Website

MarkDR said:

I'm hoping some business owners here can give me an idea of what it would cost
to establish a website in DR.

I'm thinking of the costs for:
Site design, registering domain name, publishing site and yearly maintenance.

Also what would it cost to establish a social media presence for a business?
I understand that it is perhaps even more important than a website in the DR.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

You don?t say if the website is supposed to promote a physical business, or if the website or the software behind it IS the business. In the first case, depending also a bit of the target market / niche, I would go first with social media and then possibly with website. This due to the fact that as far as I have seen, most businesses in the DR promote their FB page or similar, but not too many their website. I?d also say that people are more familiar with going around in FB than in the internet outside of that.

My wife had a physical business, which she promoted via her own FB page, pretty successfully. Currently she has her own fashion FB page, again done pretty well... She has never had a website of any kind, and I having dealt with online things the last 7 years have also never seen any need for one. Via the same FB page she deals with customer service (chat/messenger/posts/comments etc. etc.) so it?s an integrated service of promotion, commenting and customer service.

Regarding the costs of putting up a website, I?m sure we have people more proficient than I am here, but I think this topic is not really DR related at all (unless you are talking about the page promotion / traffic sources as well), as you can of course get a site done anywhere. Also, not talking the slightest bit your business, I think it can be a bit difficult to discuss pricing, as "site design" and "yearly maintenance" can contain almost anything...

Try wix.com They assured me that anyone could build a free website with their help. I can build you a house, but couldn't build a website there, but if you know more than I do about such things maybe you can. Aside from that I can give you the name of the guy that built mine when I couldn't if you want to PM me. I pay $16.50 a month to maintain my website.
Der Fish

I say go the Facebook route. There are some pretty impressive FB pages out there. Do the site, record a couple of quick videos, and start looking at other sites and "invite" their followers.

If I may ask.. Why Bella Vista Mall? As malls go, BVM is one of the slowest moving malls here in SD. It's more of a social hangout for neighboring residents than anything else.

I'd suggest you look into Downtown Center.

To be honest with you, I do a lot of mall lurking, and BVM is probably the last mall I'd want to start a business. (OK, Diamond Mall may be worse)

Websites have functions unavailable in Facebook and other social media.

The best marketing is a solid website with much marketing on social media. Social media drive eyes to your website but should never be considered a substitute. They work together; one does not compete with the other, and should never be thought of as an "either/or" decision.

You are fully in control of your website. You are never fully in control of your social media account.

Social media can create interest, but it's the website that sells. That's where you can separate yourself from competitors: the style, depth and scope of your website creates an indelible impression of your business in a way social media cannot.

Print media is dying, highly expensive per contact and is very temporary. However, some products or services may lend themselves toward print. It depends on matching your product to a market. Just be prepared to choke over the cost.

If someone has moderate skills and the aptitude to be trainable, consider a local design and hosting company that can do your initial design, maintain the critical security features of the host server and train you on the maintenance yourself. Your design will be professional and you are put in control.

Derfish said:

Try wix.com They assured me that anyone could build a free website with their help. I can build you a house, but couldn't build a website there, but if you know more than I do about such things maybe you can. Aside from that I can give you the name of the guy that built mine when I couldn't if you want to PM me. I pay $16.50 a month to maintain my website.
Der Fish

Click to expand...

The critical problem with wix websites is they rely on a lot of AJAX, which is Javascript on steroids (AJAX means ?Asynchronous Javascript and XML".)

What that means is Googlebots and other search engines have a really difficult time indexing the pages. This means they are not SEO-friendly. ALL pages have to be indexed before search engines really know you exist, much less rank you particularly high.

Wix keeps trying to keep up with SEO, but always seem a couple of steps behind. Their "HashBang" implementation has been hit-or-miss.

Just remember "free" is not always cost effective. Even with Wix, the paid packages get more google attention than the freebies. But that's not all. Wix requires you use their servers. In web servers, speed is king...and speed costs. You have no real options for speed and other cool server toys with Wix.

For those with low skills and budget, Wix can make sense. But for those who depend on their website for real business, there are other website options to explore and vastly better hosting options that are faster, have more options and can be upgraded as your business grows.

What is the product or service?

I'm assuming it's for Dominicans as you are in BV mall. What's the age demographic?

If you are talking 40 or younger as your core customer in the DR and it's a physical product (fashion, furniture etc) and no online sales, look at Instagram. It blows away everything else in regards to CPA and it can get very viral, very quickly if you know how to target your demographic.
I have seen it drive some very nice numbers, specifically in Latin countries. If it's a service, then social media and website combined.

As I have said, a lot depends on who you are trying to target and with what.
If it's a younger demographic, look at social media and a website as a distance 2nd.

Robert said:

What is the product or service?

I'm assuming it's for Dominicans as you are in BV mall. What's the age demographic?

If you are talking 40 or younger as your core customer in the DR and it's a physical product (fashion, furniture etc) and no online sales, look at Instagram. It blows away everything else in regards to CPA and it can get very viral, very quickly if you know how to target your demographic.
I have seen it drive some very nice numbers, specifically in Latin countries. If it's a service, then social media and website combined.

As I have said, a lot depends on who you are trying to target and with what.
If it's a younger demographic, look at social media and a website as a distance 2nd.

Click to expand...

Certainly social media is critical in an all-encompassing marketing program. But while it's true that Instagram appeals to young 'uns, it has some structural weaknesses that inhibit the broadcast of "message." And certainly, properly used, can be quite effective short term.

But like Facebook vs. website, it's not "either/or." It's best and most effectively used as an important complementary tool to get word out quickly for sales, hot items, etc. Like FB, it's difficult to get a broader, more nuanced message out as to who you are, and why you're different. Why? Because it's been proven over and over that the mind buys what the eyes see. And the social media platforms do not allow for specific graphic customization and presentation of message. The limitations are endless as anyone who has tried to upload a 179x179 profile image can attest.

And now that FB bought Instagram, we can assume that FB-esque policies can begin guiding that platform---which can be very frustrating (ever try to get in touch with FB on an issue that is harming your page? Good luck.). And besides: you really don't control social media. They do. They own it, you don't. And prudent business people don't put a lot of assets in anything in which they have no real control, certainly not all their eggs. Not to mention in social media you're just one in a crowd of a bazillion with no real way to differentiate yourself.

On top of that the taste of young 'uns change on a whim. I just read that FB is growing only 3% a year, and that represents a huge decline. Yes, they are large, but the young 'uns are moving on to the next coolest thing. And they will do it again. Look at Twitter: once the Cool Kids fave, it's in a death spiral.

That said, IMO FB offers the most cost-effective advertising for targeting specific demographics anywhere, and you don't have to get all wadded up over "key words" and bidding for placement like on Google or other search engines.

I recently ran one small campaign on FB targeting males 21-65, living in the Dominican Republic, with an interest in motorcycles. For $48 my ad was served to 90,840, received 14,278 page engagements, 39 page "likes" (which feeds future campaigns that will add to my email database), 14,098 click-through and resulted in 375 "information requests" emails from the website, and 22 people who want to put a deposit on a $5000 product.

I have spent $250 in total on FB and have a database of 1400 email addresses of interested potential customers. This is a classic example of using FB to drive traffic to a comprehensive, popping graphic website at a very cost-effective investment.

I second CobraBoy's advice as heseems to know his stuff and is giving you the best advice here.
I say that slighly biasedly as it is what I was going to advise you too.

The only thing I would add to his advice are a few suggestions where you can get good work done relatively inexpensively.
Check out these useful sites and services:

FREELANCERS/OUTSOURCING (GENERAL):
- https://www.peopleperhour.com/
- https://www.fiverr.com/
- https://www.freelancer.com/
- https://www.upwork.com/

FREELANCERS/OUTSOURCING (DESIGN):
- http://www.designcrowd.com/
- https://99designs.com/
- http://logotournament.com/

I have used all of these and have had great results. Happy to help walk you through how to use them if you feel a bit lost at first.

All the best with your new venture and feel free to PM me for direct advice or if you have any questions.
I work with and advise a lot of tech startups, so have a bit of experience in this area.

Rob

When it comes to choosing which social media platform to use, it all comes down to whic ones your target clients are likely to be using.
As CobraBoy mentioned above, they keep moving and where FB was once the darling of the cool kids, it's now more a haven for 'older' folk and the kids have moved to Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and the like.
But with all of them, as much as you may feel like you are targeting certain demographics, you will always be at the mercy of the platform's algorithms as to how many people actually do end up seeing you posts, adverts, etc.

However, when all said and done there is one thing that beats social media, print and all otherr forms of advertising/promotion hands down and that is EMAIL MARKETING. CobraBoy alluded to it earlier when he mentioned his email list.
When you build your site, make sure you add an email data-capture box on the home page. With all your social media work, make sure you drive followers, fans, etc. to sunscribe to your email list.
As anyone that that signs up for this is effectively telling you that they like your stuff and want to know more.

As you are only looking to build what is known as a 'brochure' website, this should not cost you much more than a few hundred bucks if you use one of the outsourced options I listed earlier or you could even learn to do it for yourself for free.
There are plenty of sites where you can learn to to code e.g. https://www.udemy.com/ or https://www.codecademy.com/.

I would also recommend you build your site using WordPress. It is really easy (even for non-technical people) to use, manage and maintain.
It has tons of plugins (many of which are free) that you can add as and when necessary if you want to grow your site and its capabilities (e.g. you can very easily add an online shop if you ever decide you want to sell from the site).

Hope that helps at least a little.

Best,

Rob

RobFenton said:

I would also recommend you build your site using WordPress. It is really easy (even for non-technical people) to use, manage and maintain.
It has tons of plugins (many of which are free) that you can add as and when necessary if you want to grow your site and its capabilities (e.g. you can very easily add an online shop if you ever decide you want to sell from the site).

Hope that helps at least a little.

Best,

Rob

Click to expand...

We've found the paid plug-in, overall, vastly superior to the freebies. But even they are quite reasonable. At the same time, we try to use as few plug-ins as possible for speed reasons. For instance, for image compression it's more effective to use a stand-alone freeware app like RIOT (instead of Photoshop, because PS is very expensive) before uploading, instead of using an image compression plug-in.

Additionally, if one really wants to make a WP site pop, they need to be able to edit the CSS, and that is generally beyond the scope of the non-technical user.

And even with a WP platform it has to live somewhere. Server choice and type is every bit as critical as the CMS platform, and this is where non-techies start rolling their eyeballs into the back of their head. Why? In SEO, the top of the requirements is SPEED. #1 and waaaay ahead of whatever the most current #2 is...

cobraboy said:

We've found the paid plug-in, overall, vastly superior to the freebies. But even they are quite reasonable. At the same time, we try to use as few plug-ins as possible for speed reasons. For instance, for image compression it's more effective to use a stand-alone freeware app like RIOT (instead of Photoshop, because PS is very expensive) before uploading, instead of using an image compression plug-in.

Additionally, if one really wants to make a WP site pop, they need to be able to edit the CSS, and that is generally beyond the scope of the non-technical user.

And even with a WP platform it has to live somewhere. Server choice and type is every bit as critical as the CMS platform, and this is where non-techies start rolling their eyeballs into the back of their head. Why? In SEO, the top of the requirements is SPEED. #1 and waaaay ahead of whatever the most current #2 is...

Click to expand...

Very true and completely agree.

Great question.
I have a webpage for my condo complex in Sosua. My Web developer is based where I live in N.J. My site is rather large with pages for each unit , description, blog, pics, amenities, ect. My investment was $3,000. U.S. and that includes adding additional pages as I build more units.
I use blue host to host my site. It cost me $25.00 per year and that includes my domain name.
I also have a fb page. The goal of the fb page is to drive renters to the website so they can book a unit. My Web developer also does social media development using fb, instagram and other social media. It's a small fortune to pay someone to do that. To do it correctly you need to know then key search words to hashtag and other information. Imho to do it correct isn't for the average person.
I view social media as a valuable tool, but for me the webpage is king because it shows my property the best way possible that social media cant. The image of being a established, legitimate, first rate business comes from a well designed webpage. I believe it's best to pay a professional to build a webpage rather than doing it yourself.
Good luck with you business.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

cobraboy said:

Websites have functions unavailable in Facebook and other social media.

The best marketing is a solid website with much marketing on social media. Social media drive eyes to your website but should never be considered a substitute. They work together; one does not compete with the other, and should never be thought of as an "either/or" decision.

You are fully in control of your website. You are never fully in control of your social media account.

Social media can create interest, but it's the website that sells. That's where you can separate yourself from competitors: the style, depth and scope of your website creates an indelible impression of your business in a way social media cannot.

Click to expand...

I fully agree with you on every point, just wanted to clarify what I said about social media, that was strictly country/market/niche related based on what I have seen on small business promotion. Obviously everything you say above is very correct in terms of general online promotion.

MarkDR said:

I had no idea before we met that social media had far surpassed websites in terms of bricks and mortar business promotion
etc.

Click to expand...

See above what cobraboy said, and I do hope that I did not say anything like this above that could be applied generally?

My point was that based on what I have seen, in certain segments social media accounts are promoted (in the DR) stronger than other accounts. People might be more comfortable going to the FB page of the company and talk with them there than they would be going to their actual website. And I believe this due to the social media usage in the DR.

As I said clearly, even in the DR, it still depends on your business, what are you offering. I was merely offering this one aspect, as I have seen it myself, using only social media to promote a small business (business of one person). Social media was heavily used, no website. I would never do that in my country (EU), people want to see my website as well. In the DR, it doesn?t work like that, based on what I have seen.

MarkDR said:

The site is strictly meant to promote a physical business. There will be no online sales, at least not for the foreseeable future.
It's interesting what you say about going with social media to promote the business.

He strongly urged us to focus on the social media side but said he was willing and able to work on both sides
(soc. med. + website).
He gave us a quote today and I was wondering whether it was reasonable or not.

As far as location of the programmer etc. is concerned...
I am aware that site setup and social media setup/updates can be done anywhere in the world.
But after I learned about the importance of social media, and specifically those that I had not heard of before here in the DR
I thought it might be wise to go with a local pro in this area rather than one located in another country.

Click to expand...

If I were you, I would principally explore professionals outside of the country, if you need help on how to start research, let me know, I can point you something...