What are your options for acquiring a website for your small business? 

When deciding on your business website, take into account these 3 essential factors:

1. Cost
Your upfront charges can be as high as 50% of the total quote value. Don't fixate on the upfront cost to build the website, for one thing you can expect a web designer to also charge a monthly maintenance fee of approximately $25 to $50. Then there is the hosting fee, which will be around $10 or more. See how the monthly fees can add up? Before you decide which approach to take, total all the costs involved and then project them over a five-year period. Bear in mind that because this is your business, chances are high that you'll keep your website as-is for three to five years before you update it in any significant way.

2. Delivery time
It can take weeks and into months to get a professional quality website designed by a reputable web designer. Especially if you are not willing to pay 5k for your small business website. You will get bumped down the list pretty fast if all you have is a few thousand. You will not even get a call back if you only have a few hundred dollars to get started. Be wary of template sites that claim to be fast. It will only be as fast as you have time to build the website. Since a high quality business website template is going to run you at least $70 and your time is worth how much? Probably more than $10 an hour. You may find yourself without the time to donate!

Regarding your business goals, consider that cost and time are inseparable. Small business owners are generally used to wearing several hats and doing almost every task themselves. Delegating or outsourcing jobs seems like a waste of time or money. However, you can become obsessed with DIY. Only choose the DIY-way if you whole-heartedly enjoy doing all the work yourself, and saving money is not the reason you do it yourself.

3. Quality
Your content must be unique and original to get anywhere in the search engines' ranking battles. Custom-built websites do well in originality, but can be overly-designed with no attention to SEO requirements. Website builder templates do a fairly good job of structuring the behind-the-scenes coding for SEO, but then you have to write your own website content. One thing I see frequently online that absolutely drives me nuts is a good business boasting weakly-written content on its website. If you are at all uncertain about your abilities to write confidently and expertly then have the sense not to do your own writing. Hire a professional writer or partner with one. You will not catch errors that others will find glaring.

Site-O-Rific provides solutions for all of the above vital issues for your small business website.

Learn about the pros and cons of hiring a freelance small business website designer and the small business web design solutions.

Is a generic business website builder the best way to go with your small business? 

Almost every small business owner has played around with a website builder online. If you have not, you may want to try it. It is one option for creating a business website for your small business. Let's examine the pros and cons of an automated website builder. 


Here are the pros of using an online business website builder