A few weeks ago a friend of mine who owns a pizzeria called me up about putting together a website for him. He wanted the works; online ordering, POS integration, email newsletter, etc. I did a fair amount of research on the topic, alot of it done right here in these forums, and when he saw what it was going to run him, he opted for just a simple 1 page place holder site. Unfortunately, he has since closed up shop, but has referred two local friends that also run pizzerias that wanted the same thing, so I’m curious if there are any others out there that would be interested as well.
The service I would be offering, to start, is a simple 1 page “place holder” site, domain registration and email hosting for $50.00 a year. This would be something geared more towards the owner that sees the value of being online, but isn’t yet ready to take on the tasks of shopping around for a good online ordering company; researching, purchasing and configuring domain names and related services; and so on.
This would be an initial offering, and if enough interest is received, I would expand into other areas, such as online menus, email campaigns, some services with Twitter and/or Facebook & MySpace, and eventually online ordering. However, if a customer was ready to get into those areas before hand, I’d be able to give direction there as well.
The unfortunate thing is that most domain service providers go ahead and put up a “place holder” when the customer purchases the URL if the customer buys directly through them (Yahoo! for example).
Are you offering these spaces on your own server, or purchasing through someone else and upcharging the client who will hopefully become a full website customer in the future?
I’ve seen designers go both ways, and wanted to ask these questions up front for any of the folks that have been here that may be Pizza Geniuses, but website “ignorant”.
Poor choice of words there on my part. Thanks for pointing that out. More specifically I’m talking about a page with some design (your photos, hours, contact info, etc). The fee would cover that, as well as domain name research, registration, DNS configuration and up to 10 email accounts (most registrars offer 1, if any). Also, the service I’m talking about would include a couple of benefits that you normally don’t get with a free registrar account such as hit counters, traffic reporting and search engine submission.
The services would be hosted on a currently under used dedicated leased server.
Thanks for that. This is my target audience. Those that want to get into it, but don’t have the time to devote to learning all the ropes that have nothing to do with their primary business. I’m not looking to do it all, at least not initially, because there are those that do that already. I’ve just seen a need for something in between nothing at all, and going all the way, and hoping to be able to help those with that need.