Websites built with WordPress start off with free software. WordPress is open source. Many, many people have built careers on that fact. All web software requires a host company such as Bluehost or GoDaddy that will rent you space on a hard drive somewhere in the cloud for as little as $5 per month. That’s great. You also have to buy the domain that represents the IP address for your server space. That can cost roughly $15 per year. Also great. So, for as little as $75 per year, you can run your website.

People find out by trying to making a site themselves that it can be complex. I built a website for a restaurant in Boston over four years ago that was recently bought by a hotelier in Oregon. The message I first got from the rep of the new company was that they would not need my services anymore. He was going to build one. The next message said the plan had changed and he wanted to continue the website with my help. My guess is that he realized pretty quickly that making a website involves a lot of experience and a long learning curve.

Your goals and requirements for the website will make a difference in the price. Fewer hours, obviously, will result in a lower price. A base price for even a few pages may take more time than you think. Consider that several meetings at 1 to 2 hours each add up to 4 hours minimum. Researching and sizing photographs, another 2. Building a home page with design styling, 4 to 6; Editing text, organizing the information, establishing a flow, and populating each page; Building forms, adjusting code settings for added functionality; setting up search engine optimization and sizing for mobile; trouble shooting, client training. Whew! Thirty hours +… For larger sites, multiply it 3 or 4 times. You also receive the designer’s artistic craft and the developer’s code craft, which is taken from years of experience.

But in the end, you own a unique website. Know that the ever changing internet demands that your site needs to be updated, watched over, backed up, improved, etc. Consider your website as a refection of your business, your brand, which grows and changes as you do. Also, that your webmaster is intimate with the workings of your website and that they will continue to offer you their services to keep that site viable and useful.

The article “How Much Does a Website Cost?” in Forbes by Ilya Pozin was used in researching this topic.

At our group, we pass mostly experience-based referrals. Experience referrals are from using a service and passing on your good experience about the service you received. They’re very important, but they’re not the whole story.

The article “Referral Marketing and Your Professional Services Brand” by Lee Frederiksen, PH.D, is from Hingemarketing.com. He states that another source of referrals, In fact, 82%, are from folks that have not worked with you directly. He says, “These referrals aren’t made in the dark”,

Chart by Hinge Marketing, 2016.

“Specifically they draw on your reputation and what referrers understand about your areas of expertise. These referrals are built on your brand.”

The chart at right reveals that brand-based referrals are driven by your expertise, via speaking engagements, blog posts and social media engagement. Many of my customers have heard me recommend blog posting as not only a way to show you are an expert in your field, but to attract inbound marketing to your website.

Professor Frederiksen goes on to say, “It’s common to hear service providers say that they can win new clients reliably…if they can just get a foot in the door to talk with them. In many cases, that may be true. But what if you never get the chance?”

And get this: Hinge research shows that over half of buyers—a full 51.9%—report they have ruled out firms without talking to them.

Potential clients usually receive the names of several providers.  And most buyers check out providers online, with a firm’s website being by far the most common source of information. But often the provider is ruled out after things go wrong from the website experience. Bad user experience is the main reason a website fails to win over your visitors and you lose them as customers.

I know that good website design improves user experience by answering the questions a visitor wants to know about your services. It provides good user flow. Or, if the website has poor quality content, is unimpressive or too focused on selling, you have wasted a good referral.

In the end, I learned that it takes BOTH a good referral AND a good website to win over a new customer.

Here’s why. The easy part is setting up the email account. You go to the c-Panel, and into the email account and add an email address with your domain name. (Providing you already created it when you set up hosting) Create a password that is in the strong range. It should be something you can remember but also with numbers, capitals and symbols. Be sure to ask for Unlimited emails, so your emails don’t suddenly stop coming into your mailbox because you forgot to clean it out every month or so. That’s it. The mail should start flowing! Hold on…

The mail software you use—now has to be set up to “Receive” on both your laptop and smart phone. It involves a lot of settings, which is why Bluehost nicely made all those videos to show you how. I had a client that used IMAP and when he switched his mail server from VistaPrint, he lost all that mail for almost an entire day. Bluehost helped him find the lost mail, fortunately, for both his reputation and his clients safety. For this reason, I ask my clients to use an IT professional in this process. But…

Here’s the good news! You can easily create a Gmail account and set it up to receive your POP email you made at your hosting company. Here is what you do:

1. Create the POP email using your cPanel’s “EMail Accounts” button of your host company.
2. Go back to the cPanel and to the same Mail area and button for “Forwarders”. Forward your POP email address to the new gmail address you already use or created.
3. Inside Gmail open the “Settings” and go to “Accounts and Import”, then click on “Add another email account you own”.
4. Put in your me@mywebsite.com there and follow the steps until Gmail says it will send you a confirmation email.
5. A confirmation code will come to your Gmail inbox which you then put in the area on your gmail account.

That’s it!

Here’s another idea: If you use a domain name that is too long for your business cards, create a new shorter Gmail address and use it on your site and all print materials. Or, forward the POP version as described above. Many people prefer the state of the art Gmail software to the ones provided by hosting companies. It’s the best of both worlds. You can also follow the same steps for Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.

For those of us who have worked in publishing, the writing piece is not a big challenge. But for others, it can be a big challenge. I get that. I tell those clients to write in their voice as if they are in their office introducing their business. Why is their service a good value? What knowledge can you share that can help a customer? What other companies complement what you offer? Is there news in your field that you can share? People want to know Your Story, or your company’s story. Are you willing to give it a try?

For more information on how and why to write a blog, I recommend my friend David Gadarian’s book, Better Business Blogging. It’s $6.99 on Amazon.

David says, “The book is about how to see more meaningful results for your business blogging efforts and it is the result of my own experiences with many business owners that were struggling with these very issues.  This book is for business owners and staff at companies ranging from the solo-prenuer all the way up to companies of 250 people (the high end of small businesses).  I feel confident in saying that I think there is value in this book for a wide range of experience levels as the bulk of the book is focused on how to create a better business blogging framework (sorry – no get rich quick schemes here!)”

Remember to feed Seymore … happy blogging! You see I just wrote one and it took all of 15 minutes!

My husband is not a professional photographer (which I highly recommend if at all possible), but he does have an artistic flair, and knows something about photography. I figured between his eye and my editing we could come up with something appropriate. We chose natural lighting and places where the light would cast some shadow. Out of less than 20 shots, I liked three. All I had to do then was crop and change each to grayscale (black and white), tinker with the contrast and brightness in Adobe Photoshop and size them for the web. One is a perfect author shot, one kind of sassy and one very business like.

Above all, I’m really excited to have a good image for the website and the social network sites. When prospective customers view the About Me page, they will have the latest image of a website designer ready to do business! How is your portrait? If it’s hasn’t been updated lately, I recommend you do so and improve your brand along with it.