Why Do I Need A Website?

In a very basic sense, your website will allow people to search and find your business online, as well as give you credibility as an establishment in today’s digital age. Beyond just having a website, it is important that your website should act as a tool to convert potential customers into actual customers. In order to do this, it is important to consider that you have all the necessary information, an easy to use experience, and a visually pleasing design.

Other Costs & Decisions To Consider

When building & launching a website you need to consider additional costs to the project:

Choosing a Platform

We build designs for a self-hosted WordPress.org site

In general, we suggest choosing self-hosted WordPress if your business has complex and custom functionality requirements, including complicated e-commerce needs. The advantage of a WordPress site is that it will allow for the most flexibility in functionality. WordPress is a free platform; however, you will need to pay for a hosting plan (around $15/month), a domain (around $17/year), and your business email (around $5/month per user).

Many people consider other drag and drop platforms such as Squarespace, Wix, Showit5, etc. We suggest only choosing this kind of site if you are a creative whose site is mostly focused on image galleries, portfolios, and static information pages. The advantage of a these kinds of sites is that it will be dead easy for you to edit yourself; however, we do not do any custom development for these platforms, and if you choose to hire a developer down the line, it is likely you will need to get your site rebuilt on a different platform. These kinds of sites are also paid platforms; however, your hosting and tech support is included in the monthly cost (around $30-$40/month). You would still need to pay for your domain (around $17/year), and your business email (around $5/month per user). Typically these kinds of platforms will also make you pay quite a bit extra to “unlock” certain features that allow you to customize your site. Thus, we suggest you go the route of hiring a WordPress developer so that you can save money in the long term, and have full flexibility  and ownership in your design and content.

*It is important to note that when we say WordPress we mean a self-hosted WordPress.org site and NOT a WordPress.com site (which is comparable to the drag and drop builder platforms we mentioned above). Many people get confused between these two WordPresses. If you are ever confused, feel free to send us an email and ask!

Purchasing a Domain

(ie: www.marceildesign.com)
We suggest buying this directly from Google for approximately $12-$17 a year.

Setting up your email

(ie: Lauren@marceildesign.com)
We suggest g-suite from google ($5/month per user) to get an email address at your domain, as well as a Google Drive and other services for your business.

Choosing a hosting service

(ie: Who pushes your site live on the internet and keeps you safe from cyber attacks)

If you choose the self-hosted WordPress site as your platform of choice, then we will suggest that you choose Flywheel as your hosting provider (around $15/month) as we have a trusted partnership with them and have found them the most responsive, affordable, and available hosting providers for our clients using WordPress.

(Optional) Choosing an e-commerce platform

If you want to sell things online, you’ll need an e-commerce solution
1. If you choose the Showit5 platform we suggest Shopify lite (approximately $9/month)
2. If you choose the WordPress platform we suggest using Woocommerce (free for very basic, each extension costs around $99 USD each. Typically a project will end up requiring at least 2-3 additional plugins at your cost).

(Optional) Choosing a payment gateway

If you want to sell things online, you’ll need a way to process payments.
We suggest discussing various options with us at the time of your custom project. Typically payment gateways are free to install, but take a % of each transaction processed via credit card