At PlanetLink we look at process of website creation from three perspectives; artistic/creative, technical, and marketing. A good design company will have skills and expertise in those areas. In general, more skilled and experienced team, higher their rates and higher their minimum project fees. Some design firms don’t take on a project for less than $20,000. You will also find designers that will create your site on a per-page cost (okay for simple, low cost sites, but not recommended for anything beyond that). Someone who is just getting started in business may also do your project for free just to get experience.

What can you afford to budget for your project?

This is really an important question to ask yourself. What are your current expenditures for marketing? For sales? For support? What are your expectations/projections for revenue, or reduction of expenses from your website? What is current annual revenue for your business? Your budget should, to a degree, be commensurate with level at which your business is operating. If your website were for a large corporation, budget would be higher than for a small sole proprietorship.

Let’s take a look at two examples:

A small business needs a website for their business so they have a presence on Internet. The site is simple - about 5 pages with information about business, services they provide, and a form that can be submitted and information received via email. The budget isn’t available for creating a graphic "look," and existing images will be used. A smaller, less experienced designer may take on a project like this for a few hundred dollars. A medium sized firm might quote $3000 to $4000 depending on variables. A larger firm would probably not take a project this small.

A mail order company wants to get into online sales. They currently have no website. They have a narrow mix of about 200 products with a broad target market; it’s also time to update their image. Depending on a wide range of variables, a project like this could start at about $7000 and go into six figures.

So back to our question, cost for your website is determined to a large degree by what you can afford to spend. The complexity, size and needs play an important role as well as level of expertise and experience of design team. Generally, more you spend on your website, more website you will get for your money, an obvious statement but true none-the-less. In developing budget for you project; remember to consider your needs and expectations, level of design, size and complexity required for your project's success.

Additionally an important component, beyond scope of this article, addresses promotion and marketing of your site - best project in world isn’t likely to be successful if no one knows about it. Be sure to include costs associated with your marketing program.

Have you service provider setup your email account so that you can use any address at your domain name. When you provide your email address in a form, make it something that you would associate with that company. If you get mail to your newly created address from a different company, you'll know how they got your address.

Use an email address with a domain name that is in your control. If you use an address at aol.com, earthlink.net. msn.com or any one of several thousand service providers, you'll have to continue to use that service provider in order to continue to receive your email. If you decide to change providers, any mail that is sent to you at old address will be lost or returned. If you instead have email sent to an address at your own domain name, you'll always be able to access it - no matter who your service provider is.

PlanetLink can assist you in with setting up an email account, registering domain name, developing a sound and profitable Internet services plan, website design services, hosting services, application development, ecommerce and site promotion. For more information, call us at 415-884-2022 or email info@planetlink.com.