Girl
Geek Speaks Newsletter
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Welcome to the long overdue May 2005
Issue of our newsletter
for the technically challenged and web site
wannabe's.
We feature articles to help guide you through the
process
of designing, building, and promoting your business
web site.
If you know someone who may benefit from
this newsletter, please forward it to
them in its entirety, or have them subscribe
below.
In This Issue:
-
Article: What's all the Hoopla about Register.com's
$4.95/month website?
- Article: What's All the Buzz about Blogs?
- Announcement: My Ebook is coming!
Article: What's all the Hoopla about Register.com's
$4.95/month website?
Remember the old saying, "If something sounds too
good to be true, it is"? This is how I think
about Register.com's new television promotion of
their $4.95/month website.
With no fear of losing potential client to Register.com, I want to educate people as to what
they'll
get, but more importantly, what are the limitations
of online sitebuilders like these.
Register.com, one of the largest domain registration
and webhosting companies, is advertising like crazy
lately for their $4.95/month "do-it-yourself"
website.
If you just want a static brochure type website, so
you can say you have a web presence, these kind of
packages
will accomplish that, but not much else. In my
opinion, this package
would be great for a family, teen, or personal
website, but is unsuitable for a business website.
Online site builders or "do-it-yourself" websites
are fine if you absolutely need to
start out inexpensively and get a site online in a
hurry. However, when/if your business
starts to grow, your website will be UNABLE to grow
with you. You will end up hiring a professional
web designer to build your second generation
website, probably within 6-12 months.
That's when you'll call me, I hope!
I want to address what you will and will not get
with the Register.com "do-it-yourself" website.
First, what do you get for the $4.95 a month?
1. You get a 5- 20 page website with only 20
template designs to choose from, which you cannot
customize.
2. Options to put a customized form on the site,
which is the only interactivity it offers.
3. Only 5-10 megabytes of server space, which will
get eaten up fast if you put more than 1-2 images on
the site.
Without purchasing a package myself to look at the
behind-the-scenes details, here's what you DON'T
get.
1. No email accounts associated with the site or
maybe only 1.
2. No way to optimize the site for search engines,
which you'll need for a regional/national market or
Pay-Per-Click advertising program.
3. No way to sell products or process credit cards
on the site.
4. No file manager, which allows you to have
complete control over your website files
5. No ability to add a blog, email newsletter, or
chat feature to interact with your potential
customers/clients
6. Limited number of times your pages can be viewed
because of limited data transfer.
7. No database for storage of customer/generated
information, sales orders, etc.
Other limitations include having your site
essentially "held captive" by the
company because you don't own the code. If there
ever comes a time when
you want to upgrade your site or its functionality
and want it to be able
to do something like host a chat feature, change the
underlying code, or
optimize the site for search engines, you'd have to
start from scratch with
a independent designer. Since the templates sitebuilders offer are probably
copyrighted, if the look of the site has become
familiar to your clientele,
you will not be able to take that with you. I've
also seen it where you don't
even own your domain name once you cancel your
account. I've worked with several clients
in this exact situation.
To get any of the features needed by most business
websites (see my article on this), you'd have to
either hire a professional designer and upgrade to
the more expensive hosting packages, or buy add-on
features.
In short, it usually ends up costing business owner
more than designing their
own customized site and hosting it independently.
Why? Because where the
sitebuilder/hosting companies make their money is
either in their high annual hosting
charges or they charge you for all these "add-on"
services, that increase the
monthly hosting cost. These may include site
statistics packages, extra charge
for a control panel, high charges for a domain name,
additional email boxes,
submission to search engines, online contact forms,
secure server licenses,
shopping carts or design charges to customizing your
template or code.
So what starts out sounding like $4.95 a month for a
website can turn out
to be much more expensive.
Just wanted you to know.
Article: What's All the Buzz about Blogs?
Thanks to Kathryn Lord for setting up a
teleconference call on Blogging.
I've had 2 blogs going now, one for over a year. I
use this one
http://girlgeekwebdesigns.blogspot.com for my FAQ
page, and another
for promotion of my clinical practice.
What is a blog? Blog is short for "weblog." They
started out as online journals, but
have been cooped for all kinds of use by businesses.
Here are some sample uses of Blogs:
-
interaction/ongoing dialogue with
customers/clients
-
establishing your credibility and expertise by
providing information to your customers
-
creating a "buzz" about new products or services
-
getting direct and immediate feedback from
customers/site visitors
-
FAQ pages
-
As a more interactive substitute for email
newsletters
-
Through audioblogs, being able to establish
rapport with potential clients who get to hear your
voice.
I set up my 2 blogs at www.blogger.com where the
services is FREE! I've also customized blogs for client using Blogger.com, such that the blog
looks exactly like their webpages.
Try it! You might like it!
Announcement: My Ebook is coming!
I'm writing an ebook on tentatively called
"Girl
Geek Speaks: How to Hire and Get the Most from a Web
Designer."
It will be in workbook format and will walk you
through every step you need to take to be fully
prepared and knowledgeable
about getting a professional/business website
online.
Of course, I will hope that you hire me once you've
completed the workbook. In fact, I'm going to offer
a
money-back option on the purchase price of the ebook
for those who do sign a contract with Girl Geek Web
Designs.
Shameless Self Promotion:
Email or Call now (well,
maybe wait until next week as I'm kinda swamped)
for your FREE initial web design consultation and NO
OBLIGATION bid for new websites or old website
revamping.
- Girl Geek Web Designs - ask for Annette
- Please note our NEW PHONE NUMBER
(618) 457-8103
- Email:
Annette@GirlGeekWebDesigns.com
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