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Do you need a Website ?
A website is an increasingly relevant component of your marketing budget if you want to maximise your visibility. ‘Google’ was included in the Oxford dictionary on June 15th 2006.
But not any old website. You should have a professional-looking site if you want to be taken seriously. Your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression. If your site looks like it was designed by your 9 year old nephew, your chance of making a good first impression will evaporate.The internet levels the playing field when it comes to competing with bigger business. With a well-designed site, you can project the image and professionalism of a larger company.
Just one caveat. Be committed to the content and to the process. There is nothing that so degrades the experience of a website visitor than a webpage that describes a service that expired 3 years ago. A visitor might assume that that is also how you run your business.
Your website is an important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such.
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Q & A
Q. Can I do it myself ?
A. Sure you can, I did.
Q. Does it take to time to get up to speed ?
A. It does take time. It is complicated and there are many pitfalls.
Q. Should I spend my valuable time building my own website ?
A. That is your choice, but it is likely that you could spend your time more productively concentrating on your core business.
Q. Is it going to cost me an arm and a leg ?
A. Probably a lot less than a very small monthly advert in a regional newspaper with no colour.
Q. What kind of website should I consider ?
A. Keep it simple, clean and informative.
Q. OK. I figured you’d say that, but what do you mean ?
A. 5 pages should do it for a small business.
- a Home page that captures the visitor’s attention,
- a page to describe your Products and Services,
- a page about you and your business to personalise the business,
- a page with your contact details and directions and
- a Terms and Conditions page.
Keeping it clean.
Keep it simple, keep it clean, give it impact, make it engaging.
Engaging, what a great word. That is the objective of your website, to engage your reader. Woolly clutter doesn’t engage, it enrages. You engage with well written, well structured information.
OK. So here’s the deal.
Here’s what WE do
- We work with you to design your website and we build your 5 page website.
- We are happy to help check your text and suggest changes or improvements if you wish
- We use WordPress because of the body of skills available in the market and because of the availability of high quality add-on product.
- We can help with selecting a Domain name. You need help ? Not really, but we can check your ideas; imagine if the domain name you would like for your church group is almost the same as an existing website which is totally inappropriate.
- We set up email addresses for you which use your own domain name. Branding your web presence. me@myowndomain.co.za has much more pizzazz than me12345.fred@gmail.com
- We set up suitable SEO (Search Engine Optimization) parameters to give your website the best chance of being indexed by Google and other search engines – very important.
- We sign you up with a reputable web hosting service.
Here’s what YOU do.
- Supply your logo
- Supply your pictures
- Supply your product and services text, we are happy to help with this if you like.
- Supply your contact details.
- Sign up with the website hosting service – we’ll help you do this. We use Hetzner because they are based in South Africa, they are very professional, their prices are competitive and their 24 by 7 service is impeccable.
- You are responsible for paying for your domain name registration through Hetzner and your monthly hosting fees to Hetzner. That way you get to be master of your own destiny without us getting involved in monthly billing on your behalf. AND there are no add-on charges from us.
Pricing
Our charge – Website design and build for 5 page website – R1,150.
Current Hetzner prices
- .co.za Domain name registration – R79 per annum
- WordPress hosting service – R99 per month – allows plenty of disk space (1GB) for web pages should you wish to expand in the future and plenty of band width (20GB) should your website take off vertically and attract huge amounts of traffic, and that’s what we want isn’t it ?
Hamburger costing model
The hamburger pricing test – another way to view hosting charges.
- Annual domain fee about one average hamburger and a beer.
- Monthly hosting fee about one average hamburger and 2 beers.
- So there you are. A dozen average hamburgers and a couple of dozen beers per year. Hardly excessive is it ?
If you want to add complexity beyond the 5 page design we can negotiate charging on an hourly basis.
Very Important – we use WordPress because there is a huge body of expertise in the market place so you can easily find someone else to help in the future if you find us irrational, bumptious, overpriced or just plain irritating 
We don’t want you to feel that you are hooked to us forever, and we certainly don’t want you to think that we see you as an ongoing cash cow.
Of course if you think we’re OK, then we would be happy to continue working together to improve your web presence 
Over to you.
Prices as at 1st January 2012 and are VAT inclusive.
Contact Peter on 083.326.4932 or use the Contact form below.
Examples of our websites.
This website Click for Home page
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