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Veteran

Jennifer Lavelle Broomall, PA

Are there any resources out there that offer discounts to build a website? I have a small
Business and can't afford the $2,500 price tag to have a professional site built.

25 April 2017 11 replies Small Business

Answers

Advisor

James DeLapa San Diego, CA

Hi Jennifer -

You can easily build a website yourself without breaking the bank using a template builder or an intuitive theme with a few tutorials. If you get cPanel hosting from GoDaddy and go with a good WordPress theme like Divi from Elegant Themes, you can make a professional looking site no problem - all it takes is a few tutorials from the Elegant Themes blog.

Tons of people offer site design for under $2500. You can get a basic site for about $1000 through https://thiswebdeveloper.com for instance. They can also point you in the right direction for budget content creators etc.

Hope this helps! If you need more information please feel free to respond.

Advisor

NANCY MOREHOUSE Lake Forest, IL

Go Daddy also has a lot of helpful products ---
and they have great tech support 24/7 that will walk you through just about anything !

Advisor

Emanuel Carpenter Alpharetta, GA

Jennifer - Check out the website fiverr. There are several capable vendors from all over the world on the site that only charge a fraction of what most vendors do. Look for vendors who already have good reviews. You'll be glad you did.

Advisor

Joy Graham Houston, TX

Hi Jennifer,

I agree that Squarespace, Weebly and Wix are all great options. I've customized templates for several entrepreneurs and nonprofits and here are my suggestions for getting started:

• Begin with copy and navigation that focuses on your audience rather than your company (making it clear how what you do helps them). Set goals for your site -- to get found, build trust, educate, inform, nurture, convert.
• Keep the mobile version of your site in mind when adding features.
• Make it easy for people to contact you.

Note: Wix doesn't require as much patience as Squarespace, but they don't offer responsive designs. So there are some trade-offs when considering one platform over another.

Advisor

Dawn Serpa San Francisco, CA

Hi Jennifer

All sound advice above but I would strongly encourage you to try Shopify. They have many free templates and offer financial services as well as a robust app system to support your various business needs. They also have a Facebook page community of users that can offer regular advice. I've built three sites using Shopify - two are live now, www.erbaviva.com and www.johnmasters.com. Best of luck and please let me know if you need any help once you are up and running.

Kind regards
Dawn Serpa

Advisor

Deb Yeagle Tampa, FL

Jennifer-
Thanks for your service!
I am a SB owner and was able to very easily, quickly, and affordably set up my company website using wix.com.
They had all the templates I needed and it is super easy to use, only costing me $111.00 / year. I recommend checking out wix.com to assess if you can set up your own website instead of paying someone else thousands of dollars to do it.
Good luck!
Deb

Advisor

John Green Cary, NC

Web pages are text files. If you can write a Word document or create a resume, you can create your own website with little difficulty. Only you know what you want anyway.

Get website templates from templatemonster . You might have a cousin, niece or nephew that could help.

Reminds me of VCRs blinking 12:00. Some kids were whizzes at fixing those.

Veteran

Jennifer Lavelle Broomall, PA

Thank you this info is very helpful and I appreciate those that took the time to reapond!

Advisor

Douglas Casey Hartford, CT

Jennifer,

I echo Michael's words about Squarespace, and you can check out Weebly as well. I have built some sites for friends using Squarespace and find it affordable and easy to use. The hard part is coming up with text and images, but if you have those, the wide range of professional templates will enable you to build and maintain a strong presence online. They also have great e-commerce and social networking connectors.

Best,

Doug

Advisor

William Smith Suffern, NY

Jennifer,

You should contact your local office of "SCORE". This is a non-profit organization affilliated with the Small Buisness Administration.
I am a member of the NY office. The group is made up mostly of buisness professionals with wide ranging backgrounds. SCORE was established to assist small buisness with the variety of challenges that they face. It is a free service.

You might also try "GODADDY.com". They assist in website development at a reasonable price.

Regards,

Bill Smith

Advisor

Miklos Philips Brooklyn, NY

Instead of a one time cost, you could look into online website builder resources such as Squarespace which charge a monthly fee and help you build and host your website.

The ongoing cost for Squarespace ranges from $144 per year (Personal plan) to $216 per year (Business plan). The Business plan is not as economical as the other plans, but that plan is reserved for those who want to operate advanced or more sophisticated e-commerce stores.

Here's a resource to do some comparison research: http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/

Good luck.

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