Small Cheap Website with Room for Development?

ed.gilmartin

Hello all,
I was just wondering for entrepreneurs and small business owners
without an online presence, would a small cheap website be a good investment for companies? I am asking this from the perspective of the website designer and would like to know does this idea have any interest?

P.S. When i say "cheap" i do mean the cheapest website you could find.

srsly78

Websites always start cheap. It's the maintenance and updating that costs.

jurez

A website as an online presence is a must. And the market knows that, too - that's why you have websites that cost $100 and such that cost $100k.

Whatever business you and your customers run, a website is nowadays like a business card. You don't have one - no one will take you seriously. Which, in the long term, means loosing money.

jmcc

Most small business websites are brochureware websites that are not updated throughout the year. There are some businesses that don't necessarily benefit from being on the web. There are some that do. It is up to you to target the second set if you want to sell but the introduction of self-build software by the web hosters produced a lot of business card/brochureware type websites. The hardest thing you are going to have to do is to sell your website design package to a small business owner who may already be getting a cookiecutter website from self-build software on their web hoster.

Regards...jmcc

BanjoSpanner

It depends on what business you're in. Nowadays it's very unusual to have zero online presence but that's only the start of it. The way things are projected to go, before long it will be a case of if you're not online when you don't exist. And that's not just me talking, that's based on evidence from research and from government sources. It's real - digital is the future and while you might still get away with ignoring it today, you most definately won't get away with it tomorrow.

jmcc

BanjoSpanner wrote: »

And that's not just me talking, that's based on evidence from research and from government sources.

What emerges from government sources about the web is complete bollox. They haven't a clue about the web and their "methodology" on measuring the Irish webscape sucks. (Unlike them, I do measure domain trends and usage in the Irish webscape.)

Regards...jmcc

Peterdalkey

I would believe that nearly every business and professional should have some basic website, even if it is only the simplest few pages. If I have a corner shop or similar, I would imagine the benefit is marginal at best.

The acid test is whether a web/digitall media presence can generate new business or at least maintain profile and make you easy to find. I love the idea of finding my local doctor/whatever on my smartphone and just tapping on the number to get connected.

The scale of your spend should be proprtionate to the potential returns, so in some cases €20K a year might be too little and €200 too much. Having even a one pager might just be spot on for some!

BanjoSpanner

Peterdalkey wrote: »

The acid test is whether a web/digitall media presence can generate new business or at least maintain profile and make you easy to find.

That's it exactly, spot on. And there are strategies to make your online presence turn into increased footfall in your store, if you're not selling online.

mneylon

It's 2013 so having some form of online presence is a must
Even if it's only very basic ie. contact details and opening hours

I don't know of anyone who uses Golden Pages to find products / services these days - I suspect most people "google" for them instead

Atomico

ed.gilmartin wrote: »

Hello all,
I was just wondering for entrepreneurs and small business owners
without an online presence, would a small cheap website be a good investment for companies? I am asking this from the perspective of the website designer and would like to know does this idea have any interest?

P.S. When i say "cheap" i do mean the cheapest website you could find.

It all depends on what a business considers a good investment and what their needs are. If a company wants to sell online to a global market, then needless to say a cheap website isn't going to cut it.

However, even when it comes to say a services-type business operating mainly / exclusively in a small market like Ireland, a cheap website may give out the wrong impression to potential clients, etc.

It depends too on whether a cheap website will also 'look cheap'.

If not, then I am sure there are plenty of sole trader and local dentist / service provider types who would be interested. A website is only the first step though, marketing is more important than any website and template-type websites tend not to do so well in search engines, for example.

jimmii

If a business doesn't have a website now then they are just missing out on potential customers no matter what I am looking for my first port of call is google to try and find a local seller and see if they do what I am looking for at a reasonable price. Its so cheap and quick to set up these days anyone not doing it is going to find things tougher and tougher if I see a business without a website it makes me wonder why.

I'm sure there must be lots of small business owners out there who have been running their shops for years who have no idea about where to even begin when its comes to a website who would love someone to do it all for them even if it is just a one page site with contact details on.

srsly78

All you need to do is register your business so it shows up on google maps so?

beauf

Peterdalkey wrote: »

...If I have a corner shop or similar, I would imagine the benefit is marginal at best....

I think even then its handy. you can list contact no's open times and what you sell. If some doesn't know the area they can find out that much at least. Specially offers might bring a few extra people in from time to time.

Peterdalkey

beauf wrote: »

I think even then its handy. you can list contact no's open times and what you sell. If some doesn't know the area they can find out that much at least. Specially offers might bring a few extra people in from time to time.

You have a point but to be honest, in my entire life (long) I have never looked up or wanted to know the telephone number or anything else about any of my local corner shops. I would just call in !

beauf

Well you might want a light night chemist, DIY stuff, or indeed just want to avoid traffic and the large shopping centres.

Our local Centra does good offers from time to time, but you only know when you drop in. So miss them quite a lot.

Peterdalkey

I am not trying to bust your chops here, but as I said before, the benefits would be marginal at best and worthy of no more that the lowest cost presence, a facebook page might be ideal. ? They would be far better making sure that they are listed in Yelp, 1850 etc etc.

Ask yourself honestly, when did you last look a specific local one up online?

That said if they are a speciality shop or stock unusual/special interest items, it could be a great move.

beauf

About a week ago. Car broke down and I had look up the local garage to confirm the name of the garage and address to get the car dropped. Garage wasn't open it was in the evening. Its a small one man garage.

Peterdalkey

That is not a local corner shop. Did you expect them to be open. The breakdown services AA, AXA and a few mobile mechanic services etc have this market pretty much covered.

beauf

Even in some of the big shopping centres the shops don't all close/open late on the same days. Saves you a journey if you can check it out on-line.

beauf

Peterdalkey wrote: »

That is not a local corner shop. Did you expect them to be open. The breakdown services AA, AXA and a few mobile mechanic services etc have this market pretty much covered.

Er what? Why would I expect the local mechanic to be open? My point was it was useful to be able to look up the details on line, so the tow company could fill in all the details. If I couldn't find them, I might have picked another garage.

Local butcher often does deals too. They put them up on facebook. Not a fan of Facebook though, its full of drivel trying to suck as much information from you as possible.

Peterdalkey

Local butcher often does deals too. They put them up on facebook.[/QUOTE]


At last we agree on something

The tow guys generally know all the local garages/mechanics, I wudda asked him!

Silverbling

I have a large ecommerce site, web sites are never cheap!

After a couple of years hunting down bugs, crashing my database and looking for needles in haystacks I have moved from a magento and prestashop site to a hosted cloud site.

Unless you have unlimited money to pay developers you will need to learn to build and fix fix the site yourself, run error reports and have excellent hosts who will help you when you need commands running.

As I learnt to my cost cheap can end up costing a lot of money and ridiculous amounts of time.

If you are going to run a business you need a professional web site, it does not have to cost that much depending on how much time you are prepared to put into it, if you are going to buy a theme make sure it comes with unlimited support for any bugs (google the theme reviews and see how many complaints there are)

There is some snobbery about these new site builders but I am loving it, I built it myself but have full support, I just mailed them telling its too slow, I added gzip compression to htaccess...........its not working, fix it please......and they did.........brilliant!

beauf

He asked me. Maybe he was new.

I could pick a better example, but that was the last time I did it, which is what you asked. I wasn't expecting the Spanish inquisition. The problem with most small websites is they don't keep them updated and I assume they don't get any metrics on how often they are hit.

beauf

Silverbling wrote: »

I have a large ecommerce site, web sites are never cheap!...

Certainly a fully featured website is a good bit of work and that costs. But there are alternative as you've found.

But I think people over think it. A small shop could have a facebook page or similar that could be updated from their mobile phone. People put up sites then abandon them.