There is big news for small business.
"You can afford a website," says web designer and E-consultant Suzanne Engels. New technology has translated into prices for design and hosting that are a small fraction of what they were just a few years ago. This is especially good news because, while prices have dropped, so has tolerance for companies that do not have a good looking, well-designed website.
Engels, who is an unusually articulate and engaging techie, lays out the basics of small business website development during a half-day seminar on Wednesday, March 24, at 9 a.m. at the Rutgers Center for Advanced Food Technology in Piscataway. The seminar is jointly sponsored by the NJAWBO Women's Business Center and by the TCNJ Small Business Development Center. Cost: $25. Call 609-581-2220 for more information.
Engels, a Mid-Westerner, studied fine arts at the University of Illinois (Class of 1976), and then taught art and math in junior high school. A realization that she needed to make more money brought her to AT&T's Bell Labs, where her skill with an ink pen won her a job in drafting. Before long, though, her pen was taken away, and "they stuck a computer in front of me."
She took to the machine right away and, with AT&T happy to pay to up her skills, earned a two-year degree in digital electronics. Moving to Massachusetts with the company, she enrolled in Boston University and earned a master's degree in computer science. There followed 15 years in the Bay State that were broken only by an 18-month stint for the company in Nuremberg.
Engels arrived in New Jersey, at Lucent's Holmdel offices, as the telecom giant's unraveling was picking up momentum. Shortly after beginning work in Holmdel she was offered a buy-out package she couldn't refuse. "I was one of the lucky ones," she says. The company added five years to her age and to her service, and, well before her 50th birthday, she became a retiree.
"I was much more fortunate than others," she says, clearly empathetic with the suffering of co-workers who were turned loose into a terrible economy without much of a safety net. She landed well, but still, it was not what she expected. "In 1979, when you signed on with AT&T, you were being hired into a career for a lifetime," she says. "You felt it really was your company."
Her tether cut, she started her business, which is based in East Brunswick and is called WebArtNTech (http://www.webartntech.com/). The company has two specialties. One is consulting to businesses of all sizes on E-business analysis, site architecture, front end systems, and many other web-enabled functions. The other is the design, marketing, and maintenance of websites for small businesses. Her clients are in a number of industries, including home improvement, pharmaceutical trials, marketing, technical writing, creative writing, technology consulting, small manufacturing, clothing design, and the professions.
Each company in each industry is different, and she makes sure that she understands it before she starts work on a website. But the basic requirements for a professional, effective website cut across all industries. They include:
Site design. Whether a business is selling financial advice or patio furniture, some basics apply. "There is a usability standard," says Engels. At a minimum, every website must let users know who you are and what you do. There has to be a product page - or pages - often with pictures. There has to be a "contact us" section with full information, and an "about us" section. "About us" is the company's chance to strut its stuff. "This is where you make the viewer comfortable with who you are and where you differentiate yourself," says Engels.
This basic business website will include about four to six pages. The cost? Engels can create it for $600 to $700. This is perhaps 10 percent of the figure being quoted by professionals five years ago. She says that if the same site is designed by a full-fledged web design firm, "which I am not," the cost would rise to at least $2,500. This is so, she says, because such a firm, which typically offers hosting, which she does not, needs to keep a full staff on its payroll.
Hosting. Obtaining a domain name and web hosting can often be done through the same firm. Engels says "there are thousands of them." The cost for that basic, four to six page site would be about $120. "Four or five years back it was at least $4,000 or $5,000," she says.
Installation and testing. This is a step many small business people do not know about, and therefore do not factor into their costs. But, one way or another, it has to be reckoned with. What often happens to neophytes, says Engels, is that they have a site designed, and expect that it will automatically put itself onto the Internet. When that proves not to be the case, many ask the website designer to put it up.
"It ends up costing an exorbitant amount," says Engels. This is so, in her view, because many designers do not have the technical ability to do the job quickly and efficiently. An alternative for the business owner is the do-it-yourself route. While not impossible, this can be a mightily frustrating process. People think that getting a website from a computer to the Internet should be a snap, but it rarely is. "There are bugs," says Engels. "There are always bugs."
A person with technical expertise can get the job done for that basic four to six page website in two to three hours at a rate of $50 an hour. A more complicated website, at say 20 pages and including a shopping cart, can take more like eight hours over a period of two days.
Maintenance and marketing. Marketing a website involves terra firma as well as cyberspace. To succeed in the former sphere, business owners have to make sure that the logos, tag lines, colors, and designs that they use on their stationery, trucks, storefronts, and brochures are replicated on their website. Success in the more ethereal space involves making sure that the website is picked up by search engines. The latter concern, however, should not be overdone.
"If your customers are in New Jersey, putting marketing money into coming up in the first 10 search engine results is a waste of money," says Engels. You need to be on the search engines, but you don't need every web surfer in New Orleans and New Delhi clicking on you.
As for maintenance, Engels says that websites need to be updated three to four times a year. While new information is being added, the site should also be evaluated. Where are visitors coming from? Which search engine sent them over? What keywords did they use? When Engels performs maintenance, for a cost of about $400, she checks all of this out, and makes adjustments accordingly.
Small business owners can do this themselves, but she finds that most are too busy to do so.
Comparison shopping is the number one activity on the Internet, says Engels. Any business that wants a shot at all of those surfers' dollars needs to be there. With prices way down, there is little excuse for parking a company on the shore.