Buying a Website: What's Involved, What it Costs and How to Get the Best

If you have a business, you absolutely need a website. No questions asked, it's a standard now that many customers will look for as a mark of professionalism. Even if you operate from a physical storefront or office location and never sell a single thing on the Internet, having a website that offers contact details and your basic list of products and/or services will help locals find you in ways you would never expect.

Often, what stops people from jumping right in is the uncertainty. What is involved in buying and setting up a website? How much will it all cost, and is there any kind of guarantee? What will I have to do, and what will I have to learn to do it?

As with most things that worry us at first, it's not as hard as it seems. Provided here is a guide on what to expect - and what to look for - as you embark on the journey of a business home online.

Owning and Renting

Before anything else, you need to understand a simple thing: you own the designs and contents of a website that you create or have created, but you rent everything else. Your domain name, your web space, everything that makes your website available to the Internet masses is rented. Even Microsoft doesn't "own" Microsoft.com. They've rented the name (currently through the year 2012).

If you don't pay the rent, either monthly or yearly, your designs and content have no way of being viewed.

Also, be aware that web hosting and domain names are - generally speaking - outside of a website designer's realm, and are something you'll need to understand yourself.

Three-Step Outline to Your Website

When you decide to purchase or create a website, there are several steps you need to go through in order to make a purchase you'll be happy with - and not overpay for.

For the purposes of this article, I'm going to assume that you are creating or purchasing a brand new web design, and not buying a "turnkey" website business. There are tons of reasons why turnkey website businesses are not a good idea to mess with, but that must be saved for another article. For now, let's just say that you are more likely to spend less money following this outline or blueprint to your business website than you would purchasing one that is being "re-sold".

Get out a pen and paper - or your handy-dandy Notepad program - and get ready to brainstorm. We'll get into fees and recommended sources after this.

1. First, you need to have a name for your website. If you currently own a business named "Olga's Organics", you might want to stick with that and go for OlgasOrganics.com as a website name. Or at least try to. The tricky part is finding a domain name that is available. Hit the Instant Domain Name Search Tool available here to try your website name out. All available website domain names are instantly searched as you type using this tool. I found that using my example of OlgasOrganics.com, I wouldn't be able to obtain Olgas.com or OlgasOrganic.com because they're both already taken. That's not a biggie because I'd planned an s at the end. This really is an important step, though. If you find that your preferred name isn't available, you'll need to brainstorm some ideas on what could be added, subtracted, or changed about your website business name to get a domain that is available for rent.

2. Next, you'll want to find a place that all the files (designs and contents that you actually own) will call home as long as you rent the space. To do this, you'll want to search for a reliable web host; reliable meaning that they can guarantee at least a 98% uptime so that your website is available any time, day or night.

3. Finally, it's time to create the website files. This is where you will decide whether you have the nerves of steel (and patience to learn through trial and error) to create the site yourself, or hire a professional designer to create your business website. If you choose to go with a pro, look for one that is well versed in using CSS style sheets separate from the website design - it's important and makes a huge difference to how well your business site will do with search engines from the start.

Renting a Website Domain Name

Really, most people just want to know how much it will cost to rent their domain name. It isn't that simple, unfortunately.

First, think hard about what sort of extension you think your site should have. The .com extension is still seen as the most professional by far, and will cost the most to rent. You can also rent extensions including .net, .org, .biz, .tv ... the list goes on. If your site is truly for an organization, you will lend tons of credibility to the site by using a .org extension - and save some bucks. Other than the .com and .org, though, you start running into problems with visitors being able to correctly remember your domain name, or your "address" on the Internet.

Personally speaking, I use one domain registrar for every website I operate and always recommend to my clients: NameCheap. It is a site that helps you rent your domain name easily, without complicated steps like GoDaddy requires, and never tries to force on you a bunch of "extras" that you don't need. The fees are very reasonable, starting at about $12/year for a .com domain (the price changes due to specials) and less for a .org name.

But before you jump the gun on this one, keep reading - some of the best web hosts offer domain names as part of your overall hosting package.

Renting a Home for Your Business Sites - Website Hosting

I'm sure you've heard of free web hosts that will put your site on their server for free. Don't fall for it ... you'll be stuck with low bandwidth, the lack of ability to really customize, and will be advertising the "free hosting" on every page of your website - like it or not. You'll also find periods of time where your site is unavailable if too many people have visited it in the last week or month. It's simply unprofessional and won't cut it.

Long story short: go for a web host that lines out what you pay for in clear, simple terms. Your monthly payment should include a certain amount of bandwidth (which relates into how many people can view your website each month), specific features, and a specific amount of storage space (how many graphics, pages, files, etc. can be stored for your website to use).

If you're looking for a host that offers all the bells and whistles, and don't dig deep, you'll find that you can spend hundreds of dollars every month to obtain a fast server. This is totally unnecessary. I recommend the following web hosts to my clients because they offer extremely reliable service at inexpensive rates (all start at under $10 per month). Most of these even include your domain name in that cost - which cuts out anywhere from $12-30 per year.

• HostGator
• BlueHost (the most popular because of all the free extras and exceptional support)
• Lunar Pages
• AMHOSTING

Buying a Website Design

I say "buying" because whether you decide to go for the design on your own or hire a pro, you're going to incur some costs.

To go your own, you'll need to invest in a decent graphics editor and an HTML editor. 90% of the pros will tell you they run Adobe software for both these pieces; Adobe Photoshop currently runs $999 for the latest version, and Dreamweaver starts at $199 to upgrade from the previous version. Of course, if you want to get into cool effects like flash, video, and other extras you'll run into the designer who has the full Creative Suite. This baby alone costs $1400-2500 depending on how advanced the collection the designer has. So these are the industry standards you'll be looking at ... and doesn't include the cost of texts to help you learn how to use them, or the amount of time you put into trial and error attempting to create your site.

Seriously, it's pretty quick to see why websites tend to cost so much for a professional to create. Not only does it require hours of work to make your design idea a reality, but the costs the designer has paid for their software, the computer systems they run their software on, and the schooling they've spent money and years going through really make a difference. They're a pro for a reason, and while it might seem like a lot of money to spend, it's going to cost a lot less than doing it yourself.

Not that this will stop the most persistent ... until I decided to go for my second degree to specialize in graphic and web design, it didn't stop me. It just took years until I had my first website that I can still today be proud to say I designed.

The actual cost of purchasing a new design depends entirely on who creates the design for you. There are millions of website designers out there, and each sets their own prices. In the long run, the only thing you can guarantee is that the more pages, the more complex the graphics, and the more "extras" like flashy menus that slide in, drop down, or jump out, the more time it will take to create your site and the more it will cost.

Here's the best method I've found for balancing the cost with what the pro offers:

1. Make sure that you will be given a copy of your website design on disc. The designer might charge $10-15 for the time and materials, but it's worth it in the long run.

2. Make sure that the pro uses CSS Style sheets separate from the website design. This helps with search engines, yes, but it also helps you if you decide to keep your website updated yourself. You won't need to know how to do anything but type if your site is designed this way.

3. Ensure that every graphic used in your design is quality and will not infringe copyrights. The graphics should either be 100% original by the designer, or the designer should have purchased rights to use the image(s) from a stock agency.

4. Find out what kind of support is offered - for free - after your purchase, and for how long. Most designers will offer basic support for 30 days after the purchase of a site design, largely answering questions you might have on how to use and get started with the design. Some of the better designers offer 30 days support and a guide included with your delivered site or a couple hours of one-on-one chat time that tells you how to get started with your design.

5. What extras are offered? Remember that there is a huge difference between a web designer and a web master. If you are willing to keep your website updated on your own or have a colleague willing to help out, you just need a web designer. On the other hand, if you expect the person who designed your site to also keep it up-to-date on a weekly or monthly basis, you're looking for a webmaster. This person will take any text, photos, and information you send to them and update your site with it according to a set schedule. They often answer customer questions about using the website itself, and troubleshoot technical problems. Do not expect your web designer to be a webmaster. Most never offer this service. Whether they do, or you have to hire a webmaster willing to work with your designed site, you will have to pay on a monthly or yearly basis for this service.

Finally, make sure that any pro you work with offers a guarantee. The guarantee you can get from a web designer is that there should be no spelling errors in any of the buttons or graphics, and that the layout of the site itself (not its content) are close to what you expected. Beyond that, if you decide that a picture would look better at the bottom of your content instead of the top, or if you want a section re-worded or moved, you're asking for more time than any web designer puts into their original agreement with you.

Most web designers won't mind doing some small fine-tuning, but if your changes amount to hours of additional work, expect to pay your designer's going hourly rate.

Costs and Keeping Costs Down

So let's break down what you can reasonably expect to pay to get your website up and running for the public - live, as the lingo goes.

First, you have the cost of domain name registration. If paying for this separately from your hosting, you can realistically expect to pay between $12 and $25 per year.

Next, figure in the cost of hosting. For a great but inexpensive package of $10 per month, you would pay $120 a year for hosting. Perhaps $10 or so more if your domain name is included.

Finally, figure in the cost of website design. Realistically, for a true pro designer, you can expect to pay anywhere from $250 to $3000 depending on whether your site contains just information or if you want to be able to sell products from it.

So at a bare minimum, be prepared to invest $382 in your business website for a very basic - but well done - site.

To keep costs down, try these tips:

1. What pages do you need to have on your site? Think in advance what pages you need, such as the home page, about page, and contact page, so you can communicate clearly your needs with the designer.

2. What type of visitor do you want to attract? Being able to tell your designer what audience your business has will help them go a long way toward gearing a look that will attract those visitors.

3. Be willing to do some of the work yourself. You can save a lot of money by typing up all the content you want presented and emailing it to your designer. They can then copy-paste content in, and use the topics to best create a layout that presents the content well. On the same note, you can save a lot of money by being willing to update your website yourself. If you can type a document in Word, you can learn to edit your web pages in a few hours.