Community Website Cost

Totally random question, but I thought you guys could help....I haven't been on site in a while...what is the going rate these days for website design and monthly hosting/maintenance? I'm just curious, I was in a discussion recently with an industry friend and her company is against setting up a website for them because of the cost. I don't see how any property could function these days without a website!

She could do a blog for her website and have a lot of info up there for free (not including the time she puts in it, of course)---pictures, prices, location, specials, and even a contact form. There's no reason not to do this because if you are a property of any substantial size, you need to have an online presence.

Webpages pre-designed are cheap but cheesy sometimes ($50-$200). That might be another avenue for her to go. I think that web designers hourly price depends on where you are, and designing a site can be quite involved or very simple, depending on what you want. Ours here (in VA, not near DC) are about $50+/hour.

Domain names are usually $10/year, and hosting a small website about $120/year.

Morgan, my advice would be to NOT do the monthly fee website companies.
They will charge you $150 per month or more. The cost ads up quickly. I have been
using a company called Alternet to create good looking and functional property
sites for a one-time cost, usually around $750-$1000, depending on what you want.
They also set it up so that the on-site staff can make their own updates to pricing, specials, photos, etc.
Alternet's phone number is 919-413-4619. Contact is Ben.

I'm going to check out that Altrenet site as well. Thanks! (Our company is thinking about going with www.propertysolutions.com for the website and paying online advantage, however; it is pricey.)

If you want something low cost but that you can get created immediately, I would suggest doing a wordpress website. What is nice is that you only pay the domain ($11/year ( www.godaddy.com ) and hosting (I like the hatchling plan $4.95/month or baby plan $7.95/month (unlimited domains) at www.hostgator.com And that is all you pay. Wordpress themes are free and so user friendly.

Also, they are mobile friendly and social media template friendly like many of the expensive property website software but not nearly close to their price.

If you would like help getting started with a wordpress webiste at all, if you want to get your website up and running asap, feel free to send me an email. I'd be happy to help you out. I've done tons of these & can do them in my sleep! [email protected] :)

Good luck!!!

I agree there are very cost effective ways to make sure you have a web site. Its not like it used to be. You can always spend more money but there are many low cost options now.

Morgan,

I think every community needs a website. I dont say that because i work for an apartment advertising company, but people these days are looking up specific apartment community on google, yahoo, or any other search engines instead of just typing up apartments in a certain city.

Another reason to have a community website, is because your community can up first on search engines when doing a search for your specific property, instead of being on an advertising website like apartmentguide, ForRent, or even ours (Rentping.com) where your competitors are coming up on the list too. The last thing a property manager wants, is having a potential client see one of their competitors on the same site they advertise, and then they move into their competitors instead of theirs.

Our company does full-video walkthrough tours for property managers and put them on their site, as well as create community website like this one at no extra cost.

Example: www.TheLandingsBellevue.com

The main goal is to get leases, so our community sites are created simple and easy to use and offer different color templates for our clients.

Simple works, like Google.com and too many things make it a nightmare for consumers, like yahoo.com

I hope this helps, and Good Luck!

By the way, have you all checked out VaultWare Places yet? They offer free apartment community websites.


(Disclosure: VaultWare Places is sponsoring Kate Good's upcoming webinar.)

Can someone fill me in more about vaultware? I checked out the website. It looks awesome but sounds too good to be true. How does it compare to wwww.propertysolutions.com?

As a former website design and search engine optimisation/web marketing agency owner, my suggestion before you go running off to buy the cheapest option is to sit down and honestly decide what place the website is going to have in the marketing and generation of business. How much business do you think you might generate from the website? How... will you advertise in community directories, will you put your website address (known as URL, or domain name) on all your brochures (hint: please do!), will you use advertising on Google (think carefully and engage a professional web marketer), will you try to be No.1 in google for key word searches (think carefully and engage a professional search engine optimisation marketer)? What will your ongoing budget for the site be (yes, there will be ongoing costs, over and above the hosting)? Who is going to update the information? How much web knowledge do they have?

I have seen many, many businesses set up a website, and then leave it with old information for years - in my mind, a complete waste of money.

The initial design and set up shouldn't set you back more than $1000 for a simple 5-10 page "static" site .. but whoever updates it needs to know html coding enough not to break the site if information is changed. Hosting for these can be as simple as a $30 once off payment.

Likewise, for a Wordpress site (my personal preference for small businesses), a simple set up shouldn't set you back more than $1000, but you will have ongoing costs in terms of hosting, but even so, $5/month is more than enough.

Whoever is updating a wordpress site really only needs to have the basic skills of logging in to an online site, and using a system similar to google docs to change information. Much safer as far as breaking the coding goes ... you can't unless you deliberately mess with the code files.

But don't just do a site because you think you need one ... yes you do! but you need to know where it fits into your overall marketing strategy, or else it will be ad hoc and not present your business well, and probably not return anything on your investment at all.

Key terms to have a basic understanding of:

hosting
server
domain
seo (search engine optimisation)
sem (search engine marketing)
ppc (pay per click)
adwords (google's advertising service)
traffic
cost per view
site tracking

Key questions to consider:

Why do I want a site?
What is my budget (as a percentage of overall marketing)?
Do I have the skills internally, or do I need external help in;

buying a domain name,
setting up a server,
designing the graphics of the site,
making sure the html/other code helps search engines find me,
making sure I include the right information on the site
update it regularly (at least a 6 monthly review)

Am I really committed to maintaining a site as an exemplary portrayal of my business?

HTH
Cate

Thanks everyone for your feedback, it's much appreciated! I'm going to pass this all along to her. I'm really impressed with the Vaultware Places, you certainly can't beat free. I'm guessing they make their money on selling their extras? Regardless, I don't see how her boss can argue with her when it's free and it seems like it'll take minimal time to set up as well.

You should definitely look into Vaultware Places ( www.vaultwareplaces.com ). They offer completely free websites that you can build/edit yourself through templates. From what I know they tend to go with more simple sites (not alot of flash) but are good for SEO and offer a great start to a site for current and potential residents. They also offer additional add-ons to upgrade the site at additional cost.

We're putting the finishing touches on VaultWare Places and will be launching later this month. You're right Elizabeth, we tend to keep our templates simple, clean and glitz free. We focus on presenting your community in a simple yet effective method so your customers can find the information they need to make a decision and lease from you. No Flash intros allowed!

Right now you can sign up to be notifed when we go live. The 4 templates currently being previewed on the site have been completely overhauled and we're adding two more templates at launch. Here's a sneak preview of two of the new designs:

If you can point, click and type, you can create an attractive and effective property website with VaultWare Places. No web design experience required!

Alisha: you aren't the first to express the "too good to be true" concern. It's a valid concern and all I can say is we expect to allay those concerns on day one when you log in and start building your 100% free property website. What's the catch? Morgan is correct, it's our hope that after you've experienced how great our free property websites are you'll want to add additional leasing solutions to your site like our mobile websites or the VaultWare apartment reservation system. We built VaultWare Places so your website can grow and evolve with your overall online marketing plans; free doesn't do you much good today if you grow out of your website tomorrow. But there is no obligation to purchase anything from us now or in the future.

I can definitely agree with everyone's comments on keeping website designs clean and simple. We do the same with the community websites we deploy for our clients. Beyond a clean appearance: the most important thing to focus on - as every blogger, webmaster, marketer, etc agrees is the content on that website. As I'm sure you know, content is King in online marketing. It is what makes property websites distinct and unique from one another.

A website is no better than a blank/unclaimed Google Place Page (which you should definitely look into as well) if it doesn't provide content that actually engages the people that click to it. You'll never show up anywhere in the search results without engaging content and back-links (unless you would like to spend hundreds on Google Adwords Campaigns - which very few website developers provide free of charge).

Content means videos, pictures, phone numbers, maps, descriptions - and all of that should be as floor-plan specific as possible. Think of what you look for when you are shopping for an apartment. Do you care more about the community pictures/videos than the actual floor plan pictures/videos?

No matter who you choose as a website provider/maker/developer - make sure they can support content that engages your web leads! Content that engages keeps cost/lead down and maximizes your internet presence as actual leasing tool.

Good luck! It seems like there are a great products out there so I'm sure you'll find success!