Your business is now registered with the state and you have a Business bank account set up. Now we’re going to get your website online. Getting online is a relatively simple process if you’re already identified the goal of what you’re going to be doing online.

Total cost on the low end of getting online can run you around $160 per year. The high end is almost infiniti and can be as deep as your pockets will let you go. Depending on what type of business you’re wanting to bring online, actually acquiring a website is affordable.

Domain Registration

Domain registration is when you get an actual website name. It’s what your customers are going to type into the web browser. You can also us a custom domain name to be used as part of your email address. Let’s say you want to use a custom email address such as marion@mowenworks.com, you can use the domain registration for mowenworks.com to route the email to your specific address.

Think of Domain Hosting as the directions for data on where to go. Similar to a physical mailing address, a domain address lets you browser know where to go. The same thinking will happen when you are looking to build a custom app, email address, or online software. A domain would be one piece you’d need. For the most part, you’re looking at around $10/year for domain registration. Go ahead and grab 2-3 years of registration from the start.

WhoIs.com – $9/year

WhoIs is a standard in the domain name registration space. They have very affordable website names and will help you research different website names before you purchase. If you run across a website that already exists, they sometimes off the option to purchase/bid on that name

NameCheap.com – $9/year

Namecheap is another alternative location where you can register your domain name. Similar to WhoIs, they will allow you to purchase/bid on website names that already exist.  

Domain Hosting

Domain Hosting is purchasing server space to physically hold your website. This is where you files, images, text, etc will be stored and served to your visitors. This is where the your Domain Registration will point to.

There are three types of website hosting

• Shared hosting
• Private Hosting (VPS)
• Custom Hosting

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the common type of hosting and the cheapest. You are sharing server space with other organizations, business, people. Shared Hosting is perfect for basic websites that just need  to “get online”. Shared hosting limits what you can do for a website as you can potentially run the risk of affecting the other websites that are sitting on the server. 

The other downside for shared hosting is that performance is usually not very good. Its ok, but not the best. Don’t forget, you are sharing a server with many other people, therefore you are sharing resources.

The good thing about Shared Hosting is that the cost to create a website is relatively cheap because the cost is spread across your neighbors.

Private Hosting

Private hosting gives you control of the actual server. You’re able to create custom code that does “something” for your website. This is a step up from Shared Hosting in cost as well as features. You’re able to control what goes on with the server to your liking.

The downside to Private Hosting is the initial cost. You’re going to be spending more money on a private server because the total cost is not spread to neighbors.

The pro about Private Hosting is the ability of total control. You can create anything you want whether its a private email server, chat-bot, payment processing server, or a Twitter clone.

Custom Hosting

Custom Hosting can be a hybrid between Private and Shared hosting. Custom hosting allows you to pick and choose which modules you may want to accompany your website. If you have a custom eCommerce online store and you need a large inventory database app, custom hosting would be the way to go.

You’re able to host your website and create a database to manage your inventory, sales, customers, and more!

The downside to Custom Hosting is that you have to have a roadmap of what you’re going to be doing. There are a lot of choices (in a good way) that lets you pick and choose what you need for your project. You can get lost in the choices because you don’t know if you need a no-SQL database or another module to accompany your website. The cost of Custom Hosting is also very variable and can change from $50/month to $500/month with the simple addition of a new module.

The plus about Custom Hosting is that you have so-many-choices when it comes to your online platform! You can mix and match and use any module that suites your needs. Need to have an email processing piece that reminds your customers of upcoming sales? Your Custom Hosting can do that for you!

For the Custom Hosting route, you will more than likely use this route if you need a highly custom online solution that requires you to bring in a developer (like myself: marion@moweworks.com).

Overall Hosting Estimates

BlueHosting.com – about $4/month for basic

Bluehosting has very competitive pricing for Shared or Private hosting. The up-time and performance of your website will be noticeably better using this hosting provider versus the competition. They are have an awesome price and package of $4 per month to help get you started! That’s hard to beat.

If and when you do decide to upgrade your website to a more robust level, it’s pretty dang easy and cheap to do so. Blue Hosting virtual servers and private servers allow you to build solutions that wont bog down.

WhoIs.com

I mainly use WhoIs for domain registration and domain research. They do have a solid domain hosting plans that includes virtual and shared hosting. I love their domain hosting and registration management panel in case you have more than one website you run/manage.

HostGator.com

Host Gator is a popular choice for web hosting with shared hosting. They are possibly one of the largest providers for shared hosting. Host Gators customer support is pretty

Hybrid Hosting (cloud computing)? : Send over an email (questions@freelancerheadstart.com) and lets chat about what you’re looking to do. Hybrid hosting is a long drawn out conversation and can get pretty complicated. Lets chat about what you need.

Types of Websites

eCommerce: An eCommerce website sells or buys goods with an online marketplace. This is a common website type that a lot of business try to have. The cost for an eCommerce website is relatively low but can become expensive depending on what the website is attempting to sell/buy.

The size and type of inventory that you’re selling/purchasing can change the overall price of an eCommerce site. If you are selling digital goods, you’ll need a little bit larger server space. If its physical goods, you’ll need a way to track and manage shipping.

The main thing that you will need for an eCommerce website is whats called an SSL security certificate. This will protect your visitors credit card and purchase information. It will also protect your data from being compromised. If you’ve ever been on a website that has that little green security lock next to the website address, that’s a clue that the website has an SSL security certificate to help protect your data/information.

These types of websites usually start at around $220-300/year to get started.

Online brochure: An online brochure is the basic type of website. It presents information to your visitors and has little to no interactions. You usually don’t buy or sell anything on these types of websites directly. You may link to something external to purchase, but your website is mostly used to present information.

An online brochure usually has content that doesn’t change that frequently.

These types of websites usually start at $160-200/year to get started.

Online community: An online community is one of the more complex websites you can have. You are essentially creating a tool that visitors can interact, consume, and maybe purchase information from. The online community will need a way to manage and accept user accounts.

You will need to also create content to initiate user interest and keep people coming back. From there, your community will slowly start to grow organically. Integrating with other social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc can help get you additional traffic as well as usage.

As your community grows, you will find features and options that will work for your online tribe.

These types of websites usually start at around $250/year.

Custom vs Pre-Made

There are a lot of reasons that having a serious custom versus off-the-shelf solutions should be have. What is your end goal? What is your budget? What is your time frame? Who is your audience? Regardless of if you choose a custom development route versus a pre-made route, start with Mobile First in mind.

Mobile First development is a method of creating a website with a mobile device in mind first. What will it look like and what it will behave like on a mobile phone is important in this day and age. There are a lot of tools out there that will help mock-up from a mobile perspective. You will usually find that most solutions will have a built in mobile version as well. Just make sure that what you are trying to do fits within a mobile framework. You may be leaving 30% of your traffic on the table.

I’m not gonna lie, custom development is expensive in two fold: time and money. You will get a highly custom solution for what you need with custom development, but it will take time to create. Custom development should be looked at if you have not found a solution that can be purchased outright. Before you commit to a custom solution you need to speak to experts and get feedback on what you are attempting to do. This includes quotes, timeline, and support after the solution was created.

Off the shelf solutions can save you a lot of time and money. But you also have to look at the long term – will that off the shelf be used for just right now or can you continue using it in the future? What is the amount it is saving you? There will be a point where a custom solution will become a much more viable and cost effective solution than a pre-paid solution.

Website Platforms

There are thousands of website platforms out there. A website platform is the framework on what your website is going to be built upon. There are tons of options, but here are the popular ones that I would suggest taking a look at.

• • WordPress – free or $60/year
    • WordPress is a popular solution for either custom built or pre-made. You have an almost unlimited amount of options that you can use within the WordPress environment. There are a lot of modules that you can turn on or off with a WordPress website that a lot of DIYers can take care of. If you feel that you’re out of your depth, grab a professional to knock your site out in no time.
  • Squarespace – $120/year
    • Squarespace is very user friendly and easy to use platform for people who don’t want to worry about their website. It is perfect for those people who just need to get something up and out there. The downside is that customization is limited to what you can do and is very difficult and expensive to go beyond the boundaries of Squarespace.com
  • Wix – $120/year
    • Wix is a similar to Squarespace in that it allows you to quickly throw up a website. You can expand a decent amount but are again limited by what Wix will let you do.
  • SharePoint – Starting at $5/month + Office 365
    • SharePoint is a unique solution where it is primarily used an an Intranet for your organization. An Intranet is a website that is private to a company or organization. The Intranet can help you automate a lot of tasks that your business does, such as employee onboarding, payroll and expense reports, inventory management, and much much more. SharePoint can do it for you with a few toggles of its settings and you can expand to do a lot more beyond that.

Social Media

We’ve entered and age where Social Media marketing and communication is becoming important. Gathering a following on social media helps give your banding and marketing social proof that you’re trustworthy or something people should purchase.

Grab yourself all the social media accounts you can for your brand or company. You never know when you’ll want to use them. You also dont want them to be taken by time you’re ready to start using them. So go ahead and grab your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts!

Analytics

Analytics about your website will help you make decisions on a lot of things. You can determine where people are accessing your website. You can then cater your marketing to speak to that audience. The reverse is also possible. You can validate that the marketing campaign that you are on is grabbing traction in the direction you’re wanting to go.

Google Analytics: With Google Analytics, you can keep tabs on where people are coming from (how did they get to your site), where they land when they do arrive, and where do they go after they arrive. This is important as you need to know how customers and consumers are using your site. You may have one idea in your head on how people will be browsing your site, but reality may show something different.

When you move into using Facebook, Twitter, or Google ads, you will use an analytics tool to see if your money is getting you a return. Google Analytics ties into your ad campaigns and helps you keep track of the visitors that come to your website.

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