Entheos and Asian web designers- Opinions

[soundimage]

Hi. Ive been looking around different web designers for the past two months. Im on a budget (isnt everyone) of around £500.

I found these www.entheosweb.com . They are based in India and on the surface look very good. This site http://www.roboland.co.nz/ costs something like £400 which seems pretty good.

My question though is has anyone tried using designers from Asia, or these guys in particular - is the distance a problem? Or would i be better off with a UK based company? For £500 i dont think i will get to much here :cry:

Be interested to hear your opinions

Rob

[Eagle]

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If/when it all goes pear-shaped, how will you bring them to court? In which country do the courts have jurisdiction? Usually it's the country where the designer resides, not the client....

Besides, why not support the UK economy? :D

[Coding Monkey]

I wouldn't be so much worried about court, as the level of support you'll receive. If something goes wrong at 3pm here, it'll be midnight there (just a guess before anyone becomes fastidious), when you've got customers to worry about.

Yet, I think their site looks decent. Good example of a website that works well using a boring template with nice colours. However, not a fan at all of that other green one you linked to.

[DuaneJackson]

Are you after the ecommerce functions of the Robo site too? If it's just design then I think you'd get a good job from a UK designer for £500 if you can find the right one.

[seabro]

Hi Sonic,

I have used desingers in India via a rep who is local to me here in Cardiff.

The rep is great, friendly and knowledgable.

The company I/she uses produce very professional results at excellent prices. A 5 page static site would be under £500.

They have a great portfolio and you pay half up front and half on completion.

The completed job are emailed / sent on CD so you can host the site yourself. This way if the site goes down you dont have to speak to the indians you just speak to your UK host.

PM me if you need more details.

[soundimage]

Yes i am after an e commerce solution as well. Which is another reason to worry about using a designer not based here.

They design your site from scratch for £300 odd, this includes bits of Flash if you want it. I cant find anywhere in the UK that can beat that.

Is it possible to have a website with e commerce for £500 here in the UK? If there are any designers with examples of them i would be very interested. Would be nice to support our own economy - hope that its possible..

@ Eagle : Do you mean i pay for the design and dont get my site (or a shoddy one at that). Fair point if so -although you pay half up front, then half on handover.

[Eagle]

@ Eagle : Do you mean i pay for the design and dont get my site (or a shoddy one at that).
Exactly that. At least if they're in the UK, they're in 'neck-wringing' distance. :wink: :P

[seabro]

Sonic,

Depends what you mean by ecommerce.

For example, if you look at the [spare parts] section of www.themuddybikeshop.co.uk I said I will add a paypal links to all the spares for under £100. This is basic e-commerce and will take about an hour to do because the page is database driven so there is effectively only one line of code to add. Total time to e-commerce enable this site - 1 hour max.

And then there is OSCommerce which is an open source ecommerce script that can be downloaded and installed to a host within the hour. My mates site uses OSCommerce (www.whatsgoingcheap.com). Mostly customised via a the web interface admin pages.

Or of course, you could spend a few hundred quid on Actinic or a few grand re-inventing the wheel and having an ecommerce site designed from scratch.

Each to their own.

Good luck.

[soundimage]

Seabro,

Well, my site is to sell 10 products which are unlikely to change much. Its to sell my training DVD along with equipment to back it up.

At a guess i dont think the commerce part would take much maintaince once set up. And at first i think i would go with Paypal to keep start up costs down. Looking at the links you provided i think i may go for the o-commerce.

Thanks for everyones above advice on this..

[JustOneUK]

You can get a static site listing 10 products and using paypal for approx £100+ hosting

[batty5]

Sinosolutions is a one stop shop for all your IT needs form website construction & hosting to database development. Service is provided in English, French, Spanish or Chinese. Take a look at our past projects at: www.sinosolutions.cn (IT) or email us at sinosolutions@yahoo.co.uk for further information.

Our rates start at around 500GBP for a 20-30 page flash site or 25Euros/hour for ad hoc work (including a years hosting & domain name reg)

[mattk]

I don't know about you guys, but I've found it useful to sit down the pub, with a pint and discuss ideas. That might be a bit difficult if your developer is based in India.

The other thing I'd stress is the most important factor in finding a Web developer - personal recommendation. Avoid cold calls, flashy Web sites and companies who rank highly on Google. The best way to find a developer is to ask people who have successful sites and find out who they work with.