As a business owner, you are constantly bombarded with people trying to sell you stuff that is suppose to make your establishment more money and run better than ever. Unfortunately a lot of those salespeople who are trying to make you rich, get rich themselves at the expense of yourself.

Many businesses will get visits from web development firms, they come in to sell you their services and guarantee a multitude of outlandish promises. Some things to watch out for are;

1. Top 10 in Google right away! If those words come out of the mouth of anybody trying to sell you a website, laugh in their face. Unless you are in a very uncompetitive market such as Custom Clothing for Ostriches, the odds of you being able to capture the top 10 spot is not very likely. Quality rankings with keywords that actually generate traffic take a lot of time, and a lot of effort. Anybody can promise a top 10 ranking with uncompetitive keywords that generate no traffic. A quality firm will explain the time and efforts needed to achieve a quality ranking.
   
   
2. The site will pay for itself in one week! Although possible, especially if you are selling products or services with a high profit margins, be keen on this sell. Competition on the web is huge and being able to capture a significant market share in a short time frame is very unlikely. Although websites are investments and DO pay off in the end with a quality firm to back it up, don't be suckered into somebody who promises to deliver the world on a weekend.
   
   
3. Get a website for $300! Many firms will offer a website at very little cost to you upfront. This sounds great at first, but in the end you will owe more than ever. Be sure to carefully read any contracts they may give you, this can be very limiting to your ability to access and change content your own site. After the small initial amount, they can charge you as much as $1,000 a month for upkeep and service and as much as $200 an hour for any changes or alterations you need for your site and if they have the only access to your server, you must pay the price.

If the sales rep at any firm tries to sell their services to you, make sure that they can back up their claims. Demand that you see examples of past clients and see if their claims are justified with past work. If they can't, show them the door.

A quality firm will not promise you more than they can deliver. They will be open and honest towards your needs and explain what will be needed to achieve your goals. They will not need to promise anything, their quality should speak for itself in the work they have done for previous clients.

All websites are investments, they will flourish with time when they are backed by quality web firms. Your website should not be something you need to keep dumping money into. If you do not see positive results to the money you spend, stop that service and look for somebody who can help.

Use your best judgment when you come face to face with somebody who is trying to sell you a website. If something sounds too good to be true, it often is. The bottom line is read the fine lines, research the company, view work done for previous clients and justify the amount you are going to spend.

Labels: buying a website, web design services, web development services, websites

Posted by Phil Antonson at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

How much should a website cost? That question is like asking how much should a car cost? On one hand, you have the discount lower quality KIAs and on the other, quality and expensive Mercedes Benz, they both get you from point 'A' to point 'B', so why spend more? Well, thats not the whole picture. Like cars, websites and web design/development firms offer different levels of quality, performance and support. In a nutshell, you typically get what you pay for!

When shopping for web designers, you need to look at many different factors such as;

• Quality
• Price
• IT
• SEO
  
• Turnaround time
• Support
• Design
• Experience
  

1. Quality - Quality, is a very broad factor and basically covers all realms of functionality, appeal and programming back-end. When you shop for a media or web design company to create your website, look at their previous work and see if it has the face appeal that you are looking for. Spend time on their previous works, click through the pages, look for a continuing effect through all of the pages. Check the support on various browsers such as Internet explorer, Safari and Mozilla Firefox to name a few. Some websites will look well in one browser, but not the others and if it looks bad on any browser, you could lose a lot of visitors and business!

2. Price - Price is going to probably be the first thing you will look at and will probably be the main factor in who you decide to choose. This is a very touchy matter because there really isn't a set or defined rate for web design and development services. Here is a general breakdown for a cost of a 10-15 page, custom designed, standard web page with no heavy programming and development.

• Large, highly qualified, experienced firm: $5,000 - $10,000+
• Medium sized, experienced firm: $3,000 - $4,000
• Small, skilled, experienced freelancer: $1,000 - $2,500
• Skilled, unexperienced freelancer: $500 - $750
• New, unexperienced, low quality: $200 - $400
• Indian or similar outsourced: $100 - $400
  

Those figures are very broad and there are definitely exceptions to those numbers. Under the $1,000 mark you will typically get unpolished, quickly developed, and end up with a website that poorly reflects your business efforts. Like most things, you get what you pay for! Up past the $1,000 range you will have a much more effective and targeted site with qualified people to back it up. For a basic 10-15 page website, I would advise not to spend more than $5,000.

3. IT - IT is the technology and back end of the site created. A qualified firm or freelancer will develop your site with the latest and most efficient languages and be valid in all W3 standards. This is typically a problem in inexperienced freelancers or individuals who have not been trained in web development. Poor efforts in this realm could result in bad indexing within search engines and unreliable compliances in various internet browsers.

4. SEO - SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts are essential in quality web sites. Although strong SEO marketing tactics are not common in "standard" web site development, it is extremely beneficial that your website is SEO ready and has the basic elements of SEO incorporated into your website, no matter how standard or basic your website is. When you communicate with a potential web developer, be sure to ask if basic SEO elements will be placed in your site for future compliances.

5. Turnaround time - Turnaround time is the time it takes for your developer to create your web site from beginning to launch. Turnaround time is not a direct factor to the quality of the web site, but it often a factor in the overall cost of your project. Typically, a larger, qualified firm will develop a site quicker, but that is not always the case. Very commonly, slow rate of completeness will come from outsourced firms such as India due to communication barriers. For a basic web site consisting of 10-15 pages, it should be completed in one to two weeks.

6. Support - Support is severely overlooked factor in web development service. When a development firm or freelancer creates your website, you need to insure that they will assist in all aspects of launching and maintaining the site. If you need a change done to your site and you don't have the technical knowhow or software to change it, you should be able to contact your development firm and they will make the changes within 24 hours or in emergency situations, much sooner. Before you deposit any money to your group, make sure you understand the rules of their support policies.

7. Design - Design is the face of your website, clearly. It is what people will see first and will have the strongest impact to your visitors about your company. A lot of weight goes behind a web site's design, a poor design and visual appeal quickly will indicate a poor company. Although a bad design may not always mean a bad company, visitors think that.

Design goes far beyond visual appeal, it digs psychologically into the visitors and reflects the business it represents in a dignified matter. The smallest hole-in-the-wall shop can appear to visitors as a fortune 500. Only qualified firms or designers trained in online marketing and general marketing can effectively harness this power - not cheap, unexperienced freelancers or outsourced designers .

8. Experience - Experience reflects the overall knowledge that the freelancer or firm has. Some freelancers will have loads of experience from previous work, but larger firms can be a sure bet that your website is truly quality work.

Recap

So, there you have it, a quick and easy guide to hiring a web development firm. To sum it all up in one easy sentence; You get what you pay for. A quality website cannot be found for under 3 digits. A website is an invest to yourself, and your company and should be the last thing you should be pinching pennies on.

Labels: development, how much should a website cost, websites

Posted by Phil Antonson at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments