Being online is very important nowadays for every business, no matter how small it would be. Without it, a business simply does not exist for the new generation that uses the internet for everything – to read, to play, to interact, even to order a pizza.
Creating a simple business website is easier than you could imagine, and the costs are smaller than you would expect. The days when hosting cost a fortune, and domain names were sold expensive, are gone. Nowadays being online only costs a few bucks, and every business, no matter how small, can afford it.
Let’s start with the hosting.
A simple business website, one with just a short description of the company, a few contact details and a feedback form, fits on the smallest plan offered by web hosting companies. For example, one of the web hosting companies I work with charges $3.45 a month for its cheapest plan (with a 1 year contract), which allows the use of a single internet domain name, and unlimited space and bandwidth consumption. That’s $41.4 a year – not a fortune at all.
Domain names are a bit different – these represent a part of the brand a company can use. If you are a shoe sales company, and plan to buy http://shoes.com, you will probably need to pay a fortune. The same goes for most other explicit domain names (like http://www.redflushcasino.com/, http://usasneakers.com/ or others), – they are either taken, or sold for huge amounts by profiteers.
If you have a brand, you might consider another domain extension. The .com domain was originally destined for commercial companies, but today it has become the most popular one for every other purpose as well. But the ICANN has launched a series of new top level domains, in the spirit of the original .com, that can be much more expressive than any country code extension (ccTLD). Let’s stick to the “shoes” example: now you can register domains like shoes.ninja, shoes.consulting, shoes.exchange, shoes.pub, and loads of others, for as low as $9.99 for a year (different domains can be registered for different annual rates).
When you have your domain name and hosting, you can create a website. This one can be done in a number of ways as well.
Paid hosting services usually offer their customers free website builder tools, so they can go online in just a few minutes. This is the perfect choice if you only plan to be present online, without the option to interact with your customers.
A dynamic website can also be built quite fast, but this one needs a bit more knowledge. There are scripts to install, databases to create, and themes to choose. In some cases this can also cost you money – but an offshore design team can build your website professionally, and in a very cost effective way.
So, if you plan to go online, know that it’s quite simple, and it does not cost a fortune – the benefits of having a website are much more than the costs. What are you waiting for, then?
