Start with a thorough situation analysis. The who, what, where, when, how, and most importantly, the why of your business and your customers. Establish the objectives for your website. Are you presenting information about your company and its products? Are you establishing an online business? Are you providing a service for the visitor? Once the plan is in place a budget will be developed to construct, maintain and promote your website. Execution is the next phase We recommend that your website be constructed in phases. Not only for budget purposes, but as you become familiar with the process, new ideas will be generated. You'll want to incorporate them into your site. The first 6 months of your web site development should be considered a testing phase. experimenting with different content and options. Enhancing those items that work well while pulling out those things that do not work well graphically and functionally. In addition to our in-house design staff, Jefferson & Associates, Inc. draws upon the skills of our network of professionals to provide copy, design, and Internet marketing strategies. How will people learn about your website? Search engine submissions should be made to the appropriate sites for your business type. We closely monitor the traffic to your website and work with you to continuously update the site to keep it fresh and interesting. But simply listing your site with search engines may not be enough to drive the traffic you desire to your site. We will work with you to determine which avenues would be best suited in advertising your website. Updates and Maintenance It doesn't end with the uploading of your first website files. It's just the beginning. Your website will continue to evolve over time. New ideas and technology will continue a stream of features that will only be limited by our collective imaginations. A schedule of routine updates and general website maintenance should be set up, so that MacWrite up to date information may be viewed by visitors to your site. A website may look beautiful and might win awards, but if it doesn't move people to action, it isn't doing its job. We believe in being effective. How much will a website cost to construct? It's a tough question to answer until we know exactly what we're going to do. It's sort of like saying "How much for a house?" We'll...How many bedrooms? How many bathrooms? What kind of fixtures in the bathroom? 1-2-3 car garage? Does it have a basement? A pool? I think you get the idea. There are some guidelines we can use however. Based on our experience with other sites, we can give you some approximates of what things generally cost. These cost estimates are for budgeting purposes only and are not intended to be quotes. Revised cost estimates will be provided based on the final content and design of the website. Initial domain registration fee ($70 for two years) Annual domain registration fee ($35/year) Hosting account set-up ($75) Monthly website hosting fees ($34.95 - $99.95 depending upon the size of the website and amount of data transfer.) The cost of producing an Internet website is essentially "Parts and Labor," the cost of producing graphic materials and people time to program the content. Here's an estimate of what it typically costs to produce various types of pages: Home Page...............................$750 Site Map...................................$500 Visitor Registration....................$350 Bulletin Boards.........................$350 To Update Text Pages..............$100 per page About Us...................................$150-$200 per page Frequently Asked Questions......$150-$200 per page What's New?/Newsletter: To establish the template and first issue.....$150-$200 per page To update text pages..................................$100 per page Subpages: To create each subpage based on a template.....$375 per page Scans of images as needed...................................$25 per scan Banners................................................................$150 per banner Password Access Only: Initial secure access page..............$350 Subpages - text..............................$150-$200 per page The typical small business, simple website (a home page plus about a half dozen sub-pages) will probably cost around $1500 to construct.