Savage Brands: How Much did the Wall Street Journal Pay for its Web Site?

How Much did the Wall Street Journal Pay for its Web Site?
posted by Bethany Haley @ 2:51 PM

Granted, it is directed to "small businesses" but Monday's WSJ article, "How to Create a Successful Web Site for Nothing (Or Almost Nothing)" is outrageous. In fact it claims that you can create one in 8 hours for $10 bucks. Really? Just buying a URL can take $10 and a couple of hours. Not to mention the time you need to spend finding a host company, designing the site, writing the content, setting up for search engine optimization, etc.

However, the opportune word here is "successful." The article claims that anyone can build a successful site on his own just by throwing together an About Us page, a Contact Us page and maybe another one or two pages that are specific to your business. This approach hints back to the late 90s when people just "needed a web site" and didn't pay attention to what that web site could do for them. Additionally, the article takes a very technology-oriented slant, as if just having access to a few tools were enough. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

Having a web presence is very different than building a web site. Not every site needs to be overly complex, but every business should be paying attention to their brand, their product, their audience and how they are pushing or pulling the users to the site. This takes some strategic thinking, at least some element of unique design and probably a bit of functionality that is tailored specifically for the business. Companies and site users today are far too advanced to view these junk sites as anything but unsuccessful.

Labels: online marketing, websites

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