Rolling Out the $1000 Site Deal
We soft-launched what we're calling the "$1000 Sites" deal last Friday. The basics of the deal are that you get a custom-designed, one page site in one week for $1000. We think it's a pretty good deal and I'll try to explain why.
A service designed for small businesses
Getting a business up and running is tough work. Affording the professional services that can make your business stand out in a crowd can be difficult. Being the owner of a small business myself, I have a soft spot for other people that are in the same boat and struggling to make things work. Unfortunately, as we've grown and taken on more overhead and improved the thoroughness of our process, the cost of working with us has increased. While I know for a fact we're not nearly the most expensive shop in town, we have almost entirely priced ourselves out of reach of the very small business.
Very small business, in our experience, don't need — or really even want — a full-blown design and development process. Sometimes all they need is a professional site that provides the credibility that new and small business desperately need and gets their message out to the world. $1000 Sites was designed to respond to these needs and work within the limited budget of a very small business.
And the potential doesn't stop there
Imagine if you wanted create a unique and individual site for every product or service you rolled out. Or maybe your company or organization is having an event that needs a dedicated space to promote it. Now you can plan it in with the rest of your promotional efforts with a clear idea of cost and timeframe.
But only one page?
Yes.
Maybe two pages?
No, and here's why. It's been long known that people don't read online. Well, they do, but only after they have determined that what they are about to read is what they have been looking for. What this means to the site owner is that it is in your best interest to streamline and focus your message for easy scanning. For businesses that are mearly looking to establish credibility and provide a potential customer with the information they need to take the next step, one page is enough.
From our perspective, it's a way to provide cost savings by minimizing complexity. The moment someone wants a second page a whole lot of questions arise. What does that page look like? Does it function differently? How do we deal with navigation or other forms of wayfinding? What happens if the site needs to expand? All of these questions are par for the course when you're developing a full-fledged site, but dealing with this issues adds time and time adds cost.
Keep it simple
One page. One week. $1000. No meetings. No proposals. Hosting and domain name included. Yep! The hardest part is writing your content.
My personal opinion is that when you give yourself the problem of having to get everything on one page, you force yourself to be more creative. Not only in terms of the visual design of the page, but also the content. And, anyways, let's face it — did you really want to have to write those other pages?
Phil Hertzler | 05.24.06 | 0 comment(s)
Reader Comments
No comments on this entry right now.
