Small Business Website FAQs
The most commonly asked questions about our small business web site design package.
Traditionally, a web site involves 4 separate costs:
- Domain registration - your www.name.com must be registered through a "registrar." Typically, the cost ranges from $15 to $35/year depending on the registrar that you choose. To check domain name availability, or to register a domain yourself, we suggest GoDaddy.
- Design (or the time and money involved to build the site yourself.) Cost range from several hundred to many thousands of dollars depending on the number of pages, complexity and design requirements.
- Server hosting fees - space must be rented on a computer that's connected to the internet at all times -- and one that has the capacity to serve your pages to visitors quickly and reliably. Costs range from $10-$50/ month depending on the server you choose and the features needed.
- Promoting your site, Search Engine Optimization and submissions - a lot of services offer submission, some charging a thousand dollars or more. Hint: Look for a shop whose own site ranks highly in Google, Bing and the other major engines. If they can't get their own site listed highly, there's less chance that they will have great success with yours.
Joe Web offers a simple, inexpensive alternative to all these web site fees. We register your domain name as well as design, host, and promote your web site for a flat $2,599. (Optional, add-on features available at discounted rates.)
If you currently have a domain name registered and select us to do your design, hosting and search engine submissions, we can handle the transfer of your existing domain to our server - usually for no extra charge.
While there are "do-it-yourself" web site packages available, they have many limitations:
- Your ability to size, color correct and "optimize" photos for fast loading is severely limited. Having pictures that take 20-30 seconds to load is one of the surest ways to lose visitors to your site.
- Most "do-it-yourself" applications yield "do-it-yourself" looking pages -- often with broken links.
- Designing, building and optimizing an effective web page may take an expert several days. Creating it yourself can easily result in weeks of frustration.
- A web page that no one can find is useless. Professional designers understand what search engines look for and design pages for high ratings. A good listing on Google, Bing or the other search engines and directories makes all the difference between a heavily-visited, profitable web site and one that just sits there.
Plus, now that many search directories and engines charge hefty submission or "pay per click" fees, a knowledgeable web designer can save you thousands of dollars that would have otherwise been wasted.
Visit GoDaddy to check domain name availability or purchase the rights to use a web address.
Do-it-yourself domain registration costs as little as $9 or $10 per year. However, if you have Joe Web register the domain in your name as part of your web site package, there is no cost to you for the first year.
While search engines (and many web directories) still offer free submissions options, Google and Bing also offer pay-per-click listings. And, so do the major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
While these "premium" listings are a quick way to attract exposure to a website, they can also be very costly -- easily incurring hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month.
At Joe Web, we work hard to help our clients rank on page one in the 'organic,' free search results and directory submissions.
Rather than calling "friend of a friend" or the local agency with the largest listing in the phone book, we suggest doing a search for important phrases like "best website designer in Asheville" and start your search there.
Firms that rank on page one in Google and Bing have proven that they understand search engine technology and that the search engines have determined them to be credible and trustworthy. Otherwise, they wouldn't recommend them to their valued search visitors.
Obviously, we hope that you will include Joe Web in your list of design firms to consider. Please feel free to call us at 828-551-9761.
Noone knows your business as well as you do. We will help in those regards, and we're happy to offer suggestions, but clients are responsible for supplying us with the wording and images that appear on their webpages.
Send us an E-mail message. We will respond with a prompt, personal reply.