Website Creation and its Cost Implications

© 2017 March Oyinki

Introduction:

The growth of the digital marketing industry has led to an increase in the number of new websites owned by startups. The reason for this increase is not farfetched; digital marketing has enabled even small mum and pop shops make significant progress and increase sales by been present on the Internet.

Affiliate marketing, which is one of the most effective digital marketing channels, avails tremendous opportunities to many individuals who sell affiliate products on their blogging sites, by embedding content codes in for of banner or text, and as a result, they earn substantial commission. Many business owners find it quite challenging to setup a website because of the huge cost, which they sometimes incur to design a website that is fully interactive.

High cost is one of the main reasons why several business owners are unable to setup their own website. The cost of a website is determined by factors such as domain name registration, hosting of the site, secure certificate fee, site backup fees, ecommerce functionality, email accounts and many other optional services that attract a fee.

Domain Name Registration

The registration of a domain name plays a crucial role in determining the cost of a website. Domain name can either be free or paid for, and it can sometimes be expensive, depending on the registrant. Some registrants offer a fee domain when you subscribe to their hosting service. At the same time, there are domain names that are categorized as premium. These type of domain names are those that contain common or short English words or abbreviations.

For example, to register the domain name Joyfulthingz.com cost over 7,000 pounds on GoDaddy, which is about 3 million Naira, and the same domain name with a .org extension cost far much less and as low as 5 pounds.

Hosting Service:

The type of hosting service you choose can influence the cost of your website as well. Using a tier-1 registrant often attract higher fees. By tier-1 registrant, I mean the global leading hosting service providers, such as GoDaddy, Register, 1 & 1, inMotion, HostGator and many others. Sites such as WordPress and Wix, which offers free hosting site are more affordable for new startups, who have issues with cost.

There are other small registrants that charge less, which are more exposed to hackers and viruses, therefore have higher downtime rates.

Secure Certificate:

Secure or SSL Certificate is a requirement for websites that want to protect their data, especially, when they want to carry out ecommerce transaction. GlobalSigns describes SSL Certificates as small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key to an organization's details. When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser.

Ecommerce Functionality:

Introducing ecommerce features on your website is one of the most important requirements if you want to transact business such as sell products and services and can transfer funds on your site. Ecommerce services are offered by most hosting providers and the cost varies.

Site Backup Services:

Many hosting providers offer site backup services as optional. This allow site administrators to protect the content of their website such that they are able to restore the site content in the event of a crash or accidental deletion of the uploaded files.

Email Account:

To setup a domain name email account is an important aspect of owning a website. If you have setup a website and you are still using a free email account, such as Yahoo! or Gmail, is quite out of place for a business website. It is either the site owner does not know the advantage of owning a domain name email or cannot afford the cost. Email is an essential part of the corporate identity of the company, and it is as important as the hallmark, location address, phone numbers and slogan.

Conclusion:

Each of the above factors attract different charges and could all build up to so much at the end of the day, and domes with some financial consequences that could prevent or discourage many new startup, particularly those that do not have sufficient funds to pay for such cost.

When a new startup experiences a situation whereby some or all of the required website features becomes unaffordable, remember that there are free versions of most of these services, though they may compromise the integrity of your website.