For the owner of a small service or retail business, the the best first step to building your online presence is probably far from obvious. Whenever I come across a website that claims to provide cheap, easy websites, I love to check them out and see what they are all about. It is always interesting to see what kind of great solutions (or complete crap) these services are selling to the often unsuspecting entrepreneur.

I’d like to share two groupings of services that I would feel confident recommending to a small business owner. They include everything you need to get started, from email addresses to web site statistics. Additionally, each package meets my standards for:

• affordability
• portability of your content (it’s important to have the option to move your site if needed)
• quality html code that is, by nature, search engine friendly
• easy integration of social media and analytics tracking
• quality design, offering templates to get you started along with the capacity to completely customize the design down the road

So, here are my recommendations:

Plan 1:

• Website design/hosting/CMS and site statistics at Squarespace: starts at $12/month ($144/year)
• Domain registration from Godaddy: about $12/year
• Email through Google Apps: Free
• One time fee for set up (paid to a tech-savvy friend or web designer if you are not  comfortable doing it yourself): about $100-$200

Plan 2:

• Website design/hosting/cms at Page.ly: starts at $14.98/month and includes one free domain registration (179.96/year)
• Email and site statistics through Google Apps: Free
• One time fee for set up (paid to a tech-savvy friend or web designer if you are not  comfortable doing it yourself): about $100-$200

Bottom line: for less than $300, you can get your business online and feel confident that your investment of time and money is going into a flexible, high quality product that will allow your website to grow along with your business!

Interestingly, a Google search for the terms “small business web site builder” turns up some options that I personally feel are not very good solutions for a small business seeking to build a simple web presence. Some are very e-commerce focused, which I suppose would be good for a business with a unique product they wish to sell online, but for the hair salon or coffee shop just wishing to advertise specials and build awareness, these are not appropriate. Google Sites is completely free, but the experience is mediocre both in terms of design and flexibility. Intuit offers a small business-focused website builder as well, starting at $4.99/month, but I am not impressed with the template designs and the customization options appear limited. They are also quite ambiguous about their pricing plans and I think it’s safe to assume there is no easy way to get your data out of their system if you become unhappy with their service.

Have you used any of the sites mentioned above? Are there any gems that I have overlooked? I’d love to hear your thoughts.