There are four costs involved with putting up a website:

1. Getting a web address.  This is technically known as a URL (geekspeak: Universal Resource Locator).  It's the www.yourname.com thing. They cost about $10 a year, and are often included in hosting fees (see #2).  Getting a great one may cost more if someone has it and wants to sell it.  If you're an established business that everyone knows, it might be worth the expense in the long run.  It's also possible to get more than one and make them all point to your website.
   There are a number of endings that are available.  It's most important that you get the .COM ending since that's what everyone expects.  If you fear competitors or critics stealing your thunder, going for the .NET, .ORG, .BIZ and others might be of value since they only cost about $10 a year, but in most cases it's not a big deal.
2. Hosting Fees.  The space on a computer server where your website files are kept is called storage and bandwidth is a measure of how many times your files are sent to website visitors.  Hosting has become very cheap, but it's important that you use a service that is consistently there. 
   McColley Marketing Media has a long-time relationship with one of the best, Dreamhost - they currently host over a half million websites!  We think you'll be pleased with both their pricing and quality.  Most smaller sites can be hosted for a little as $7.95 a month. 
   Hosting prices have fallen in the last year or two - I recently converted a group of sites that had been paying $1200 per month to hosting for less than $35 a month.
3. Initial Design Costs.  As I said at the beginning, you can do it yourself programs for $250, or I've seen competitors proposals go into the $10-20,000 range.  We custom design your site and therefore can't just offer you a blanket, one size fits all price.  We will provide you with a firm price once we agree on the scope of your site.  We think you'll be very happy with our pricing.
4. Ongoing costs.  This is where you'll get burned with most websites.  If your site isn't designed using a Content Management System (CMS), you'll be calling your webmaster for every little update.  If nothing in your business ever changes, then your costs will be low.  But Google and the other search engines reward websites that have fresh, updated content with higher rankings, so it's a foolish way to save money. 
   McColley Marketing Media designs sites using the award winning Joomla CMS, which makes it easy for you to update it yourself.  That means you'll save you money and can add the kind of content that makes it easier to get better search engine rankings.

The world is full of website "designers".  If your initial cost is your primary consideration, then using your sister's husband's nephew as your webmaster is probably your best choice.  Or you can sign up for one of those cookie cutter, build-it-yourself-in-five-easy-steps programs.  They're suitable for lots of people.  But, if you're like most business people we know, you want it done right the first time, and you don't want to create a new long-term expense.

Our secret is using a CMS!

That's short for Content Managment System.  Your website can be hand-built the old fashioned way (which is time-consuming, expensive, and hard to update), or it can have a program called a CMS that separates the computer code from the text and the design.  Traditionally, a CMS would cost you tens of thousands of dollars (I know because I've used them!). 

McColley Marketing Media uses an award-winning CMS named Joomla, which is FREE!  Joomla is used on tens of thousands of websites around the world from small businesses to international ones.  You've likely visited a number of Joomla-powered websites but didn't even know it, because the CMS is invisible to visitors.

Using the CMS means you get complete control of your website.  Adding or changing content is done through a special "back-end" part of your website that is completely password secured.  It's as easy as using a word processor or email. 

Want a special feature?  We've got lots of 'em! 

In addition to simplifying changes and adding new content, there are lots of special features available:

• Members Only Controls.  You can create content that is for members only.  Membership can be open to anyone who gives you an email address, or you can limit it to only people you explicitly approve.  You can use this for clients only areas, or as a way of building an email address list.
• Blogging Features.  The success of blogging arose because it is easy to create content, plus content can be "pushed" to others through syndication (RSS).  Others can respond with comments, or share it easily with their friends.  Joomla supports almost all the features of leading blogging software.
• Specialized Content.  Calendars, Reservations, Clocks, Maps, Weather, Quote of the Day, Business Directories & Recipes, are some common examples.  File uploading and downloading is available as well.
• Media.  Pictures, audio and video are all easily added to Joomla.  Podcasting, videocasting and photo galleries are all ready for you to use to make your site more interesting to visitors.  You can even add electronic greeting cards.
• Interactivity. Polls and Forums are the beginning.  Add instant messenging, quizzes, and video games.
• Income Producers.  Your site can have Banner Ads, Ads from Google (and several other ad servers), Auctions, and Classifieds. Shopping Carts and Payment Systems are easily integrated, and it interfaces with several enterprise scale e-commerce systems.
• Geeky Features. Search engine optimization, automated menus and sitemaps are all easily added - and very important for the success of your site.

You probably won't use more than one or two of these things, but they are there and ready to be added to your site if you want them.  And since Joomla was developed in a completely open standards way, it's easy for a large community of developers to add even more specialized features. 

You've thought about it, but couldn't justify spending the money.  But the time has come - your business needs to be on the Internet, NOW!  It's where your customers are, and they are looking for you.

• 3 out of 4 Americans are online.  They higher the education and income, the more likely they are to be using the internet. (Click here for the latest figures from Pew Internet)
• 69% or people use the internet to the research purchases - even if they are buying in person. (Accenture Survey, 2007)
• Online retail sales now total $120 billion a year, up from $100 billion the year before.  Over 3% of all retail sales are online and that figure is growing rapidly.  (Internet Retailer, 2007)

Find out how many people are looking for you! 

Yahoo has a cool tool to find out how many times people have searched for your type of business.  You put in terms that people might use to find your type of business, and the tool returns a list of related searches that people did in a recent month, and the number or searches they did using those terms. (In our example the month was January, 2007).  

Here are the totals for a couple of terms:

Remember, these searches were done in January (a slow month for sales in most businesses), and only using two words, chances are there are many other words they might use. For instance, instead of motorcycle, they might use a brand name like Honda or Harley.  To get a fuller picture you should think of all the various words that might be attached to your business, and do separate searches for all of them.

It's interesting to note that, despite the fact that Phoenix has only had 7 years in the last century where the snowfall reached .1 inches for the whole season, there were 337 searches for Phoenix and Ski.

Now you need to adjust those numbers -UP!

Those numbers only come from Yahoo searches.  Yahoo currently has a market share of just under 30%.  So you can easily multiply those numbers by 3.  If you were a motorcycle dealer in Phoenix would you be upset if you missed 3,780 phone calls from prospective buyers?  What about nearly 40,000 calls about insurance?  Heck, with 1000 people looking for skiing, maybe you could come up with a way to ski indoors!  And let's not forget that these searches are only for one month.

It's time to get YOUR business online

You probably don't need to put up a full-blown e-commerce website.  But you do need a website to grab those people looking for your business online.  It's a great way to let people learn about your business, and start building a relationship with you that will lead to a purchase.

Besides, a website can be a great multiplier for all your other marketing efforts.  By inviting people to visit your site, they can go find out much more about you than you could afford to put in a newspaper or radio ad...and it actually could make those specialty pens and things pay off.  Just include your web address in all your marketing.

Good News for your budget!

If you have considered putting up a website, you probably think it's going to be very expensive.  Early websites had to be hand assembled using mind-numbing computer codes.  A webmaster was needed even if you wanted to make even a small change on a page...and the costs added up.  At McColley Marketing Media, we design your website using an award winning, state of the art content management system called Joomla that separates the computer code from the words on the page.  We won't bore you with the details on how it works, but the end result is that anyone who can use email or word processing can update your website.  And your startup costs are very reasonable, since Joomla is FREE!  Of course, if you ever need help, we're here for you anytime.

Call us to find out how really affordable our websites can be.