Site cost
Where are we?
This chapter is about what makes a Web site good. A good site serves owners. We’ve talked about how a site can increase sales. But owners want to control costs as well. Let’s talk about that.
This lesson’s goals
Learn:
- A business that has a Web site must pay to (1) create a site, (2) run the Web server and its infrastructure, and (3) keep the site’s content up-to-date.
- Web servers for most small business sites cost from about $20 to $200 per month to run.
- A content management system (CMS) can reduce the cost of updating a Web site, by (1) reducing the cost of creating the site, and (2) letting less skilled people update the site.
Types of cost
The value proposition and branding are about sales. They’re about getting people to come to the site and do business.
But profit is sales minus cost. If the site is too expensive to run, the business won’t make a profit. Owners want sites that are cheap to run.
Creating the site is obviously a major expense. But it’s not the only one. Once a site is up and running, there are two main types of costs:
- Technology operation.
- Keeping the site up-to-date.
Of the two, the second is usually more expensive.
The Web server
Every site needs a Web server, a computer that has the right software installed. It needs to be in an air-conditioned room, plugged in to a power outlet, and connected to the Internet. It needs to be kept secure. The data needs to be backed up regularly, so it can be restored if something goes wrong.
All of this costs money. But not much, at least for a typical small business. Carly’s School would not run its own Web server. Very few companies do. Instead, they pay other companies to run the servers for them.
Hosting companies run Web servers, and sell space on them. CarlysSchool.Com could spend less than $20 per month on its Web server. You’ll learn more about this later.
WanderingDog.Com might need more power. But, unless the site became very popular, it would not cost more than $200 per month. A lot cheaper than a physical store!
Keeping the site up-to-date
Someone has to keep the site up-to-date. This labor cost is usually more than the cost of the server.
CarlysSchool.Com might not change very much over time. Add new courses, change the starting dates of the next courses, change prices, but not much else. Maybe a few changes per week.
WanderingDog.Com would change a lot. New products would come out. Older products would be retired. There would be new expert reviews all the time.
Software can help automate some of the work. Particularly a content management system (CMS).
Suppose a WanderingDog.Com page is being updated. A new customer review is being added. One way to do it is to edit the HTML code. HTML is the main language of the Web. Here’s what someone would type:
Figure 1. Editing HTML
You need expertise to do this task. You need to know what the HTML tags do, and how they work together. You’ll be learning about these tags later in CoreDogs.
Some CMS (content management systems, remember) give you an interface like this:
Figure 2. WYSIWYG editor
It’s like Microsoft Word. You use buttons to indent, set italic and bold, and so on. This is called a WYSIWYG editor, pronounced “wizzy-wig.” It stands for What You See Is What You Get.
The WYSIWYG editor translates your work into HTML. HTML is still being created, but the editor does part of the work.
What does this have to do with the cost of a Web site? Because (on average) people who know HTML get paid more than people who don’t. So using a CMS with a WYSIWYG editor means that WanderingDog.Com can hire a less expensive person to update the content.
Of course, WanderingDog.Com would need to hire someone to build the site, and change its structure as needed. That requires technical skills. WanderingDog.Com is going to have to pay more for that.
So if I learn HTML and other stuff, I could earn more money because I could type in the tags, rather than using the WYSIWYG editor?
No, that’s not it. If there’s a WYSIWYG editor, you can enter the customer review without knowing HTML. WanderingDog.Com would not pay extra for someone who knows HTML to do that job. The job doesn’t require HTML knowledge.
If you learn Web stuff, you don’t type in customer reviews anymore. You do other things. You create page menus, add branding images, and so on. You set up the WYSIWYG editor that other employees use to add customer reviews.
You get paid more because you can build and maintain the structure of the site itself. You can do tasks that can’t be done by people who only know how to use WYSIWYG editors.
Summary
- A business that has a Web site must pay to (1) create a site, (2) run the Web server and its infrastructure, and (3) keep the site’s content up-to-date.
- Web servers for most small business sites cost from about $20 to $200 per month to run.
- A content management system (CMS) can reduce the cost of updating a Web site, by (1) reducing the cost of creating the site, and (2) letting less skilled people update the site.
What now?
This chapter is about what makes a Web site good. A good site serves owners. We’ve talked about the goal of making money. We’ve looked at things like branding, and the cost of running a site.
But owners have goals that aren’t about money. Let’s talk about that.
