As marketers for small to medium business we are pretty good at what we do. Website design is a separate skill and we do marketing better than we design.
As such we have teamed with WebsitePros.com, who offer attractive, affordable CUSTOM websites . They offer the best, most affordable price points we've seen.
Take a look at their pricing and sweet design options.
Many small businesses I approach with marketing proposals don't have a website. Those without a website generally fall into three categories. Either a relative is helping them, they paid someone who builds websites and it's still in progress or they don't know where to start. They all believe "getting on the web" is expensive. It's not.
I blogged about solutions from Yahoo! Local awhile back and briefly touched on web hosting solutions from SuperPages.com. Both fit the bill for most small outfits and come in under $20.00 per month.
Another simple website solution provider is SiteKreator.com. Of the three I prefer SiteKreator.
The designs are simple, clean and affordable. Packages run from $7.95 to $39.95 monthly and offer "unlimited" pages. Simple editing caught my eye. It looks as easy as Blogger which means even moi might feel comfortable at the controls.
No further need for bugging your teen nephew or the friend of a friend to put together something in spare time. Definitely no need for the local bakery to pay thousands for a simple layout.
Those days are gone.
I'm a bit humbled after viewing the blog design for Cooking With Amy, which sports a brilliant use of the Blogspot platform. The design is credited to Cat Batacan. Amy runs this blog for a total of ZERO dollars for hosting or domain costs. Wow.
Contrast this with Conde Nast's business property Portfolio.com and the $125 million price tag for that site and associated pages. Battelle posted on the news earlier today.
Conde Nast probably could have hired Cat for oh say........ $1,000 per page across the board and saved Uhhhh $124, 500,000 or so, ya think?
Yeah I know there is more to it but come on.
Thanks for the inspiration Cat and Amy. More of our clients want blogs and we are in the learning phase of blog design and content development.
We won't copy but it's tempting.
Yahoo! Small Business hits a clean triple through the gap with the introduction of a simple and inexpensive webhosting and site building feature.
It's a definite improvement on the free website offering that is nothing more than an information page.
This product plays into the hands of smaller businesses unwilling or unable to employ full service website design firms. Over a decade into the world of website building it is still a minefield for small businesses looking for an trustworthy site designer that does not charge an arm and a leg. I have heard enough horror stories lately to represent that overpriced designers are still laying in wait for the uninitiated.
I intend to introduce this solution to my clients looking for easy and inexpensive website options. SuperPages has a similar offering with monthly charges in the $15.00 range. I have not studied the program but the templates look clean and the price is right.
I also noticed this interesting item on the new Yahoo! site building page, a submission option to Yahoo! and Google. Yahoo! has no direct submission option. Their site submission is normally $299.00 and that does not guarantee inclusion.
