Brochure website

[mrjonathanbrown]

Hi,

Is anyone able to recommend a platform to build a brochure type website? Wordpress has been recommended to me but would appreciate some other ideas.

We currently have a ecommerce store running on shopify. This second site is mainly for our business customers to showcase our products and the craft that goes behind them.

I would like the brochure site to link to shopify just simply by having a "shop now" tab and that direct you to our shopify store.

Thanks.

 

[ryedale]

A lot depends on your ability (assuming you are doing this yourself)

Can you code? or are you looking for a system that will allow you to use a theme that you can add content to without needing technical skills.

 

[mrjonathanbrown]

ryedale we are working with an agency I forgot to mention. I am having a meeting with their web developers at the end of the week to discuss this.

 

[ryedale]

Wordpress should be fine for you. We use Joomla ourselves but it comes down to what the designer is most experienced in.

So long as they use a clean theme that allows visitors to actually get to what you are promoting quickly and efficiently then it will be fine.

The only time Wordpress is bad really is when a clunky theme is used that is poorly optimised and bloated leading to most visitors leaving pretty quickly.

 

[mrjonathanbrown]

what makes a theme clunky?

I just want lots of illustrations & images showcasing our craft. The people behind the brand.

 

[ryedale]

Too many unneeded scripts loading and a poorly designed layout / user experience which makes it hard for the user to grasp what you are offering or to get to the key information.

 

[mrjonathanbrown]

Should 2k budget do the job for the build?

 

[ryedale]

Piece of string really, it all depends on what you are looking for from it and how much depth the agency go to e.g are they going to create a bespoke design for you or use a premade theme.

How much planning will they do, will they take time to understand your target market, will they design the site around the potential requirements of your users. Will they create mockups and pre-design plans for you and so on.

 

[Alan]

For a brochure site I would go with a static html site, not a content management system like WordPress. A static html site is not full of bloat and can be lightning fast ( I have built brochure sites that load in less that half a second).

In terms of budget, depends on how many layouts, but assuming one home page layout and one inner page layout £2k should be ample for the build ( I assume here design is a separate activity and so is creating & loading content )

 

[Alan]

How much planning will they do, will they take time to understand your target market, will they design the site around the potential requirements of your users. Will they create mockups and pre-design plans for you and so on.

Just to be clear the term build means build, but that might not be what the OP meant, the OP may have meant 'the full project'.

For the benefit of the OP build means exactly as it does in construction,its putting up the walls, ceiling & floors, it doesn't include the arcihect, the planning permission or interior furnishings or overall project management.

So when you say £2k for the build - do you mean £2k for the project ( in which case the piece of string length calculator is required )

 

[ryedale]

I guess it depends on whether they want to be able to edit it themselves afterward for static v CMS.

A well designed CMS can be almost as quick as a static site when using the right framework and only essential scripts. The hosting setup is important as well.

 

[Alan]

And well built static site doesn't preclude easy update of content and even easy blog post.

The problem with WP for a brochure site that might never have content changed apart from a phone number or something once a year, is it requires resources such as a database, and it is hackable unless you secure it as it has user logins.

I have hundreds of WP sites built by me for users that thought it would be nice to update content and less than 5% actually update their sites at all.

 

[ryedale]

I guess it varies from client base to client base. I'd say maybe 30-40% of our clients update with CMS's update regularly but it would probably be less if we didn't push them.

In terms of being hacked, again it comes down to how proactive the person looking after the site is in terms of security awareness and ongoing maintenance as to whether it's large risk or not.

 

[Alan]

In terms of being hacked, again it comes down to how proactive the person looking after the site is in terms of security awareness and ongoing maintenance as to whether it's large risk or not.

I agree, but ongoing maintenance costs someone somewhere, and if its not required its wasted cost.

 

[antropy]

For a brochure site I would go with a static html site, not a content management system like WordPress.

Yeah I'm inclined to agree with this to some extent for some projects. No database, less complexity, should mean a faster build time and a lightening fast website but it does depend on how much content you have and how often it will be updated. If you want a blog then you won't be able to build it this way.

Also, slightly controversial, but I think WordPress is only popular because it's popular if you know what I mean. Its success is down to marketing, not a better product. Any serious developer will tell you that WordPress is a blog platform made popular by amateur bedroom web designers who don't know any better.

If you want something that's far easier to use, have a look at:
https://www.concrete5.org/ or
https://www.silverstripe.org/

 

[Alan]

If you want a blog then you won't be able to build it this way.

Not true really, there are plenty of static site generators that support blogging for instance Jekyll that has been around since 2008 and my personal favorite the much more recent Hugo - there are others.

OK so you have to write your blog 'offline' and use a tool to upload it, but for many bloggers that is probably their natural way of writing.

Certainly was for me, some one would write the content, send it to me, I'd review it and load it into WP. Exact same workflow for a static site.

 

[antropy]

That's a good point, you can work with a desktop based CMS that uploads a static site. You would lose the ability to do any sort of dynamic searches on the site though, but for sites without a massive amount of content this could be a sensible way to build it. It also makes the site code itself unhackable with the only vulnerability being the server itself, which tend to be pretty secure these days.

 

[Paul Norman]

Should 2k budget do the job for the build?

For a brochure site, I would allow rather less than that, although my caveat, as always, would be that we need to see a specification first.

 

[Alan]

You would lose the ability to do any sort of dynamic searches

Truly dynamic yes, but Google custom search is pretty nifty and actually far better at site searching than Wordpress standard search. Also, it costs from $100 if you want to opt out of adverts and Google branding.

But the economics would still stack up
- hosting on WP Engine personal $29 / month = $348 p.a. (approx 25GB data / 10GB storage )
or
- hosting on AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage approx $0.75 / month = $9 p.a. plus $100 p.a. for Google search custom = $109

So a static site could easily save you hundreds p.a. even with search on you blog.

 

[antropy]

Truly dynamic yes, but Google custom search is pretty nifty and actually far better at site searching than Wordpress standard search.

I agree. I regularly search for things on Google which I know are on a site that I know has its own search. Google can search the entirety of human knowledge faster and more efficiently than most websites can search their own comparatively minuscule databases.

 

[Alan]

Just to be totally clear - you can have a search box that is on your site that is not branded as Google and doesn't show Google Ads and is integrated into your site with no server code but uses the Google power to return search results for your site.

This isn't mickey mouse stuff its used by brands like citibank.com - try - do yu do dolloar biz accounts - in their search bar - Google search copes - I doubt ant WP search standard or plugin would get close.

https://cse.google.com/cse/

 

[antropy]

Just to be totally clear - you can have a search box that is on your site

Yep, I knew what you meant, just agreeing that a Google search is very powerful and giving the example that I use Google itself rather than the search on a site.

 

[mrjonathanbrown]

Thanks for the reponses. Unfortunately the website will no longer being going ahead due to unforeseen circumstances.