this approach as it enables them to find out more about you and your company at their leisure.

Another scenario is that the potential customer has found you via a Google or Yahoo search. Perhaps they are looking for a plumber, electrician or photographer.

The objective of the type of website is to provide an overview of everything a potential customer would want to know about you and your company before doing business with you. Stuff like contacts details, your background, your products & services, list of clients & testimonials, membership to any trade groups, warranties etc. These are all usually covered in a 5-6 page website and the website standard is to call the pages 'home', 'About us', 'Products & Services', 'Portfolio' & 'Contacts'.

This type of website is the most common and does not normally have any facility for the customer to make online payments. A correctly worded website of this type should place your customer into the 'prepared to do business' mode. All you have to do next is 'close' the business when they contact you.

It doesn't matter where you buy your website, you will ALWAYS have to write the text (content) that goes on the pages. A good website developer will assist you with this. So make sure you ask your website developer about website content before you buy. Yes, you guessed it. Here at Website Developer we can give you pointers on how to create your website content. We can even write the original text for you.....

2. To sell a product or service. My favourite way to explain the two types of sales websites is to use the 'market stall trader' analogy.

Type 1 - Opportunistic Market Stall. The customer usually stumbles onto this type of stall and while there is attracted by the banners everywhere displaying special offers and discounts. Most people just can't resist a bargain so if you get your sales pitch right good sales can be made...

Type 2 - Proactive Market Stall. My favourite. Have you ever heard the guy standing in the middle of the crowd of market shoppers shouting "get yer orangeees ear", "orangeees 50p apaand!" ? Every now and then this guy will stop someone and insist that they try a free sample. Invariably he ends up leading them back to his stall to close the sale..... ......Love them or hate them theses guys make a lot of sales....

The owner of this type of market stall doesn't wait for customers to find him. He goes out to find customers looking for his products or just looking. He knows that anyone walking in the market is there because they want to buy something. As far as he is concerned 80% of his job is already done. All he has to do is convince the customer that his product is the thing to buy.

In website terms the opportunistic website owner gets his customers via a search engine search or a link from another website. The first requires that your website pages have search engine friendly text. The later that you have a good product or service and other website owners want to link to your site.

The proactive website owner will get customers from links with other websites, search engines searches AND most of all from an advertising systems such as Google Adwords.

At Website Developer we are EXPERTS in website marketing. Many of our clients products are in the top 5 of Google search engine results for their chosen key phrase. Contact Us and tell us what product or service you would like to sell and we can give you our recommendations. .....It's free to talk....

** WARNING ** running a proactive website can be very expensive in up front investment costs. However, implemented correctly the return on investment will make it all worthwhile. Ask Website Developer about the various Packages we offer that will get your product or service to market. We have one package that has zero up front advertising costs. Contact Us. It's free to talk.....

2. What type of website do you need?

Sorry about this but we have to talk techie for a while. I'll keep it real simple... Technically speaking there are loads of website types, but the all fall under two main categories HTLM and Flash websites.

HTML - Is cheaper than flash to buy and more search engine friendly. The website you are reading at this very moment is a HTML website. If you are setting up a business that's going to need a 'sales' website with credit payment links, I would recommend an HTML or HTML e-commerce website. Search engines (Google and Yahoo) like HTML websites and index them quickly. The Standard and e-Commerce websites are typical examples of HTML websites. The standard HTML website is great for single product/service sales and can be modified to accept 'simple' online payments. The HTML e-commerce website is perfect for multi product sales as it includes a shopping cart.

Flash - There are some amazing flash websites that are full of movement and clever graphics. These websites are a must if you are involved in anything creative or fashionable. They work well for forward thinking organisations and tradesmen looking for a professional image. The down side it that they take a little longer to load up onto the web browser and search engines find it a little more difficult to indexing pages when compared to HTML web pages. However, in today market relying on search engines finding and indexing your web pages from your website is not the way forward. In todays market you need to be a 'proactive' website owner.... You need to find the search engines....

Flash websites fall within the 'impress a potential customer' bracket. Examples are Business, Photographer and Tradesman. In case you were wondering, there is usually a button on the website for customers to turn of the music. Alternatively the website can be changed so that no music is played.

3. What domain name do you need?

You need a domains name so your customers can find you on the web. If you are starting a new company you should make sure the domain name you want to use is available BEFORE naming your company. You can check availability and buy domain names on GoDaddy.com.

'The Cheapest Pizza Company In North London is a great name for high street sales and search engines will eventually work out how to categories your website. However your customers may have problems remembering your domain name and typing it in the browser if it was 'www.thecheapestpizzacompanyinnorthlondon.com'.

www.arods.co.uk is simple to remember and type in a browser but it's meaningless so search engines will not be able to use your domain name to help them index your website.

.com is usually the best domain TLD (TLD is a term for the digits after the '.' in a domain name) to get but most of the good ones are gone. If you are trading only in the UK, .co.uk or is all you need. There are loads of different TLD's available. Check the GoDaddy.com site for the list and domain name availability.

What do I recommend? Well I would use your company name or an abbreviation of your company name. With or without hyphens. For example 'Stanley, Morgan Fish Shop' as a domain name could be www.stanleymorganfishshop.co.uk or www.stanley-morgan-fish-shop.co.uk or www.smfs.co.uk or sm-fish-shop.co.uk. Of these options I would pick www.sm-fish-shop.co.uk. Why? Because there is a good chance the search engines would index you under "fish shops".

Domain names cost between £8 to £25 to buy and there is an annual renewal fee which is around the same cost.

4. Where are you going to store your website & e-mail

So, you've bought a domain name and website. Now all you need to do is store it somewhere and set up e-mail addresses. You may have noticed that websites are accessible 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 day of the year. Well that's because they are held on a computer server which is connect to the web and left on 24, 7 365.

Again I will not bore you with the details but suffice to say if you don't have technical skills your only option is to store your website on a 'hosted' computer server. A hosted computer server is a computer server managed buy a specialist company. Even if you do have the skills I would recommend you get your website hosted. Good website hosting can be found for around £60 per year upwards. It all depends on the size of your website and the amount of traffic (customers) you expect to have. Let's face it, there is no way you can setup a PC and ADLS/broadband and run it 24 7 365 for that money.....

** WARNING ** Not all hosting companies are the same. Some offer cheap annual costs and provide appalling service. I.e. the computer server is always failing or the server is slow, meaning the website takes ages to load, meaning lost sales. Choose your host company wisely.

5. How much can you afford to spend?

Come on! Be honest. How much have you got to spend?

If you have any technical skills you can download a free website. These free websites are very basic but if you don't have much of a budget they are better than no website at all. You will need to be able to modify the website (add your logo and content etc). You will also need to know how to install your website on a host server and setup the e-mail etc. Click free website for a list.

If you don't have any technical skills your only option is to buy a website from a website developer. Again there are two options.

1. The most expensive option is to ask a website developer to create a website from scratch especially for you. This will cost from about £1500 for a simple 5 page HTML website. Asking a website developer to create a website especially for you can result in loads of problems. Especially if you don't have any technical skills. You will be quoted an exact figure before you start. However, every error you make or change to specification will result in additional costs. Web developer charge around £60 per hour so you could end up with a website costing many times more than you originally budgeted for.

My advice? ......This option is not for you unless you have deep pockets and a liking for stress!!

2. A cheaper alternative is to buy a 'ready made' website. This type of website will have most or all of the tandard functionality you require built-in. After buying it you need to do is ask a website developer to modify it to show your company name/logo & company specific content. Clearly the more you want to modify the more expensive the website developer costs will be but at least this way you are more likely to stay within budget. Here at website developer our template website Packages start at £295 for a 3 page HTML website. This price includes loads of extras stuff so check the Packages page out.

Running costs is something you need to consider. Every year you will have to renew your domain name & hosting server provider agreement. This will cost around the same as the first years fees. Some website owners pay annual running costs by generating income from their website other than product or services sales. You can do this by allowing other website owners to advertise non competitive but related product/services on your website. An easy way to do this is through the Google Adsense program.

** WARNING ** I would recommend Google Adsense if you have decided to create a website to 'sell a product or service'. For example you are a hairdresser and you want to include Google Adsense adverts for hair care products. However placing adverts on a 'impress a potential customer' type website can be viewed a little unprofessional. If in doubt leave Google Adsense well alone....

Well, that's all from me. Even if you're not ready to buy a website at this time I think it worth having a look at the example websites in our Packages page. Then you will have something to compare with in the furture.

Thank you for your time and good luck with your website and business!

Anthony Hawkins

Senior Consultant - Web Developer