Website Design

T.C.

Any know how much a good website should cost to set up? Three pages with good search criteria through google etc. My client has been quoted £1700 - seems a little expensive to me!!

Londina

with Google website you can do your own one! or try Joomla http://www.joomla.org

T.C.

Yes, but my client is not that "computer literate". Anyone know a good designer?

Monsoon

Depends what you want.

A good brochure website (i.e. 5 pages that say who we are, what we do, how much, contact us etc) you can get for £500 or so. You can get that for £200 or so but you get what you pay for.

Also, the DIY sites... depends how professional they care about looking - DIY sites, unless you are very good, look DIY and that's not professional.

If you want anything more complex or interactive, it starts getting more expensive. An e-commerce store will be in 4 figures, for sure.

I recommend
www.jessnorwood.co.uk and
www.silentwebsolutions.co.uk
Have used both, and both are excellent, and reasonably priced.

jilt

TC have sent you a PM

Tracy_Rutherford

Website design

Hi, my husband has his own computer website business. His prices start at £379+ vat for a 3 page site. He has an excellent portfolio and gives great value for money. To view his portfolio visit www.npitservices.com

Tracy

Gem7321

PMed you

blobbyh

This must be a tricky area for a local but ambitious firm. Pay too little and you'll simply look little (with a possible implication you're "tin pot" - you can't help people!), pay too much and potential customers might think you're overcharging to be able to throw so much money away on a too flashy website.

However, if a website costing four times as much as a cheaper one equates to three times as much interest and maybe generating twice as much revenue (hard to quantify I know), then surely it's an investment worth paying? If you don't pay for the right service, you arguably won't be search engine optimised - our own SEO costs are in the hundreds of pounds each month - and you may as well not have a website at all if your target market can't find you or unfairly think you're not professional enough.

Also, are the charges on a like for like basis? You haven't said but does the more expensive one not only deliver a better functioning website but also technical support, a "warranty period", monthly reporting statistics, web hosting or search engine optimisation? CJC would be a good person to ask for this question.

P.S. Our website cost £50k+ plus annual running costs and trust me, it looks nice but that much?!!

Andy Blyth

I'm currently doing a course at night school on how to make your own website, with a view to making my own website for an online shop.

The course costs £100. Can't be bad. It's not even as difficult as you may think.

If you go down this route, I can recommend Microsoft Expression Web for designing your website. You can buy it for around £140. Avoid Adobe Dreamweaver, although it's considered to be the best on the market, it's expensive (about £400 - £500) very complicated and intimidating if you're a beginner.

I know some people will say but you've already shelled out a few hundred quid and you could get someone to do it for you for that amount, but this means I can update the website myself as often as I like rather than phoning some expert to do it who will charge me a fortune each time.

It also means I get to learn how to do it, which is always good.

Maybe if the online shop takes off, I'll set up a web design business too.....................

blobbyh

I had my own website ten years ago and was even pretentious enough to pay and have a prime domain under my own name - www.howcroft.org (No longer there as I didn't continue with it!)

I used the stupidly simple Netscape Composer to design it: that was the easy part, learning to upload and making changes to it via FTP was much more difficult. Plus I didn't realise I was being charged by 1&1 for every time I visited it myself!

Possibly one of the potential pitfalls of doing it for your own business though is that you could become too hooked on it and neglect the core areas of your business itself? I'd like to learn it properly but can see the fine line between wanting to build my own website and obsessing over it, with the line progessing towards the latter over time!

Monsoon

blobbyh wrote: »

Possibly one of the potential pitfalls of doing it for your own business though is that you could become too hooked on it and neglect the core areas of your business itself? I'd like to learn it properly but can see the fine line between wanting to build my own website and obsessing over it, with the line progessing towards the latter over time!

It's like running a business and trying to do your own accounts, or trying to do the headgasket on your car yourself, instead of paying an accountant, or a mechanic, respectively...

PGM

I've avoided web deseign for years, did my first website a few months ago. Its surprisingly easy to do a simple website, keep it looking clean and fresh and it looks as good as many professional ones.

MoneySavingBank

Learn WrodPress, Problem Solved!

Not an expert but from my experience I can say, you can create a site in less than 10 minutes.

Then use your preferred theme.

Do a little customisation where necessary.

Best solution for somebody who is a new starter.

I hope this helps.

cheers'

T.C.

Thank you everybody. Alot of really useful replies there.

burg

I did a basic site using free builders for a while. I then paid for someone to build my site last year. Cost was around £350. I have then used what they have done to learn a bit of HTML and do my own updating, re-structuring and adding of pages.

deanshepherd

I would recommend Chris Kirkham of CK Design.

He was actually my fee protection scheme agent for Qdos when I first met him but now runs his own design practice. Good quality for the money.

sjkr

I have built myself a website using www.moonfruit.com. I can't remember the exact price I paid, it was only something like £50 per year. Good if you are just starting out and don't want the pricier options, and if you want complete control of updating it yourself. It is easy to use (I had never done a website before), and also includes webmail. Worth a look.

T.C.

www.wix.com seems to be good!