Many web owners come to me and want to build a super-site, one that has features like member management, shopping cart, affiliate tracking, event signup and more. The problem is they don’t have a super-budget for it.

I spend a lot of time looking at 3rd Party and Off-the-Shelf solutions that are pre-built and ready to go. These pre-built can save you lots of money if they are a “perfect” fit. The problem is that while many of the systems may have most of the features you are looking for they may not have everything that you wanted.

Feature lists demand custom programming in order to give the web owner exactly what they want. Not only does it cost a lot of money to produce a super-site, but it also takes a lot of time. If you are short on time and money then you might want to look at some alternatives.

There are some savvy web owners out there who are finding inexpensive ways to get what they want. They do it in a modular fashion.

Many of you might already be approaching modularity in that you have a main website, but you also have a blog somewhere else. Additionally you might have your online store at yet another location.

The Base

Start with a type of website that has a back-end administration panel that allows you to update web pages on your own. I am a strong advocate of CMS (Content Management Systems) if they are easy to use and empower the web owner to be able to express themselves on the web.

Not all websites are the same and is hard to tell what is under the hood. Some websites are created by hand or with the help of web page authoring software. Some are part of a CMS that you can subscribe to and login and make changes anytime you want without having to know HTML.

So the Base site should be CMS type of site that allows you to control the content yourself. We call it the “Base” because from here you can link to other sites. More importantly, you can link to other 3rd party applications that provide the “special” functionality that you want.

One such “Base” that I like to recommend is WebSiteTonight. They are constantly upgrading this program and it is really easy to use. So far it is the most bang for the buck. Make a 10 page site for only $10 a month. There are no contracts or commitments. If it doesn’t serve your purpose you can always cancel.

Adding 3rd Party Functionality

Many web owners want the ability to sell things. I suggest subscribing to a 3rd party hosted shopping cart solution. They range in price from $15 per month to $200 per month.

Don’t worry about what it looks like. We are not trying to hide that your store is a separate entity from your base site in fact we encourage them to be different because they have different functions. All shopping cart systems have customization options for example uploading your logo and changing some colors. Some systems are very customizable, but we are most concerned about the bottom line.

Here is an example. This is full featured shopping cart system called Monster Commerce which just recently got purchased by Network Solutions. It costs $50 per month for Standard or $100 per month for the Pro version.

Once you have your online store running you simply link to it from your base site. Invite users that visit your base website to go buy things at your online store. It doesn’t have to be the same site.

To help market your products that you are selling at the online store you might want to consider signing up for an affiliate tracking site. Interneka starts at $30 per month and gives you the ability to track your affiliates. Users can sign up though the system and Interneka will tell you who made sales and how much you owe in commissions.

Perhaps you want to add a way to track members to your organization. There are several solutions on the web and they usually feature signup applications and renewal management. Some will also offer email announcements, newsletters and event invitation signup.

Membership management can get pricey. Why? because it is assumed that you are making money by charging your members dues. For that reason the prices for these systems are based on the amount of members you have. For example at Memberize, 500 members would cost $65 per month.

You may decide to just track your members with an Excel spread sheet to keep costs down for awhile. Let’s say you want the ability to email an invite that requires users to signup to attend a seminar. EventBrite may be for you. It is very flexible and there isn’t any fees unless you charge for the event. EventBrite just takes a small percentage from your fee that is successfully charged. In this manner there isn’t any overhead related to this feature. You can just bump your cost up a little to cover the transaction fee.

Wow this is getting Expensive!

Not really. In this scenario you are totally in control by cherry picking the components that you want to include in your over all modular web space. Another way to look at it is that you are transferring the initial cost of a complete system and spreading it out over monthly payments.

Either way you get what you pay for. If you don’t have a large enough budget to support interactive technology then you may need to go back to the drawing board and re-think your business plan.

The New Web is full of complete and not so complete solutions. It is rare that I find a perfect match for a customer’s feature list and a pre-made solution. In ways I feel like a car salesman on the web; “This dandy over here goes fast, but doesn’t have air conditioning!”

I offer this perspective for those who don’t want to lay down $10,000 on a complete custom system. These solutions are just examples. There are literally hundreds of online applications popping up all the time. Some are really nifty too!

Give us a call if you would like expert web consulting to help you find a solution that will best fit your needs.

Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Karl Knelson
Filed under: Web in General | No Comments »