Web Design in Donaldson, Minnesota

The city of Donaldson in numbers

Designing a website around Donaldson’s customers

The county around Donaldson, Kittson County, counts 4,031 residents and 9 cities and towns. Census estimates for a city this size carry a wide margin of error, so the county is the better guide: households have a median income of $76,100, and half the residents are older than 47.8.

Businesses in and around Donaldson

Some of the business types in Kittson County, from the 2023 County Business Patterns:

• Site preparation contractors: 5. Their website should show the equipment you run, the kinds of jobs you take and a contact form for builders and owners.

Across Kittson County, County Business Patterns counted 144 employer establishments in 2023, and the Nonemployer Statistics add 353 businesses with no payroll, most of them self-employed owners. Retail trade accounts for 18.8% of the county’s employer establishments, ahead of other services (repair, personal care, organizations) (17.4%) and construction (11.1%).

Where Donaldson customers come from

Nearby incorporated places: Kennedy (5 miles), Stephen (8.4 miles) and Drayton, ND (13 miles). A 25-mile radius around Donaldson takes in 10 other municipalities. For big-city shopping and services, Grand Forks, ND (60,365 residents) is 46 miles away. Pembina Municipal Airport (PMB) is 30 miles northwest of Donaldson in a straight line. The city spreads over 0.2 square miles of land, with roughly 84 people per square mile. Hallock, seat of Kittson County, lies 14 miles to the north. List the towns you actually serve, such as Drayton and Hallock, on your website; customers outside Donaldson want to know before they call.

Climate normals for 1991-2020 from Argyle, 17 miles away, put the July average high at 82°F and the January average low at -5°F. Precipitation totals about 23 inches a year, with June the wettest month. Snowfall averages about 44 inches a year. Freezing nights (32°F or below) come about 194 times a year. Cold winters mean furnace repair, snow removal, roofing and auto service, and the first freeze sends everyone searching at once. Give seasonal work its own page, so the right page is there when the weather turns.

How a website for $89 a month works

Based in Curitiba, Brazil, Aria has been building business websites since 2008. There are no visits or meetings in Donaldson: you send your material by email, and you approve the website on a temporary link.

1. Register your business online in about 5 minutes; the logo, photos and texts you already have go by email.
2. Within 5 business days the website is ready on a temporary link, and you review it and ask for changes.
3. Once you approve it, the first monthly fee is issued and the website goes live on your domain.

Once the site is live, hosting, SSL, daily backups and security updates stay with Aria, and content changes by email are included.

Rules that apply to a Donaldson business website

These are some of the Minnesota and federal rules a small business with a website runs into:

• Minnesota’s state sales tax is 6.875%: a 6.5% general rate plus the 0.375% increase required by the Minnesota Constitution. Cities, counties and special districts add local sales taxes on top of it. Minnesota Department of Revenue
• Selling to customers in other states? Each state sets its own threshold for remote sellers; Minnesota’s is 200 or more retail sales from outside Minnesota to destinations in Minnesota in the prior 12-month period, or retail sales totaling more than $100,000 in the prior 12-month period. Minnesota still keeps the 200-sale test. Minn. Stat. 297A.66, subd. 1(c)

This is general information, not legal advice; check with the Minnesota agencies, Kittson County, the city of Donaldson or an attorney.