Web Site Designers ?

[wigwag]

Hi all,

Anyone with a good recomendation for a web site construction group ? well priced if there is such a thing and good job.

Yes done the searches and thrown up 10000's of them. I'm looking for advice and pointers any personal experiences

ww

[IO540]

I have a small business and have always got somebody to design the website. I can do website design and do lots of it but it's only ever so basic stuff - not even using stuff like tables.

The first Q you need to ask yourself is whether you want to maintain it yourself. For a business, you may well want to be able to add new products and change pricing etc. This may dictate the tool which you want the design to be done in. My original designer, 1996, used Hot Metal Pro (a piece of junk). Then he got a well paid job and didn't do web design anymore, so I got somebody else. He used Micro$oft Frontpage (a piece of junk, IMHO) which generated a pretty but an incredibly slow to load website with each page containing hundreds of little objects and inefficient HTML. Then this bloke b*ggered off as well (got a well paid job) and the next man I used I told I want it done in Dreamweaver (which I use myself for my simple hacks). He did that; did a good website but lost interest partway through (probably got a well paid job) and we ended up in a dispute over what the terms of the job involved; basically some (few) things he did were very tacky but he said they are impossible to fix.

In the end I got a friend (who works in the office 1 day a week and looks after all this stuff) to sort it all out and that is where I have been for 2-3 years now. It works well.

A lot of things have changed in the past few years.

M$ have stopped constantly modifying Explorer. In the past, a website would work with v4 but not v5 or with v6 but not with v5 and not with Netscape etc etc. This is a real problem if selling into the less developed countries; a lot of people around the world are running an old browser under win98, etc. and they can't load a fancy website which uses browser specific features (read: it works only with IE6). OTOH, there is now IE7 and for all I know this will generate a load of websites which don't work on IE6...

A lot more people have fast connections, so bloated sites are no longer the major drag they used to be. But again this isn't true everywhere; a lot of people are still on dial-up.

The problem is that it's very hard to make a living just designing websites, so a lot of the people that do it clear off the moment they get a "proper job".

So it's essential to tightly specify what and how it will be done, so the next person (you?) can pick it up. A website done in Frontpage is close to impossible to do anything with unless again using Frontpage, and a lot of designers (most?) don't use Frontpage...

You don't say what business you are in but I can tell you that nearly everybody appreciates a clean simple honest website, which loads fast, tells you what the company does, and has simple navigation buttons on the side. No java, no flash, no active-x, minimal graphics. And keep any graphics on the main page narrow (no more than a few hundred pixels) because wide graphics prevent the pages printing properly (the RH margin gets cut off) from IE; most designers don't know this.

Bank on the designer not being around in a year's time. Buy a copy of (say) Dreamweaver, install it on some PC, and make sure that the job finally handed over is sitting on that PC, the site can be edited, and the new version can be FTP's to the server. Make sure this is specified at the outset as the deliverable package. Make sure it all works before handing over the money (or all the money).

As for artistic input, most designers don't have this. If you go to a big firm, they will bring in a graphic designer to make it pretty (say sony.co.uk etc) but all those sites (that I have seen) are massively bloated, and the job is very expensive. £100k is not unusual for such a site design.

[tallsandwich]

As with all software related issues, the cost of maint. is the real cost, so good technical design pays dividends.

<< link to service provider deleted, PM me if you want it>>

PM is the only possible way to communicate such information.

SD

How about editing the original post "Anyone with a good recomendation for a web site construction group ?"

It's not really free advertising is it? that would be what happens when a profit oriented group puts content in the forums without a request (i.e. "pushing" the message). When someone asks about other peoples experiences with a certain company or piece of software it is a different matter - they are "pulling" the info - this is not Advertising. Where do you draw the line? If someone says "I need a cheap application to sync my contacts on my phone and my latop" and someone posts with a suggestion then I assume you will delete that too?

tallsandwich

[pilothunter]

IO540 is right on!! Very well written post.

Our situation is much like what he describes. My advise would be the same.

PH

[Conan the Librarian]

I know a good web design company that is talented,original, enthusiastic, savvy and offers a quality service. PM me for details if you need them. No - I don't get ten percent either


Conan

[wigwag]

IO540,

Thanks to you and everyone else for thoughts and ideas on this. I didnt realise how much I have to learn or at least be aware of before going ahead...:ooh:

Yes i want very much to be able to update the site myself and add and remove images. The maintenance sounds expensive :8 so ill have to think long and hard about my exact requirements and perhaps look at using my own pc to help reduce costs and problems

Many thanks everyone :D

WW

[planecrazy.eu]

A half way between the two extremes is to just have a personal CMS set up for you. This way you get a pro design and a CMS set-up to your needs and then you can edit, add and delete pages as and when you need. You can add catagories and other links and all really easy and via the internet. Seems like a perfect solution for you. The interface on most CMS systems is simple and has nice features to add images easy and all the other formatting options. CMS is content management system, and loads of top companies have them, I know alot of large Automotive and Consumer electronics companies use them, so people in different departments can add and edit things simply with no knowledge. To get a CMS customized for you, you are looking at £50-80 for the design, and the same again for installation, around £3-5pm for hosting and £3 or so for a domain for a year. Then you need to get your website found, £30 a month would get a fair few visitors to you, most companies for this would optimize your website for the search engines which are free traffic, and they would offer so many paid traffic hits that lead people who are looking for what you offer to your website. You can look at rentacoder.com, there you can post what you want and get people to give you some quotes, its world wide and most will be india or the likes. I have used that site a few times both to make a few $$$ and other times to get a few things done. I know some web-designers may ask the world, others will ask very little. As with most things you get what you pay for, but the best for the price is normally in between. £200 is about right to set-up a website, double that if you want to add e-commerce, unless you want bespoke scripts made or scripts that are unique then i dont think they cost much. The problem is if you do it, you will get tied up trying to make it better, and then you have to account for the time you are spending on it and how much it is really costing you, as time is money, even if its your own time...

[Lost_luggage34]

Excellent post IO540 - some very useful information and views there.

[unimuts]

Interesting post's,

can someone tell me what is third party component integration is? Had a quote from a company explaining that the quote is without this third party and cms and database oriented coding. Is this going to increase the price a large amount? Would help if i knew what all this meant in laymans terms.

Just had a quote myself for a web site by several companies in India, Is anyone any experiences good or bad tips and hints to add to this thread? Sorry if Im butting in on this thread MrM.

:ok:

[PaperTiger]

Yes i want very much to be able to update the site myself and add and remove images. The maintenance sounds expensive :8 so ill have to think long and hard about my exact requirements and perhaps look at using my own pc to help reduce costs and problems
Many thanks everyone :D
WWBuy a book on HTML. At first glance it looks intimidating, but it isn't - anyone (well almost) who can post here can learn HTML in a few hours. Just skip the esoteric convoluted bits - they'll be in the back of the book - there are only about a score or so tags (browser commands) that you really need for a simple, effective website. Leave the bells and whistles alone as others have said. Flash is the most appropriately named piece of **** to come along in a long time :cool:

[Hobo]

If you are a BALPA member, which you should be, there's a Web Design Company in "The Log" classified ads. I used them, very happy.

[planecrazy.eu]

[quote=wigwag;2845308]IO540,

Yes i want very much to be able to update the site myself and add and remove images. The maintenance sounds expensive :8 so ill have to think long and hard about my exact requirements and perhaps look at using my own pc to help reduce costs and problems

There are a good handfull of scripts that are so simple to update and run its untrue. For example, there are flash scripts where you simply upload them, and to add a picture you just upload a folder into the pictures folder "the folder name is then the gallery name" and then you just upload pictures into that folder, and they get added automatically... To delete, just delete the image or the folder on the server...

These are so easy to use, and so easy to just integrate into a normal, static HTML website. There is no need to get all flash =)...

There are a good few free HTML editors for Windows, look on downloads.com, its so easy to create HTML pages these days...

---------------

As for unimuts posts, Indian designers are in two breeds, excellent and pi** poor, just just have to be lucky to get an excellent one...

I have worked with ones that dedicate there time to your project, and your project only for around half what it would cost over here...

I have worked with ones that promise that your there only client, but in reality they are just greedy and have half a dozon or more at the same time and dont dedicate or do a propper job, and they your just left $$ down and still in-need of someone to finish the job properly...

It can cost more for someone to finish a job, than in some cases do it from scratch as each coder and designer has there own styles of programming...

It sounds like that a good CMS would suite you though, there free and very very functional, you can get just about any plugin for them, and they are usually free too...

A CMS wont cost too much to get setup if you want someone else to upload and install, even though these days a good host will have an AutoMatic install feature for these, look out for CPanel With Fantastico... Thats the hosting with around 20 or so scripts ready to install for free...

The only technical part with a CMS is getting them to look how you want, they are pretty complex templates usually, and better left to someone who knows what there doing, they could have it done in 1-2 hours depending on design...

One last thing, the website its self should only take up half of your online budget, spend the other half on marketing and S.E.O "Search Engine Optimisation"... There is no point in having a killer website if no one will ever find it unless they are a customer already...

There are now a good few web designers in the yellow pages, most of them will be local and low key and offer good rates, do a little research, a template for a cms could cost £40+, dependant on how confident the designer is with css and html, without WYSIWYG editors...

Or failing that, there are a few web designers on here, me for example =) and i am sure there are a few others that would do it too... I could do with some extra cash for my training, as could we all...

Or if i doubt when you have found a company you like the look of, but your unsure, post the quote here and get some advice or feedback...