Simple Website Needed

[chrisOs]

Hi, my wife has a dress agency and we are thinking about getting online, at the moment we just want an internet presence with about 3 or 4 pages explaining what she sells and a contact form.

We have spoke to a couple of people and their prices are all over the place. We dont have a huge amount to spend on it really. Can anyone give some advice or their prices for a 3-5 page website with a contact form please.

Thanx

Chris

 

[Vision2]

cheap and nasty, i'm sure you'll get a load of quotes under 500 quid.

something decent expect to pay £800 - £1200 or so, dependent on what other bits you wanted (if you wanted).

I'm sure i'll get some random comments about being able to spend a 100 quid and you'll get an amazing website that has dancing elephants...

depends what you want and who you want to do it.. look at peoples work, if it feels right foryou then go with them, if it doesn't then keep searching and go with someone else.

websites don't have a set price margins, you pay for the experience and skill of the person(s) / company you ask to do the work.

 

[Poppy Design]

Hi

if you just want a 3 - 5 page brochure style website with contact form and you will provide the logo, writtent content and images then £500 would be a good budget to allow for.
£1200 seems a bit steep to me but that may be allowing for logo design and written content which would be about right.



Joanne

 

[bdw]

Speaking as a self employed web designer I don't think you'll have to pay anything near £800. My prices are listed on my website and I think they are fairly typical. We actually offer a cut price 4 pager for £299 but for a small website like you describe we would seldom charge more than £400 even for the full service. Full service includes search engine optimisation (SEO), design, creating the website and submission to the main search engines and the Open Directory (DMOZ). When the website is complete we also offer documented advice and information on future marketing for the website.

If you are comparing prices what you need to do is ensure that you are comparing apples with apples. Your wife's website will require SEO to get it found in the search engines. Ensure that the companies you are looking at have a track record for this. If you get this right the website could become your main source of business enquiries. For what it costs and when done right this is the cheapest form of advertising available.

Best of luck!

 

[pickaweb]

If your budget is tight i would go for a website builder. That comes free normally with most web hosting companies.
You can build your website easily with the use of templates and the advantage is that you can make updates to it when required yourself.

 

[Bradley Porter]

Hi Chris,

If the quotes you received were a little 'all-over-the-place' then this could be that the design company's were not quite sure exactly what you were after - in this way they allow for extra time and cost to get the specification right on-the-fly.

Have you got a specification of exactly what you want in your website? For example:

• What you like and dont like in other websites?
• Whether you need a logo designed?
• Colour representation?
• Complete description of your business?
• The message you are trying to get accross?
• Whether you can supply images and all copy?
• etc, etc

You may find that with such specifics that the quotes narrow a bit and therefore give you a little more direction.

One piece of advice I would like to offer is that when you work with any designer or company, ensure that they understand what your business is trying to do. This will help them design a site that looks attractive to the correct audience. I always feel that half the battle of designing websites is understanding the customers requirement's and what their business is doing. Only then can the right site be designed.

Brad

 

[bdw]

Free website builder software is just a bit of fun. It's not for real businesses unless the person using it knows what they are doing. There is more (a lot more!) to website design than uploading a few web pages. Go for this if you want to waste a lot of time more or less guarantee that you will have to go for a professional design with SEO at some time in the future. During this period your wife may have missed out on a (Brad Pitt)load of business.

Your wife is running a dress agency. The site will have to be appropriately designed and optimised.
.
.

 

Chris

If this website is for the start up of a company its not to invest lots of money.

You can get a really nice looking site for £199 + vat, I have pm'd you details about this.

You will be able to completely manage the cms on this so as and when you get new products or products go out of stock you can update it at the click of a button.

Feel free to contact me for a chat about this.

 

[florenceij]

Hi Chris

I have sent you a pm with an estimated quote. Feel free to contact me with your response.

 

[philjohns]

Hi Chris, Ive sent a you a PM

As a freelance website designer a agree with BDW. You wont have to pay anything like £800 for 3-5 pages and a website design that looks good!

Phil

 

[Vision2]

Do the math

If for example, you want a £200 budget for a site, work out how much time that will buy you for the design, deployment, setup, communication - all of these things and more cost time.

Also, if you are freelance which most people i'd imagine are on this forum, you also need to work in the costs of time inbetween, this time inbetween costs money, as a project ends another begins, there may well be time inbetween 2 larger projects. Your £200 might get pushed inbetween those 2 leaving hardly any time to acturally think about anything to do with the client, business, clients customers and what they will be doing in the future.

There is no time with the design, will most likely end up reusing the same material for faster output.

Basically, you get what you pay for is the bottom line

Each to their own, you need to make a decision which route to take and what your budget is, as well as looking at each business/person to see if it feels right to go with them or not.

Also, as the previous guy said, without a detailed budget, you will get quote ranges like i did. People just quoting £200 for a site without having any detailed spec infront of them is just crazy.

 

[WebCreator]

I have also sent you a PM. I am very good with these sorts of tasks, and because it's such a small job, I could throw in a few more things for you

 

[OnlineHotelCompany]

Hi,

I think the best way is to do it yourself. I paid £35 to set up my website using a webhost. Feel free to message me and i can tell you the company i used.

You can look at my site and see what that gets you onlinehotelcompany.com

Long term its better to understand web design so you can have freedom to run your business in the future. creating a website really isn't as difficult as it seems

 

[WebCreator]

I understand your points above, but in my opinion, and maybe in the long run it could be ok.

But for a simple 3-5 page website, for our services, we'd charge around £30. That's it.

The domain is obviouslly around £8 for 2 years (.co.uk). And hosting is a couple of quid. However, this will change when we set up our Reseller account.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

I understand your points above, but in my opinion, and maybe in the long run it could be ok.

But for a simple 3-5 page website, for our services, we'd charge around £30. That's it.

The domain is obviouslly around £8 for 2 years (.co.uk). And hosting is a couple of quid. However, this will change when we set up our Reseller account.

Forget the £30, can I just pay you in peanuts?

 

[liams7]

cheap and nasty, i'm sure you'll get a load of quotes under 500 quid.

something decent expect to pay £800 - £1200 or so, dependent on what other bits you wanted (if you wanted).

I'm sure i'll get some random comments about being able to spend a 100 quid and you'll get an amazing website that has dancing elephants...

depends what you want and who you want to do it.. look at peoples work, if it feels right foryou then go with them, if it doesn't then keep searching and go with someone else.

websites don't have a set price margins, you pay for the experience and skill of the person(s) / company you ask to do the work.

completely agree with this. Depends what you want, If you want a simple site you can get them for about £500 if you want something a little differnet with some CHAZAM then it would cost up of that.

I could do you a website for £99 doesnt mean it would be good. I could do one for £500 but it would be the same as eveyone elses and be a bit boring

Our sites start a little higher so probably wont meet your budget but i would check what you are buying.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Pay cheap, pay twice! Our website audits usually uncover that the websites that business pay below £400 for turn out to be a complete waste of money. These businesses usually end up starting again from scratch with a professional website design company whilst the bottom feeders end up going out of business because their practices are unsustainable.

 

[Poppy Design]

But for a simple 3-5 page website, for our services, we'd charge around £30. That's it.

I doubt you will get cheaper than that!!

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

I doubt you will get cheaper than that!!

The poor guy must have forgotten to add a zero on the end of that?!?! Surely! Talk about devaluing the industry!

 

[Poppy Design]

The poor guy must have forgotten to add a zero on the end of that?!?! Surely! Talk about devaluing the industry!

ain't it just!.... perhaps he is still at school living with parents?!

 

[Big Pete]

Hi, my wife has a dress agency and we are thinking about getting online, at the moment we just want an internet presence with about 3 or 4 pages explaining what she sells and a contact form.

We have spoke to a couple of people and their prices are all over the place. We dont have a huge amount to spend on it really. Can anyone give some advice or their prices for a 3-5 page website with a contact form please.

Thanx

Chris

Make your own .. and add and change as you want ..see below link

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Make your own .. and add and change as you want ..see below link

Yeah but if you make a website yourself and you're not a designer then it really does give your company a showing up doesn't it? Customers might think poor website, poor products/services. I find that if something doesn't look or feel right then they just won't buy.

I suppose if the majority of websites in a certain sector are poor then the effect in minimal but even industries which were previously underrepresented with regards to good quality web design are now seeing an improvement.

 

[Big Pete]

Yeah but if you make a website yourself and you're not a designer then it really does give your company a showing up doesn't it? Customers might think poor website, poor products/services. I find that if something doesn't look or feel right then they just won't buy.

I suppose if the majority of websites in a certain sector are poor then the effect in minimal but even industries which were previously underrepresented with regards to good quality web design are now seeing an improvement.

No you assume that the average surfer judges sites ..

If you are searching for say as an example.. A Carpet fitter in Dudley ..

Then lets be honest as long as the website has a few pictures of well laid carpets and a contact point ,phone or whatever ... They will get the same ammount of work from it as if they had spent 25k on a Flash website.. Indeed i would go so far as to say spend to much and you will get LESS work as the avaerage Joe who just wants a cheap carpet laying will think , oh heck there to flash gonna be to expensive.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

No you assume that the average surfer judges sites ..

If you are searching for say as an example.. A Carpet fitter in Dudley ..

Then lets be honest as long as the website has a few pictures of well laid carpets and a contact point ,phone or whatever ... They will get the same ammount of work from it as if they had spent 25k on a Flash website.. Indeed i would go so far as to say spend to much and you will get LESS work as the avaerage Joe who just wants a cheap carpet laying will think , oh heck there to flash gonna be to expensive.

The same happens with newspaper ads. People go with the ones with smaller ads because they think that the companies with larger ads will have higher costs to cover. Which is usually true.

 

[WebCreator]

ain't it just!.... perhaps he is still at school living with parents?!

Correct.

I need to get a portfolio together - not try to rake in thousands.

It sounds abnormal charging at that price, but this is my only chance of income, and I have rent to pay - that's why I need to make a low, appealing cost.
This is a genuine offer.

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

Correct.

I need to get a portfolio together - not try to rake in thousands.

It sounds abnormal charging at that price, but this is my only chance of income, and I have rent to pay - that's why I need to make a low, appealing cost.
This is a genuine offer.

I think you'd need to do a few for free first because your website and the two in your portfolio aren't good examples. I'm sorry but there's just nothing to go on. It's not just £30 that the client is spending, it's their time taken imparting their requirements to you.

 

[WebCreator]

I have offered my services for free for any Charity that wants it.

A couple of Charities have enquired about it already.

 

[Big Pete]

The same happens with newspaper ads. People go with the ones with smaller ads because they think that the companies with larger ads will have higher costs to cover. Which is usually true.

Exactly..

The problem on the forum is to many experts seem to think that Mrs Smith who is searching for that little gift for her Grand daughter, is going to go on a site and go flippin eck the tab margin on the lower footer section is slightly out of line, i am not going to buy from here ..

Doesnt happen .. All they want is simple NO FLASHING Migrane inducing lights pages that show clearly what she wants and at the cheapest price ..

So many people over work there web pages ...

 

[MASSEY]

The same happens with newspaper ads. People go with the ones with smaller ads because they think that the companies with larger ads will have higher costs to cover. Which is usually true.

I usually have the largest ads in the paper and i have the lowest costs

 

[Big Pete]

I will add though and this is the key element in my opinion !!!!

ANYONE can build a website ..

SEO and getting it in first pages of google and the others now thats the cost .. and the skill and workload .

So if the business is competitive speak and pay for that part ,prior to even starting your first webpage..

Thats where our website design and build services pay off..

Carpet fitters easy peasy DIY
Computer sales - You NEED Top websites and the the BEST SEO or do not even bother ..

In my opinion anyways

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

I will add though and this is the key element in my opinion !!!!

ANYONE can build a website ..

SEO and getting it in first pages of google and the others now thats the cost .. and the skill and workload .

So if the business is competitive speak and pay for that part ,prior to even starting your first webpage..

Thats where our website design and build services pay off..

Carpet fitters easy peasy DIY
Computer sales - You NEED Top websites and the the BEST SEO or do not even bother ..

In my opinion anyways

Agreed lots of competition now, only the best will do. Lots of marketing budgets are wasted by driving visitors to poor websites. Just as lots of well designed websites underperform because targeted traffic isn't driven to them.

 

[bigberrydigital]

Hi Chris,

Seems your post has sparked a bit of a debate in the web design/development world.

I think we'd be a bit too pricey for you, and probably a bit overkill for what you need but I would like to offer some advice to help you one your way...

Make sure you can update the site yourself, you dont want to be spending money on paying a developer every time you want to make small copy adjustments, ie changing your opening hours etc

£800 for a site is not unreasonable as long as you get the right person/company, look at their portfolio, think long term will, dont go for the cheapest option. There's solutions out there where you can create as many pages as you want, so if you want to expand in the future, a static site would be costly.

Image is always important regardless of your profession in my opinion. A sloppy site gives the appearance of sloppy workmanship, and maybe most people wont be put off, they'll always be a percentage that are.

A gallery of your work may be beneficial, or even a latest news section ie. if you've adjusted some dresses for a wedding and you're able to nab a few pictures to put on your site, with the right site it would only take you a few minutes to do a small write up and add credibility to your business. This all depends on how much competition you have of course, so may seem over the top if you're a small operation in a rural area with little competition, but not so if you're fighting for work in London....

Just a few thoughts. Feel free to contact us for some impartial advice on any proposals you get, as I said, small sites are not our domain, but quite happy to help you through the jungle so to speak

Many Thanks

Tim

 

[asraconsulting]

Well!

You can get a website with cart for displaying dress and online shopping option at 500 GBP. Check PM

thanks

 

[bdw]

Make sure you can update the site yourself, you dont want to be spending money on paying a developer every time you want to make small copy adjustments, ie changing your opening hours etc

This is not always the best solution. people who are not highly IT literate and who make infrequent changes to their websites (2 or 3 times a year) are often better leaving this to their designer.

A. If they forget how to make the updates they often have to contact their designer anyway and the designer will probably charge for his/her time.

B. If their site has been optimised to be found on the search engines and they do not fully understand the implications of making certain changes to their website then it could drop dramatically in the rankings.

If you are in this category then consider asking the prospective designer how much they would charge for a support contract and how much they charge for ad hoc changes. Tell them what you want from this contract. They will often agree to low charges for this in order to get the job.