Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Laurie,

The quote you mentioned is in line depending on what you're getting for the money. Figure a website should be about $100 per page. For that, you'd expect the designer give you guidance on usability features like nav button design and color coordination. He/she should also help you (some) with content by researching competitive sites and suggesting things you put on yours. This service would be much cheaper! He/she should also provide heavy guidance for SEO in the content - e.g. the designer is not just taking the stuff you put together and mounting it in templates. As far as hosting fee, for that, you should expect some modification built into the budget - e.g. changes made to 4 pages per month included. The training cost appears to be a bit steep to me.

As for doing it yourself, as a business advisor, I'd have you look at the hourly rate you'd EARN if you spent the equivalent time prospecting, selling, and service your customers. By futzing around on your website, it's probably costing you MUCH more than you'd pay someone else to do it. Additionally, they will be much more effective at it in terms of time it takes and quality. I'm sure your clients could do what you provide themselves, right? Why would you tell them they shouldn't do that and let you? Spend your time doing activities that net you the most money and avoid being distracted with the other stuff. If you can't afford the website right now, budget it in for later. Unless you're doing a large percentage of your business online, chances are the website is a secondary marketing tool anyway. It won't dramatically affect your business if you wait a few months.

If you don't know anyone who will provide you the services I mentioned above for around $100 per page, I do know good, reputable website designers who can help you. Contact me via email (find that in my profile) and I will give you some names/contact info for others who can help you.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

No - you're not missing anything.

Time is money and building a web site takes more time than we expect (yours and/or your developer). Site builders are fine for simpler sites, yet many have limited features and some have good features but you typically pay more for features / custom additions.

Hosting for $25/month (for just hosting) it too much. More like $5/month (shared hosting). The higher price may be additional revenue for admin / customer service time. Most companies include it.

$95/hour to teach you - time is money yet pricey.

You are dabbling in a gray area - the transition from DIY to a custom site ("not exactly what I want"). If you expect / desire to change content "often" then having a Content Management System included is a must for long-term cost control and flexibility. Web sites should be changed to keep them fresh.

I suggest you speak to an unbiased consultant first (namely AdsValue) and explore what you have, what you want, and how to get there with the best concerns for your budget, flexibility, and abilities / time.

Sincerely,
Bob

Perhaps https://www.weebly.com/ is more of what you're looking for?

$25 per month for hosting is daylight robbery.

You might want to look into Wordpress, which is pretty easy to use, and host your own domain via JustHost, GoDaddy or Namecheap. I use https://www.justhost.com/ for hosting and have had no problems. You'll pay an annual fee to buy and retain a domain name and a monthly or annual fee for hosting, but this shouldn't cost you more than $6 per month.

To set up a Wordpress site, try working with a designer via elance or ODesk. You'll pay a good deal less and probably get a better product.

The web price is in line based on the requirements. Do you need e-commerce capability, shopping carts, data capture, etc. Yahoo, GoDaddy, etc will host the site for significantly less, give you great functionality as well.

What you need to ask the designer is the charge to update the site. To build good rankings in organic search you now need to stay relevant, which requires frequent updating. That's a good reason to look at getting the design done in WordPress, it's very easy to update and you could do it quickly (as long as you stay within the format currently built).

I may be able to point you in the direction of a designer who can help you accomplish these goals, but I'd need more information. If interested you can contact me directly at:

Price ranges for web site design can be all over the place, from several hundred dollars to tens of thousands. It all depends on what you need on your site. For a basic site, the 'design' price seems reasonable, but the on-going costs for hosting and training seem a bit steep.

I own my domain name through GoDaddy which runs me about $12 or so a year. My site is hosted by Host Gator at $9.95 a month for a package that allows me a lot of options for growth as my company matures. Someone mentioned WordPress as a platform and I concur. It is pretty simple to edit yourself, has a lot of tutorial help and has a lot of plug-ins to flesh out functionality of your the site.

I would caution that the cost of just the 'design' of your site is fine, but does the person doing the work know anything at all about marketing and SEO (search engine optimization)? Just putting up a site that doesn't meet basic concepts of marketing in terms of design and content that does not attract traffic and customers can be pretty expensive in the end, regardless of the amount paid up front for design.