Where have the all the good website builders gone?

[estwig]

20 years ago when I had my first website built and the half a dozen sites for 10 years after that, it seemed relatively easy to find someone good to build a website.

My current website built about 4 years ago is very slow, you can make a cuppa in the time it takes to load, I was conned by someone who purported to know what they where doing, I trusted them. It hasn't really mattered before now but the general economy is a mess, so my enquiries are slowing. I need to turn my attention to the website and marketing.

I've put what I hope is a well written proposal on Upwork and on PPH, to have my large, static, WP brochure site rebuilt exactly as it currently is, removing Divi which I don't like, all optimised to load faster. All I'm getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

 

[MBE2017]

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

Money. Loads of money.

 

[fisicx]

Most of those on the freelancer sites aren’t website builders. What they do is customise themes using things like Divi.

They aren’t conmen, they just aren’t very good.

There are some excellent website builders. But they are either very busy or very expensive.

And if you just want to duplicate what you already have then you will struggle. Divi is admittedly crap but you could do so much more with a better theme. Might not look the same but it would be a lot better.

 

[UKSBD]

20 years ago when I had my first website built and the half a dozen sites for 10 years after that, it seemed relatively easy to find someone good to build a website.

My current website built about 4 years ago is very slow, you can make a cuppa in the time it takes to load, I was conned by someone who purported to know what they where doing, I trusted them. It hasn't really mattered before now but the general economy is a mess, so my enquiries are slowing. I need to turn my attention to the website and marketing.

I've put what I hope is a well written proposal on Upwork and on PPH, to have my large, static, WP brochure site rebuilt exactly as it currently is, removing Divi which I don't like, all optimised to load faster. All I'm getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

There are too many out there who just use Wordpress with the likes of Elementor and other plugins.

Knock up half a dozen sites, create a portfolio and they look like the bees knees - But...

 

[UKSBD]

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

The thing about good websites is the reason some are good is due to the quality of images.

You might think a website someone has built is brilliant, but they build one without the same quality images and graphics and it isn't half as good

 

[KM-Tiger]

you could do so much more with a better theme.

Out of curiosity, what would you recommend as a theme for @estwig to use?

 

[estwig]

The thing about good websites is the reason some are good is due to the quality of images.

You might think a website someone has built is brilliant, but they build one without the same quality images and graphics and it isn't half as good

Very true, my website is great on the images, layout, design and graphics..........It must be as I drove that bit!

It's just that it takes forever to load!

 

[EcomAlistair]

Can you please send me a link to your current website?

 

[UKSBD]

Very true, my website is great on the images, layout, design and graphics..........It must be as I drove that bit!

It's just that it takes forever to load!

Did you resize and compress them before uploading them.

I was working on a site the other day where the image on the page was only about 600px wide, the uploaded image was over 3,000

 

[UKSBD]

Out of curiosity, what would you recommend as a theme for @estwig to use?

I know you didn't ask me but I still don't think you can co far wrong with an adapted Twenty Nineteen

 

[thetiger2015]

Very true, my website is great on the images, layout, design and graphics..........It must be as I drove that bit!

It's just that it takes forever to load!

That may require someone to look at the technical side. If you're only worried about the load times then it could be a case of image compressing or a problem with a plug-in, someone might be able to fix it in an hour or two. Problem solved, money saved.

If you need or want a complete rebuild on a new theme, it starts getting expensive, because there's no gold at the bottom end of the market. Most people I speak to are charging £300 per day for basic web stuff now, freelance.

 

[estwig]

Did you resize and compress them before uploading them.

I was working on a site the other day where the image on the page was only about 600px wide, the uploaded image was over 3,000

That could me right there!

 

[Fagin2021]

That could me right there!

Run a Google 'Lighthouse' Report on a slow-loading page. That'll give you a lot of info' about where the problem(s) are. Lighthouse is just an extension to Chrome.

 

[Daveyon]

We are most likely tied up with other projects or are in full-time employment.

A website has many moving parts to consider:

* Hosting: How fast is the server?
* Database: How fast is the database?
* Images: Should be lazy-loaded and where are these images (assets) loading from?

For me, those are the three main causes of an effective website. Your potential developer should sit with you to understand your business' needs.

I'm a full-time Software Engineer but my passion is in eCommerce.

Dave

Edited:

If you store information into a database, caching is required.

 

[fisicx]

@estwig - start here:

PageSpeed Insights

pagespeed.web.dev

 

[antropy]

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

Those freelancer sites are full of rubbish these days, I know, I used to use them.

You could contact us for an estimate, we've been in business a very long time and have a great reputation: [email protected]

Paul.

 

[HFE Signs]

They are either working for large companies or on a self employed basis under the umbrella of an agency.

 

[UKOnlineServices]

Most webdevelopers you find on gig websites offer cheap stuff, as they go for quantity. This means heavy reliance on website builders - drag and drop software that generates the website code for you. Such code is usually bloated and of poor general quality.
Another issue is media optimization. Images are often uploaded as whole and processed via styling, after load. Balancing that takes time as there is a different quality/size ratio for each file - depending on usage.

On top of that we have modern javascript, which, again, when used in a rush, does a lot of damage to website performance.

One good way to decide if the webdeveloper can do well performing websites is to test their websites with google page speed tool:

pagespeed.web.dev

 

[Uwe (Invoiceberry)]

Lots of website developers out there. Most use builders such as Wix, Webflow, EditorX and co. to get their clients' sites done.

 

[makeusvisible]

20 years ago when I had my first website built and the half a dozen sites for 10 years after that, it seemed relatively easy to find someone good to build a website.

My current website built about 4 years ago is very slow, you can make a cuppa in the time it takes to load, I was conned by someone who purported to know what they where doing, I trusted them. It hasn't really mattered before now but the general economy is a mess, so my enquiries are slowing. I need to turn my attention to the website and marketing.

I've put what I hope is a well written proposal on Upwork and on PPH, to have my large, static, WP brochure site rebuilt exactly as it currently is, removing Divi which I don't like, all optimised to load faster. All I'm getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

Coming at this from an agency perspective. I've run a digital marketing agency for just over 10 years, and during that time worked with countless developers, and designers. I've also used UpWork.

The problem you will always have with UpWork is that anyone can register there. Anyone, sadly, can tell you anything until such point as you either have enough knowledge to spot their knowledge gaps, or they start the job and make a mess of it.

I'll guarantee you 100% that there are more good developers out there than 4 years ago. The problem is there are also a huge number of people who 'think' they are good developers and see an opportunity.

As above, I've been in this job 10+ years, and Im very familiar with managing developers. If I have a situation where I need to work with a new developer, its tough! Establishing their skill set, their experience, their attention to detail.... their capacity..... is a very difficult process. I can usually tell within a few hours of starting a project if the dev is going to live up to expectations and follow through on what was agreed.

You will find good devs on upwork. But your chances of finding them will come down to your budget, as those experienced and those with good feedback will align that with the hourly fee.

It really comes down to your specification document which outlines the project requirements. The tighter that is the better. You've mentioned speed and performance.... so you might for example put some page insight benchmarks in there as to what you expect on completion. That at least gives you a clearly defined goal.

One last thing to consider might be working with a team on upwork rather than a freelancer. That way you could have access to a project manager who will help you keep the project on track. Or use a UK agency who have solid reviews.

Hope that helps.

 

[Paul Carmen]

It's money for old rope mostly these days; you pay peanuts for someone in India, or a lot more money for someone in the UK/EU to build a site for you.

Either way the results are often the same, as the process has become about creating a site on a CMS with a theme, and the only difference is the cost of who's doing the work.

The real work for most websites starts before you get anywhere near building it, and then continues after it's built. The little bit in between (the build) is the least important!

The important bit is getting the reasons for the build in order; e.g. what is the site for, how are you going to market it and generate ongoing profitable leads/sales. This is true for about 95% of the website market, unless is a pure brochure site that you show to people and it does not need to be found online.

The what's it for and how it will be marketed should encompass the functionality needed; e.g. marketing, research, copywriting, content, lead/sales tracking, usability, speed, testing etc. If you don't do this as part of the project then you're normally setting yourself up to fail...

 

[EcomAlistair]

Coming at this from an agency perspective. I've run a digital marketing agency for just over 10 years, and during that time worked with countless developers, and designers. I've also used UpWork.

The problem you will always have with UpWork is that anyone can register there. Anyone, sadly, can tell you anything until such point as you either have enough knowledge to spot their knowledge gaps, or they start the job and make a mess of it.

I'll guarantee you 100% that there are more good developers out there than 4 years ago. The problem is there are also a huge number of people who 'think' they are good developers and see an opportunity.

As above, I've been in this job 10+ years, and Im very familiar with managing developers. If I have a situation where I need to work with a new developer, its tough! Establishing their skill set, their experience, their attention to detail.... their capacity..... is a very difficult process. I can usually tell within a few hours of starting a project if the dev is going to live up to expectations and follow through on what was agreed.

You will find good devs on upwork. But your chances of finding them will come down to your budget, as those experienced and those with good feedback will align that with the hourly fee.

It really comes down to your specification document which outlines the project requirements. The tighter that is the better. You've mentioned speed and performance.... so you might for example put some page insight benchmarks in there as to what you expect on completion. That at least gives you a clearly defined goal.

One last thing to consider might be working with a team on upwork rather than a freelancer. That way you could have access to a project manager who will help you keep the project on track. Or use a UK agency who have solid reviews.

Hope that helps.

Well said

 

[Russ Michaels]

20 years ago when I had my first website built and the half a dozen sites for 10 years after that, it seemed relatively easy to find someone good to build a website.

My current website built about 4 years ago is very slow, you can make a cuppa in the time it takes to load, I was conned by someone who purported to know what they where doing, I trusted them. It hasn't really mattered before now but the general economy is a mess, so my enquiries are slowing. I need to turn my attention to the website and marketing.

I've put what I hope is a well written proposal on Upwork and on PPH, to have my large, static, WP brochure site rebuilt exactly as it currently is, removing Divi which I don't like, all optimised to load faster. All I'm getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

Just install a caching plugin, this will speed up your site, and/or also use cloudflare.Com free plan, which will really help if you have a crappy host, which I suspect is also highly likely.

The other option is to move to a managed WordPress host like flywheel that do all the caching and performance stuff for you, and provide a lot more support.

If you need help or want your site fully managed, take a look at managedwp.uk

 

[EcomAlistair]

Have you looked into Webflow yet?

 

[vermillionfilm]

20 years ago when I had my first website built and the half a dozen sites for 10 years after that, it seemed relatively easy to find someone good to build a website.

My current website built about 4 years ago is very slow, you can make a cuppa in the time it takes to load, I was conned by someone who purported to know what they where doing, I trusted them. It hasn't really mattered before now but the general economy is a mess, so my enquiries are slowing. I need to turn my attention to the website and marketing.

I've put what I hope is a well written proposal on Upwork and on PPH, to have my large, static, WP brochure site rebuilt exactly as it currently is, removing Divi which I don't like, all optimised to load faster. All I'm getting are either numpties, conmen, or way overpriced opportunists.

Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?

What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?

Don't use the gig sites, you pay peanuts and get monkeys, all using WordPress with either Astra or Elementor theme, which is slooooow! (as we have found out).

WordPress can be fast but you need a great server setup, and a professional website designer to be able to do more than just switch on every plugin.

You may be better off looking at one of the web builders like Duda for example - they have nice ready-made themes, and all runs on AWS so the servers don't go down, and are fast! You don't have to get involved in any of the techie stuff, and you can just build it yourself.

I believe the likes of Squarespace are built on similar platforms.

Otherwise look for a professional web design company, like Echo in Peterborough (if you want to stay with WordPress they are cost-effective and great!) or Verto in Kettering (if you want a custom ASP.net site built from scratch - more costly but amazing!).

We have been looking into all the same recently for our video production company, and are going to move from self-hosted WordPress & Elementor theme to Echo hosting, managing and building custom plugins to speed everything up, as we simply couldn't get the LCP to a decent enough speed with the current setup.

 

[Russ Michaels]

Don't use the gig sites, you pay peanuts and get monkeys, all using WordPress with either Astra or Elementor theme, which is slooooow! (as we have found out).

WordPress can be fast but you need a great server setup, and a professional website designer to be able to do more than just switch on every plugin.

You may be better off looking at one of the web builders like Duda for example - they have nice ready-made themes, and all runs on AWS so the servers don't go down, and are fast! You don't have to get involved in any of the techie stuff, and you can just build it yourself.

I believe the likes of Squarespace are built on similar platforms.

Otherwise look for a professional web design company, like Echo in Peterborough (if you want to stay with WordPress they are cost-effective and great!) or Verto in Kettering (if you want a custom ASP.net site built from scratch - more costly but amazing!).

We have been looking into all the same recently for our video production company, and are going to move from self-hosted WordPress & Elementor theme to Echo hosting, managing and building custom plugins to speed everything up, as we simply couldn't get the LCP to a decent enough speed with the current setup.

You only get that problem on freelance sites if you choose to pay peanuts and hire people from India.
If you pay appropriately and how someone in this country, you get a good job done by someone like me.

I would have too disagree about duda, this requires a lot more time and skill than WordPress, as you need to write custom code to do most of the things that that WordPress has built right into the builder or plugins.
So you really do need coding skills to use duda or it works out more expensive as a result if you are paying someone else to do it.
The main advantage of that you don't have to worry about security, hosting, updates, management etc, but maintenance will be more expensive as well.

 

[fisicx]

WordPress can be fast but you need a great server setup, and a professional website designer to be able to do more than just switch on every plugin.

No you don't. You just need decent hosting and bin the page builder plugins/themes. An out the box WP+Woo install is fast. What slows it done is generally the choice of theme.

 

[Russ Michaels]

No you don't. You just need decent hosting and bin the page builder plugins/themes. An out the box WP+Woo install is fast. What slows it done is generally the choice of theme.

sorry but this is also wrong and base don ignorance.

Builder plugins (some are worse than others) will slow the site down, obviously, because they add a whole bunch of additional functionality. Just as adding an extension to your house will make it bigger. basic common sense.
But this doesn't automatically mean your site has to be slow... you just have to optimise it, use a good host and put some effort in.

Sure, if you just use a lightweight theme like kadence or blocksy and no builder and minimum plugins, your site will be faster, but it will also be very bland, basic and boring.
You can use Gutenberg blocks, but again, you still to install additional plugins to get better blocks if you want a site that doesn't look like amateur junk.

I would also not recommend using Woocommerce for most clients, as it is unwieldy and not very intuitive for most clients. Plus once you start needing additional functionality from paid plugins, it starts getting expensive and slow.
I tend to use ECWID, which my clients love as it is so easy to use, no management, update or security issues, no hosting to worry about, and pricing is very reasonable.

 

[fisicx]

All depends on your needs. One of the many woo themes will suffice for many shops. Bland and boring isn’t bad. If you are selling nuts and bolts it doesn’t need to be exciting.

Don’t know when you last used WP but the blocks have got a whole lot better. The problem with woo it still uses the old tinymcd editor.

 

[Shopclicks]

It's been a while since I posted here but thought I'd add my 2p. A lot gets said about the downside of using bloated themes and page builders. Frankly, there are upsides which are important to my clients. Half of my clients go into a project wanting the ability to edit and add pages themselves. Page builders make that easy. If they get stuck, it's easy for me to fix or train.
The combination I use for all projects is Wordpress, OceanWP & Elementor Pro. The user experience is very good provided the sites are on good hosting (I use Krystal) and the images are optimised. I discourage the use of animations or moving parts.
A lot is said about page load speed but testing on page speed insights isn't in line with SERP results. Page load speed as tested by Google is over-rated and is only a small ranking factor, if anything.
The user experience is far more important than a green circle on page speed insights. Nobody wants pages that open slowly and in my experience, it's the content that slows a page, not what it's built on.

 

[Heyes]

I agree it's become increasingly difficult to 'get good help'.

Part of my 'business advice & support' service has been to recommend to clients, or sub-contract on their behalf with, appropriate providers of various services - including website providers.

But nowadays many of those with whom I've previously dealt are no longer available - having retired or taken employment. The flipside of this is that many website providers don't have appropriate knowledge and simply aren't good enough.

So increasingly I've advised clients to use WordPress (com rather than self-hosted), Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, etcetera - despite the relatively limited functionality and often bloated/unnecessary code.

I do this because although it's not ideal they'll get something which is visually decent and works - faster and easier than finding an appropriate website provider and at a price that's much lower than they'll get from a provider. (This is *not* a criticism of website providers.) Many simply can't afford or won't pay the cost of what they genuinely need.

Additionally, many-to-most wanting a website quite rightly don't have sufficient knowledge of what they need to be able to realistically assess the ability/appropriateness of website providers - in consequence of which they often get something unsuitable and or over/under-priced.

In response to your direct questions:

'Where do all the good website builders hang out nowadays, where do I find someone decent?'

Many of the good ones 'hang out' in their own premises, and increasingly less have need to 'put themselves about'. So you search, and enquire.

And:
'What is a decent website builder looking for, how do I attract them?'

They're wanting clients with appropriate knowledge/appreciation/budget, and they're to be searched for and found rather than attracted - it's that thing of increasingly less have need to 'put themselves about'.

 

[fisicx]

Building websites is a pain in the butt. Not the coding, that’s the easy bit. The pain is dealing with clients.

And most of these clients begrudge paying for the hours and hours of consultation needed to get the site built.

Which is why many (like me) have moved into creating themes, plugins, extensions and other addons for popular platforms. It’s far more lucrative, you don’t have to deal with people and you are no longer competing with cheap freelancers offering Wordpress sites for under $100.

 

[Russ Michaels]

All depends on your needs. One of the many woo themes will suffice for many shops. Bland and boring isn’t bad. If you are selling nuts and bolts it doesn’t need to be exciting.

Don’t know when you last used WP but the blocks have got a whole lot better. The problem with woo it still uses the old tinymcd editor.

I use WP all the time, I build, manage and maintain WP websites.
I have given the gutenburg blocks a try several times, but they are still not good for anything other than a very very basic site or blog.
Still required additional plugins with better blocks for gutenburg to produce anything decent. I am happy to use kadence or Blocksy with an additional plugin for simple sites.
My preference is still DIVI for sites that want bells and whistles, for which I have an unlimited licence, so it avoid extra costs for clients.

 

[fisicx]

Fair enough, but a simple layout often suffices without the need for plugins.

Interesting that you like Divi. I’ve always found the mobile UI very poor.

 

[Russ Michaels]

Fair enough, but a simple layout often suffices without the need for plugins.

Interesting that you like Divi. I’ve always found the mobile UI very poor.

for clients that only need something that simple, I don't even bother using Wordpress, as its overkill.