Web Design

[wagstaf]

Good morning!
I am in the process of buying a business. Their website is old, although functional, but looks 1990 ish and amateurish.
Is it easy to re-vamp a website (the kind of thing that an amateur could do?) or how much (roughly) would it cost to have it done professionally - there's about 7 pages but is information/contact only - no e-commerce etc.
Any ideas very gratetfully received!
W.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

couple fo hundred quid should do it. between 300-700 depending on what you want and who you use.

The most important thing is to handle the switch to the new site properly. keeping the existing urls if possible, if not putting in place proiper 301 redirects.

 

[ScotComp]

I would personally go for a new site, it would probably cost you the same amount to fully revamp it.

 

[zomex]

couple fo hundred quid should do it. between 300-700 depending on what you want and who you use.

The most important thing is to handle the switch to the new site properly. keeping the existing urls if possible, if not putting in place proiper 301 redirects.

I agree completely. Also keeping as much of the content the same as possible at least until Google has noticed the website change so that includes the page title, meta description etc

 

[RebornMedia]

if you are revamping a simple site like thsi you are pretty much rebuilding it anyway.

If you are asking if it is easy to do yourself I would perhaps say no!

You will need to learn a few skills, html, css, maybe javascript as well, not to mention design skills.


A site like this might cost around £500 - £800 in my book. You will always find someone who will do it cheaper, probably free, but i would reccomend using a decent agency/designer and paying a fair price, you will get a better product and support for it.

 

[goliveuk]

Hi wagstaf, how are you? when you buy the business and get the website, I would suggest having a new website instead of re-vamping the old one. It would be easier and it would cost you the same if done by a company. The new website, might need some SEO, but it is easier to optimise a website which has been developed and designed in a SEO friendly way. Whichever you choose, it is possible. I will send a pm. Regards

 

[marketingquotes]

Hi Wagstaf,

All designers will charge differently depending on the quality you want.

Did you want to compare a few quotes and get some mock ups in order to choose the one you like the look of?

Regards,

Marketing Quotes Support.

 

[takerootdesign]

I wouldn't suggest anyone designed their own site - unless they had previous knowledge or were happy to gain that knowledge.

Web design is no different to most things, you get what you pay for. The better web designers and developers quite rightly charge more. What you need to decide is your requirements. You may want to spend money on getting the content up to scratch. As most people forget, this is an essential part of any website so it's important to get it right. Is the current website ranking well in the search engines? If so you need to be careful not to undo too much of the good work. You way want to spend money on an SEO. Do you want a to be able to add and edit content yourself? There many ways of building a site with a CMS depending on how much money you want to spend.

There are ways of building websites on a very small budget e.g. using a content management system and a generic theme. You can also spend in excess of £1000 on a 7-10 page website. Your content and SEO would be in tip top condition and you would have hired a top quality designer, however this would probably be overkill. I'd suggest finding a happy medium between the two - but don't try to skimp too much!

 

[OpenSure]

Hi Wagstaff

Hope the business sale proceeds well. It might be useful to know the type of markets the business works in.

Businesses need different levels of investment to get the best from a website and may need differing online approaches to its market. Depending on the scale of the business and state of the competition you may find the costs vary considerably.

I suggest a some kind of process to determine the value a successful website in your market would deliver to the business and then invest as appropriate to optimise a return.

The main cost of a website is generally not the creation, design nor the hosting but the operation and continuing management of it. If it takes special skills to update, add to or look after then they become expensive to keep or die static and bored ;-)

Perhaps see if it can form a part of the business itself and be driven along by the process of doing business rather than a superficial extra that just adds to management demands.

Good luck!

 

[coxdabd]

Having a well designed site can make a huge difference in the success of your business. Many businesses have a website, a lot of them are just not up to scratch. For some this may not matter a great deal. Having a quality, well designed, custom made site should really produce good results. Feel free to PM for some further information

 

[Mattchu]

With nearly everybody using the internet and most businesses having a website its very important that you get the design right. While a well designed website could generate you business a bad website will most definitely lose it.

Roughly £300 Basic or £500-£600 CMS. Depends on what you require.


Google Shoq Media for more information

 

[ianharte]

Hi,
A good re design would be around £595, however with an old site it is not just the design you will need to look at the authority the domain name has within the search engines, if it has good rankings you don't want to affect these by all of a sudden changing everything! We would be able to help you out - Google "Absolute Web Design"!

Thanks

 

[refinedline]

Depending on your exact requirements, we would be able to offer a redesign for around £300. If interested, just give me a PM.

Thanks
Adam

 

[dumfstar]

yeah, a new design would probably be best. do you have the link to the site or have you already posted it and I've just missed it?

 

[matt4]

Yes, Re-designs are best. I agree with others on that.

Depending on your business a CMS might be best especially for a business whose content needs to be updated regularly. If your business is static and you very, very rarely make changes and can work your way around a bit of html then a static html solution would work.

Thanks,

 

[zenei webdesign]

search for zenei on google.

We're a webdesign company, and give discounts to members on this forum, I could do what your looking for for around £250

 

[Inkywillow]

Hi Wagstaf, I design and build professional websites starting from £299. I can't say how much a redesign of your website would cost without having seen it but I'd be happy to give you a quote if you would like one.

Regards...

Tom

 

[aapkae]

couple fo hundred quid should do it. between 300-700 depending on what you want and who you use.

The most important thing is to handle the switch to the new site properly. keeping the existing urls if possible, if not putting in place proiper 301 redirects.

 

[DBMark]

couple fo hundred quid should do it. between 300-700 depending on what you want and who you use.

The most important thing is to handle the switch to the new site properly. keeping the existing urls if possible, if not putting in place proiper 301 redirects.

I'd agree with this post.
Make sure though that you get the new site written using a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress, and hosted accordingly - will cost say £5 a month. This will allow you to log-in and update your content directly, even run a blog or special offers list. It's also fairly easy to create pages on a set-up like Drupal, so you can have more than 7 pages if you really wanted to in the future. There are a lot of themes out there for Drupal or Wordpress, so you don't need to spend loads on an expensive design. If I was forced to, spend money on this I'd budget 180-250 for the Drupal setup and between 0 and 150 for the theme design.

 

[jshgardiner]

What is this site about? If you do not need something extra-super-fancy with a lot of features (like another ebay or whatever), you can check out Wordpress. It is free, it also has free themes, but what is great, there are also premium, paid themes. Look at those Wordpress Themes.
Wordpress is super-easy to administrate, add and remove pages, ect. So if you need business website, I recommend it.

But if you need custom features (that, which wordpress plugins can't do), it is better to hire a web developer.

 

[DBMark]

What is this site about? If you do not need something extra-super-fancy with a lot of features (like another ebay or whatever), you can check out Wordpress. It is free, it also has free themes, but what is great, there are also premium, paid themes. Look at those Wordpress Themes.
Wordpress is super-easy to administrate, add and remove pages, ect. So if you need business website, I recommend it.

But if you need custom features (that, which wordpress plugins can't do), it is better to hire a web developer.

There are designer-developers out there who can design you a new Wordpress theme, if needed. End of the day it's a matter of changing the css styles and knowing how Wordpress operates. So you could start off with your preferred theme (either free or premium) but then change it later if you wanted to update your site.
A small word of warning though about Wordpress. I've recently worked for a major employer that had a carpet ban on all Wordpress sites (well they banned 'blog' sites, and included Wordpress in this) for internet use. So, if you have customers who may look up your site during their lunch break at work, this may be something to consider - use a package like Drupal that is seen as more business-orientated or even get the site written directly. There again, I have no idea how many companies operate this kind of internet policy.

 

[ESSindia]

A good website design ensures that content is fresher, giving visitors a reason to linger longer and return more often to the Web site. Here is a case study on development of a <removed by mod>

 

[holmewoodorg]

Yeah 549 pounds should cover it there are simple to use tools like mr site. Welsh guy offered sound advice with 301 redirects. Depends if your looking for web presence or your looking to generate business by having people find you on the net rather than pay google as things like mrsite for 25 pound a year are not good on that. A new site from scratch is a must.

 

[nathanial]

don't reaper the old site make a new site with the new feature