Any entrepreneur will tell you that every penny counts. You need to make sure your options are as cost-effective as possible, to concentrate your money on your core business. A critical part of any business is marketing and advertising. If you do not get your business out there and market your products effectively then you might as well burn your money. The easiest way to get your business out there is to set up a website.
However, for a small business starting up, you may not have all the resources that you would like in order to build the kind of website that larger companies are engaging in. This does not mean that you can’t do something substantial within your budget, or your ability.
Setting up a website is not as expensive as you would think. You can even do it yourself with very little knowledge or experience in programming and web development. In fact, most start-up entrepreneurs are choosing to create and launch their websites themselves, with no professionals involved. How do they do it?
Register a Domain
You can purchase any domain name that is available. It can be your company name or any name based on what your business is about. You can register domains for as cheap as $10 to $15 per year with companies like NameCheap or GoDaddy. Although you must renew the domain each year, the cost is negligible. For an additional $10 per year you can add WHOIS Protection, which helps keep your contact and domain info private.
Website Hosting
Shared hosting, is where the web host has several websites on one server. This way the cost of hosting is spread out among many customers. As a result, companies like HostGator and BlueHost can offer cheap hosting at $50 per year. For a small startup, it’s all you need. When you sign up for hosting, you’ll connect your web hosting to the domain name you purchased above.
Choose a CMS
Content Management Systems (called CMS) make it easier to put your website up and to load updated content onto your site. Run a Google search of the different types of Content Management Systems that are available, and you’ll quickly run into WordPress. The reason is simple. WordPress allows you to update your own website, which can save significantly on the costs of hiring a web company.
The best part is WordPress is open-source, so it’s free! Almost all hosting companies have a quick install feature that loads WordPress right onto your site. If you don’t have the technical knowhow, the webhost company will even do it for you.
WordPress is very powerful as you can choose themes for design, and various plugins to add specialized functionality. You can even add an ecommerce plugin like Woo Commerce, and you’ll even have an online store!
Upload a Theme
Your website needs to be attractive in order to attract sufficient traffic. You can choose from a variety of free themes that are available online. Download the most suitable one, and upload it using your FTP client. If you are using WordPress, then you can upload the theme right from the WordPress Dashboard.
Create Your Pages
Once your site is setup, and the theme is uploaded, all you need to do is create your content. A free CMS like WordPress will allow you to create pages, upload images, and even setup menus. There are tons of plugins to help you build your site, and even plugins for SEO. The best part is you can build a cheap website, that costs less than $100 per year!
See, it is all pretty straightforward isn’t it? So go ahead and get your business to the next level by creating your own website for really next to nothing.
If we can save some money, then why not do it? cheap website design company offer an affordable way of a beginning business owner to get started.