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 WEBSITE BUDGETThanks for taking a look at Winners Web Design, the Internet service for winners! After winning the Tennessee Collegiate Web Design Contest in Year 2000, John Lee created Winners Web Design to provide winning services to smaller businesses seeking a competitive edge. Timing can be everything, and for a limited time only, we are doing great deals to break into the market. So it's your lucky day!  WARNING! Webmasters can eat your budget, especially the budgets of a "smaller" business. A business can easily spend $25,000 to $100,000 or more per year just operating its website. Obviously, many business owners would not feel comfortable with such an expense. Especially if few customers were placing credit-card orders through the site. "Dot-com Fever" can blind an enthusiastic investor in a new website just as it can intoxicate Wall Street investors. In the majority of such ventures, the only business owners getting rich quickly are the website programmers. By the time the reality sinks in, it's often too late to change programmers. In the case of "advertising" on the World Wide Web, you don't always get what you pay for. The key to success on the web is deciding what is most important to your business, then stick to that game plan regardless of temptations. The variety of options available for websites is virtually unlimited, with new programming created everyday. Yet the bottom line for business success is increased sales, not fancy technology at your expense. The bottom line requires that return must exceed investment. This can be difficult to accomplish with most website designers, due to the extravagant costs of their services. This is not to say their work is not worth their price. Website design and programming can be an extremely labor-intensive project, if not a full-time job for a team of artists, computer engineers, sales reps and customer service professionals. Fortunately, it is possible to maintain a high profile on the web for a tiny fraction of what most webmasters charge. The key is to get a high return for minimal investment. Decide what you need to accomplish most, get an estimate, get online, then add features if satisfied with the initial performance of your new site. Websites can accomplish many things:
Obviously, you may invest as much as you want in a website, as any web-design service will tell you. Obviously, you must determine what your return on investment must be to remain in business. Credit card sites are rather expensive compared to regular websites, and fortunately there are other options if that is a problem. Site owners can pay $10,000 and get no hits whatsoever, then get "extorted" by their "employee" who takes the site offline until the neverending-monthly account is paid. Big companies can pay $100,000/year salary just to run a website, even without credit card sales. The internet business world is in the Wild Wild West stage right now, and its challenge is to make it pay off without jumping into a money pit. My service is on the lowest end of the scale, including price. I'm not "degreed" in computer science, so I can't do fancy programming, such as Flash movies, or XML "Palm Pilot" stuff, at least not at the moment. I've got little overhead, so no cost there to a customer. I'm not forced to pay a mortgage or send kids to college, so those fees are not passed on to customers. And I don't mind if you eventually learn to run your own website, unlike most webmasters. Websites need several steps:
I can do several options:
No "package deals", since there are just too many variables. Any web-designer who quotes a single price is taking a personal gamble or expects to "bump" the client with lots of add-ons. I can estimate better if you have a definite concept of:
I recommend not using "frames", but if you do, there needs to be an identical html version (doubled number of pages). This lets customers with older computers to see all of the site. Nonessential options include JAVA and JAVASCRIPT applications to "animate" buttons at mouseover, print rolling text at bottom of screen, create custom clocks or counters, animations, sound FX or music, streaming video, weather information. Forms can be useful to mass-produce cutstomer comments or to take orders. "Aggressive" search-engine ranking can include setting up as many "dummy" pages as you can think of "keywords" that your potential customers might try to search with. This presumes you do all your own orders, bookkeeping, taxes, banking and shipping. A "guesstimate" of investment for a small "credit-card" site:
Prices subject to change upward or downward. prices are based on time invested-- Example of a "$10,000" website ($150/year hosting -- no credit card): Examples of a "$100,000" site ("free" hosting -- no credit card): FREE TIPS FOR SUCCESS: Always list your website address on ALL promotional items and "news" interviews. This includes signs, advertisements, business cards, letterhead, invoices, your email, etc. Use the website for detailed info about your business that cannot be included in ordinary advertising. Think of the website as your personal "TV station". Consider making a "charitable donation" from the sale of each item, then announcing that on the site. Budget for the long haul, since it can take 6 months to a year for the big search engines to finally index your site (unless you pay them an "extortionist" fee to jump to the head of the cue). This is a big problem with the internet. Recommended -- a small site -- keep your overhead low:
Contact the webmaster today! John Lee awesome artwork by SFB DESIGN |