Anyone who is thinking about starting their own business or building an online presence knows they’ll need a website. But shelling out thousands of dollars for web design doesn’t always fit in the budget. As someone who’s been there, let me share a few tips I’ve learned about creating an affordable website.
First, consider investing in a domain name only instead of a full build-out right away. You can purchase a .com or .org domain for around $15,000 NGN. This establishes your online identity without committing to full site development. Later, if your business takes off you can upgrade as needed.
For hosting, opt for a basic shared plan rather than a dedicated server right away. Shared hosting starts around $60-168,000 NGN per year. This gives you plenty of resources to get started and see what kind of traffic your site will get. Only upgrade if you need more bandwidth or advanced features down the line.
Look for templates rather than custom designs. WordPress and Joomla have thousands of themes available for $60-250,000 NGN. These take care of the heavy lifting so you just need to input your content and customize colors/images. Quality free themes are also available if you’re willing to do some digging.
Finally, factor in added costs carefully. While features like SSL certificates, plugins, and integration are nice, I’d wait to implement non-essential items until later stages. Things like email marketing, live chat, and dedicated support come with higher price tags that young startups may not need immediately.
By starting light with domain, hosting, and templated designs, you can get an affordable professional presence online for about 150-200k NGN. That’s a lot less intimidating than large upfront development fees. With success over time, optimize your site as budgets allow. But take the pressure off and start small – your content and product are more important at first anyway.
