Choosing Web Hosting
And Web Design Services
Excerpted from Chapter 14 Business Know-How:
An Operational Guide for Home-Based And Micro-Sized Businesses On Limited
Budgets
by Janet Attard
Adams Media Copyright 2000, Janet Attard
All Rights Reserved.
Know what to expect .
With web hosting and web design, you don't always get what you pay for.
High price is no assurance of good service from your web host. Nor is
it an assurance of good web design focused on your objectives. One organization
paid several thousand dollars to have their web site designed and hosted
for a year. The web site consisted of only a few pages of text and one
graphic image. There were no databases and no order forms. The only
interactive feature was a function to send mail to the owners of the
site. The entire job - including creating the graphic image - shouldn't
have taken more than a day or two to create.
Other small business owners have paid equally high prices to have their
web site designed with animation and sound, only to discover that the
first thing their visitors to their site look for his the "skip
the intro" button.
You could get ripped off like this too, if you don't know what you
are buying. Launching a web site is a process that involves several
types of activities. Depending on the nature of your site, those services
will include some or all of the following:
Setting up the web site on a hosting service.
Hosting the web site on an ongoing basis (storing the web site on a
computer, connecting it to the internet)
Registering a domain name (giving yourself a unique "address"
on the web such as your business.com)
Designing web pages (similar to typesetting and laying out a newsletter)
Designing art work (creating original art work for the web site
Writing the editorial content for the web site
Programming a database to work on the web (for mailing lists, surveys,
catalogs, customer sales data, etc.)
Registering the site with Internet search engines Marketing and promoting
the site (on the web and off line)
Advertising (on the web and off line)
Scanning your graphics and text to make them useable on the web
Maintaining the site on an ongoing basis.
Few companies offer all of these services. Many, however offer "complete"
packages that include setting up and hosting the site along with design
and limited maintenance. Although using a single source to do all the
work sounds convenient, it isn't necessarily a good idea. The person
who is a whiz at computer programming may have no artistic abilities
and no eye for graphic design. Someone who is capable of putting text
into html may not know anything about creating the editorial content
for the site or about marketing. (Don't assume they can type well or
spell words correctly either!) And, the company that hosts the web site
may charge a small fortune to "design" your website, when
all they do is plug your material into a cookie-cutter template that
they use to "design" every web site they create.
Furthermore, if you are charged a flat fee, you may wind up paying
for services you don't need, or overpaying for the ones you do need.
To make sure the price you are quoted is fair, ask the provider to
give you an itemized list of services they provide and to specify the
fee they are charging for each service.
Get quotes from several vendors and compare them. Look at how much
disk space you get, how much bandwidth you are allowed (how much data
can be transferred monthly for the fee), and what extra charges you'll
incur if you go over these amounts. If you plan to sell online, see
if there are extra charges for a "storefront," too. Ask whether
you will have access to update the files yourself if you decide to,
how many email accounts you will be given, and whether there are extra
charges for autoresponders, mailing lists and other services you may
want.
Know the going rates.
Be wary of deals that offer you a set number of "pages" unless
you have no plans to add anything to your site after it is set up. A
page requires very little space on a computer. If you only need to have
a few "pages" on the internet, you shouldn't have to pay more
than $10 or $15 a month for hosting them, plus a reasonable hourly fee
for taking your material and converting it into html web pages.
In 1999, web hosting prices for people who could build their own web
sites ranged from as little as $15 a month to $50 a month or more depending
on the amount of computer (server) space needed and whether the web
site would require database, audio or video capabilities. A site costing
$15 per month in hosting fees was adequate from most small businesses
whose primarily goal is to put sales literature on the web to get sales
leads. Some hosting companies included shopping cart software (software
for setting up a retail site) at no extra charge with host plans costing
about $25 a month. Graphic artists and programmers typically charge
$75 an hour and up. Conversion of documents to simple HTML pages costs
between $15 and $25 an hour.
Find affordable web hosting.
If you will be creating your own web pages or if you want to compare
the prices your service provider quotes to price elsewhere, be sure
to visit Budgetweb.com http://www.budgetweb.com/budgetweb/index.html.
This web site contains a directory of companies that offer web hosting
services and a primer that explains some of the terms you may encounter
in setting up your web. There is also a list of questions you should
ask a web hosting company on the site.
Ask for references and check them.
Before you agree to have anyone design your web site ask for references.
Get the names and URLs of web sites they have designed for other companies.
Look at those sites and see if you like them. Is the design of the pages
attractive? Do they load quickly? Do they all look the same? Look around
the sites for the email address of the owners and send them email. Ask
if they were satisfied with the work that was done for them and if it
was done in a timely fashion.
Excerpted from Chapter 14 of Business Know-How. May not be reproduced
or transmitted without written permission.
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