Most small businesses fail to realize the significance of a quality web site to represent their business on the web. Inside a survey conducted last year by Nielsen, they discovered that over 51% of individuals used the internet and major search engines to search for local company services. That means the internet was adopted more often the phone book. That is an alarming statistic because it costs up to 5 times more for any yellow page advertisement of computer does for any website. Unfortunately there is a lot more to consider when buying a website for the business.

Seo

You can find web designers offering very economical websites as little as $99 and a website such as this can serve a small business well once internet searchers find your website. That which you must consider is what happens once you have your $99 website? With no search engine marketing techniques strategy nobody will find your company when searching for the help you are offering. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services will always be one more cost but one really worth exploring because it can improve your profits exponentially. An experienced SEO service can get your company around the front page of all the major search engines like google in front of all of your competitors. That is if you’ve incorporated SEO for your business first. Usually within the internet search engine game, those there first are the ones that stick.

Updates and Maintenance

Website maintenance is another big thing to think about. The web is an ever changing and evolving organism. The way web pages are rendered in browsers changes quickly as the internet updates itself. Hosting technology changes too and websites have to stay current to remain functional. Nothing says “do not shop here” just like a broken website. Also pointing back to SEO, SEO changes as well and exactly how the various search engines rank pages always changes and it is important for your company to stay towards the top of the major search engines.

Static Website Vs. Content Management System (CMS)

There’s two type of websites on the web today, static and CMS. Like a website owner you should be aware of difference and how each can benefit you. A static website is one that every page is made separate and sits on the server as a file and is written in XHTML. The advantage to this is that it doesn’t need much maintenance since it isn’t designed to change much what works today will likely work 5 years in the future. Another good thing is the fact that static websites are generally cheaper to purchase. Unhealthy is that if the content of your site changes like prices, store hours or weekly specials then you’ll likely need to pay a web designer to create those changes. Because most web-site designers limit their site management time for your site within their contract (usually 2 billable hours monthly) you should use up that allotted time quickly and incur additional fees each month to add to the total cost of owning your website.

However, you can own a Cms for your website that is what 90% of all websites are nowadays. The largest benefit of owning a cms is you can make frequent changes towards the content of the website effortlessly. If you know how you can type and click enter you will not are having issues updating your own site. The disadvantage to that’s CMS style websites require maintenance but is usually very minimal and will require someone just like a web design service with programming knowledge to help keep it updated. As stated before about website management and time, this kind of maintenance won’t require a lot more than the allotted 2 hours monthly and it is what web-site designers intend for those 2 hours monthly to be used for. Another consideration when purchasing a website is the fact that a CMS usually costs more in advance because of the time involved in setting it up and building it. However, it does save money in the long run and allows you because the website owner a chance to keep the website abreast with alterations in your business without waiting or paying someone else to do it.