My day job is designing websites for small business owners who don’t have bottomless pockets to have an internet presence.

I believe every brick and mortar business needs a website these days. It’s become a requirement for a credible appearance to customers and if it does nothing else, it gives prospective customers your location and contact information. If you don’t have a store, it’s even more important. The site doesn’t have to be huge, but it needs to be current and well done. It will often be the first impression a prospective new customer has of you, so it needs to be a good one.

I design sites for people who have never had a site before, but often for people who have a site and are paying way too much for it on an ongoing basis. There are some high-priced options being pushed so I’d like to give you some ideas on what to ask about and how to protect yourself from getting snookered. Trust me — good budget website design is out there and you can find it.

Most importantly — you will want to own all elements of what goes into your website. I’ll explain what I mean later. If you have a complete blow out with your designer, or if he or she gets run over by a truck, you want to be able to pick up your toys and go elsewhere. And I mean all your toys.

Free website design

If you do a search on Craigslist you can find a lot of offers for free websites. There are some companies who offer a free website if you use their hosting. I have worked with several people who tried the Craigslist route and ended up with hot pink sites, kaleidoscope backgrounds, comic sans fonts and terrible layout. I have worked with people who got a “free” website and were paying horrendous monthly fees for web hosting – and their sites looked terrible. I have yet to see a well done “free site”.

This is where the phrase “you get what you pay for” comes in. While you shouldn’t pay an arm, a leg, and your first-born for a website, you don’t get professional, polished, and current web standards for free.

What you should pay for

So there are no surprises, there should be three things you have to pay for: 1. URL registration (annual charge), 2. web hosting (monthly or annual), and 3. the design of the new site (one time charge). Changes later on would be an additional charge.

My personal opinion is that small businesses do better with a small designer – as long as they are reliable. Big companies charge big bucks. There are probably exceptions to this.

The flip side of this is the DIY computer generated sites that use canned images. They may not cost a lot, but I don’t think they are a good first impression to present to new customers because they look like a DIY computer generated site. Even if you’re a blogger, unless less you are talented at graphics and design I think you’re better off hiring a designer.

How much should it cost?

I’ll use a couple actual customers as examples. Customer A had an obviously canned site with the same images on each page, very little text, poor images, and lots of misspellings. For the design and hosting he was paying $114.95 A MONTH. I almost had a stroke. So in 5 years he would pay $6,897.00 for his site. Goodness. I designed a new and better site for him for under $1000 and he prepaid for 2 years of hosting at $3.99 a month or a total charge of $95.76. Even if it goes up to the normal $7.99 a month, which I have encouraged him to call at the end of 2 years and see if they’ll give him a deal, he’ll pay less than $3000 for his site over the 5 years. Beats the heck out of almost $7000.

Customer B also had an obviously canned site that was terribly outdated and was paying $19.95 for the site and hosting or $1,197.00 for 5 years. Not as heart stopping, but I thought that was too much considering it was for an ugly site. I did a new site for them and with the deal I got them for hosting they will pay around $900 for 5 years. Not a huge savings, but they now have a nice, updated site and total ownership (and therefore total control) of all the parts of the website.

There is very reasonable web hosting out there that performs very well so if you can find a designer who can do a nice job for a decent price the above examples should be possible for anyone.

Own your URL

Never, ever sign up with someone who owns or controls your URL. The URL is www.yourbusinessname.com. While a reputable designer will work with you on coming up with a good URL for your business, they should never, ever want to own it. Register the URL in your name and pay for it with your credit card. You control your URL now and always. It is the singularly most important thing about your website and will stay with you even if you have many different designers and web hosting services over the years.

Ask for references

Ask to talk to a couple of people the designer has done work for and get not only the URL of the website, but also the client’s phone number so you can ask the client questions. Ask them how long it took the designer to get the site up, how easy they were to work with, how willing they were to make changes if the client didn’t like something, how well written was the final site (was the designer okay with inaccurate information and misspellings or were they meticulous about accuracy, grammar, and spelling)? Would this client use the same designer in the future? That’s a very telling answer. Make sure the designer is a pleasure to work with before you sign on the dotted line.

Get bottom line price before

Never go on a pay as you go basis. Get a total published on the web price and what all is included in that price.

Don’t get sucked into high monthly fees

I have talked to people who have unknowingly gotten sucked into ridiculous fees. I feel there are big companies who feed off people who simply don’t know any better. If someone wants to charge you over $100 a month for a simple 5 or 6 page site, walk away. Heck, if someone tells you you’re going to pay $20 a month, keep shopping. I regularly set people up on reputable, reliable hosting services that charge less than $90 for THE FIRST TWO YEARS TOTAL. 24 months for under $90. I really recommend locking in the great price for 3 years if people can afford it.

The price will go up to something like $7.99 a month after the initial period. Call the sales office and ask what the best price is they can offer if you extend another year or two. You may not be successful, but it’s most certainly worth a try. Hosting services know there are many options out there and the good ones work to keep your business.

Warning: If you are currently with a service that charges a big monthly fee for design and hosting they will most likely make it as painful as they possibly can to cancel and transfer your site elsewhere. It will not happen overnight. It may take many phone calls and long periods spent on hold with lots of hoops to jump through. The effort is worth it to pay less per month and have ownership of your site.

Pay for your own hosting

This is another thing you should own. The designer may need to help you get set up. I call and chat with the hosting service and they are happy to then handhold a new customer through the sign up process. You will have to share the login and password with the designer after you sign up or set up another user, but it should be registered to you and paid by your credit card so you are ultimately in control of your site.

Cost of the website design

One of the first questions a designer should ask it is what your budget is for a new site. If they don’t respect the number you quote then check with more designers or rethink your budget. Budget website design shouldn’t mean ugly design. Be willing to pay a little bit more if that’s what it takes to have a great site.

If you need a site with a home page, about page, a contact page, a couple of product or services page find someone who will do it for around $150 a page. It’s initially a few hundred dollars up front, but it’s a cost that should last you for a few years.

If you don’t know how to do it, make sure setting up all required email addresses is included in the price.

Find out how much they will charge if you want something changed in the future.

Google and Bing

Make sure the designer registers your site with google and bing webmaster tools. I also suggest brick and mortar or service companies be registered in both Google and Bing Places. You can do this yourself but ask your designer if this stuff intimidates you.

Update your site

At some point all sites look old and dated. Web standards evolve and styles change. If all the information is still valid find a designer to update your site so it looks current. An old-fashioned site isn’t the first impression you want people to have of your business.

You can contact me through this website or at Gale at Winding-RoadDesign dot com if you have any questions. I’ll be happy to help if I am able — even if you’re using someone else for web design.

I will update this post as I think of more things.

Visit me at my day job at Winding-RoadDesign.com