Finances are tight for everyone nowadays, and nearly everyone is looking for ways to cut their expenditures. When it comes to reducing costs for your business, you may be tempted to eliminate your business website altogether—or never put one up at all. But going without a business website is generally a mistake. Your website is how potential customers can find you. It’s where you can send people for more information about your business. And if you use the Web to sell goods or services, having a good website is not optional. If you’re finding website costs prohibitive, here are some ideas to help you get what you need at a price you can afford.

 

Who Do You Know?

Your solution may be with someone you already know, or with someone your friends can refer you to. You might be able to hire a techno-savvy teen who’s itching to use his or her skills to put a website together, for only a fraction of the price it would cost to hire an established professional. Or you may find someone just starting out in the Web design business and is willing to work for lower pay in exchange for a recommendation. You never know what skills lurk among the people you know until you start asking!

Templates

Many Web hosting companies offer templates for their customers to design their own websites. They’re straightforward to put together, and don’t require much technical know-how to get up and running. Check out the templates available with your company and see if one of them will work for your business.

Do-It-Yourself Programs

Depending on what you want your website to do, you may find a particular program is all you need to put your site together. Some programs take a little work to use correctly, but they don’t require the alternative: pages of endless computer code that only programmers can read. Word Press is widely used across the Internet, and it produces some attractive sites. Adobe Dream weaver has long been a staple among professional Web designers and can be purchased and used by anyone. Blogger offers free blogs with lots of templates and formatting flexibility. With a little patience and study, even newbie’s can use these tools to put together attractive websites.

Work out a Trade

If you don’t have money you can devote to the project, you may still be able to work out a deal with a good Web designer. Ask if they’d be willing to work out a trade where you pay them in goods and services offered by your business rather than cash. This can be cost-effective for you because the goods and services cost you less than you charge your customers for them; even if you give your Web designer a good deal, you can still save money over what you would have paid in cash. It also gives you an extra opportunity to promote your business and potentially gain a new loyal customer.

Even when the price of everything seems to be going through the roof, there are still ways you can have a good website for your business. Be creative and ask around. There may be opportunities in front of your nose that you never would have seen if you hadn’t looked.

Sheila Barnett writes on personal finance and budgeting for financialcalculator.org, a site with helpful information about investments, loans, net worth and plenty of intriguing tools like this investment calculator; there’s even a calculator to help you get started with your retirement planning.