Client told me recently they have been having some hard sell from a Adwords reseller that holds the lofty title of Premier Partner, the information they received from that partner is misleading and incorrect and is repeated in full here (with comments by delicious webdesign). After investigating their figures I found that in the last year the website has received less visits than claimed.

[message from Google Adwords Premier Partner] Please see attached the stats for your Google programme. Views are how many times the advert has appeared [Delicious Webdesign - shown as over 48,000] and CLICKS are visits to your website.[Delicious Webdesign - shown as 199 these figures are given over a 1 month period]

The only thing that maybe is stopping the user calling is that you only have MOBILE number on the website and NO ADDRESS so they cannot see where you are based ?????? [Delicious Webdesign - Address is on the site and its very shortsighted to say that they know the only thing that stops people calling is the lack of a landline number]

Maybe an idea to get a landline added and then divert it to your mobile. I know a builder who had the exact same issue and this definitely helped.

I have asked Yell to sort out the refund our end for the over payment. [Delicious Webdesign - no idea whats this is about]

Sorry about that. Let me know what you think about the landline ????

[Delicious Webdesign - message to client after he requested help ] Just checked your ‘real Google Analytics  Statistics’. The claim that the ‘clicks’ are visits to your website is incorrect as in the last 3 months your ‘real website stats report you have only had 18 visitors from Yell (you had the same amount from ebay!) .

My advice is as soon as you can stop paying for this advertising and will use your free £50 google adwords voucher and start your ads going on your own Google account.

We often get asked is it worth using a budget overseas company to host a website, in short the answer is NO, here is a brief conversation I had recently to emphasise the point when asked about using a budget hosting company based not in the UK.

They are one of a huge amount of hosting companies that have their servers situated somewhere other than UK. Having UK based servers is one of the SEO basics, its one of the essentials we check for when reviewing websites. I would say that out of over 450 domains we have created and optimised only 3 are not hosted by us and all our SEO successes are with websites hosted on our award winning UK servers.

We are happy for you to arrange your own hosting and for you to provide us with the codes to access the website but in general you will find they are cheap for a reason. We have spend 5 years finding the best hosting company and this has been confirmed by PC Pro who have put the company we use in the top 3 for the last 3 years since they have been rating them. You will find that by saving a few £ early on will always either cost you more long term or cost you more in website downtime or extra stress and hassle

So you need to decide on the domain name from the ones we talked about and were sent for you for review. We agree to include a standard blog (this requires another database) as well as all the other features as mentioned below.

You didnt mention how many galleries you want but assume one main one (within html – main site)

Payment and project details:

Total payment for project £1750

I will accept this very reduced rate on the understanding that you can do a few hours graphic design / logo type work in the future (if possible) and included in my proposal is:

Domain name
1 years hosting
Website design / build
Ecommerce Suite (plus admin access)
Wordpress Blog Basic to be customised at a later date if required (plus admin access)
Email accounts (3)
500MB webspace
All the standard features of a Premium site as detailed here >> http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/website-packages.html
FTP access to website (required for ftp uploads of your products)

Will agree payment stages of

Deposit £750

Payment once project completed £750

Final payment £250 (when convenient but within 6 months of project completion would be appreciated)

There are no obvious additional costs for your project and only 2^ndand subsequent years hosting at £45 per year would be charged. I would also email 123 reg to see if they can cancel your agreement or even reduce the hosting plan from pro to beginner ?

Opting out of WHOIS

I believe we have the option to opt you out of ‘whois’ database on domain purchase but believe that as you are a trading individual its not ‘correct’ see here for further details look at the nic website link.

[Website Client] Hope your bank holiday was good. Must say I am sorry should have thought about this earlier (must remember that the americans do not have bank holidays) Sadly we do so as ever there is a back log on banking. I am waiting on the bank to clear the funds I have put in to pay Delicious Webdesign  the £750 hoping it will be this week (pokes banks). In the mean time art works are finished & text is not far off other half is reading it all through mostly because I can’t spell if my life depended on it.

Once the banks finish being silly & clear the funds I can pay you which makes me happy. Keep smiling & have a great week.

[Delicious Webdesign]  Money received this morning, thank you. Give me a day or two to get the ball rolling and will buy the domain and proceed with the project preparation, expect a flurry of email questions from us in the next week. Domain purchased and holding logo uploaded.  Remember that you were to send us the font (as we dont have the one you used in the PSD layout).  Also can you send us any art work and text (dont worry you can add / correct text as you go)

Are you happy for us to resize your design to ensure it looks and works on the majority of displays ? as your photoshop mockups are too wide to fit into a standard screen resolution, ideally 1000 px is as wide as I would go. We altered the index one to narrow the width a little but its best if you decides what is reduced or not, before we reconstruct this into a page.

[Website Client] Yep not a problem. I have the girls home for another weeks so may take me a few hours to reply to questions. I am getting quite excited about the whole thing not to mention the going back into businesss with the view that if i am good enough to make money  everyday I must be very good. Anyway let you get on have a great day.

Yes the text is coming along sadly taken longer than expected with the girls at home wanting my undivided attention. Here are the two fonts I use called scriptina.  I bought these myself a while back & have found them to be very useful.  I will get all the text finished tonight for everything as well as all the images ziped I will send you an email link to metafire once I have uploaded it all.

Regarding website page size go ahead. I am intirely in your hands on this one. I made it 1280×1024 as that is my screen set up. just tell em what you need

[Delicious Webdesign] Rock on love! Totaly in love with the the animated sakura blossom. Love the way you have got the text to highlight at the top. I know in my original wording at the top says the domain name, can we change that to just the company name and if possible shrink the animation at the top so everything fits on one page with out the need to scroll I know it seems trivial but knowing the customers they are uber picky & will moan about it. Trust me this happends a lot. In the what is new section need to move the graphic up a little as it pokes out the frame a little (slap me I am a perfectionist). The Mission statment still needs to changed to the one on the note card I sent you abotu a week ago & need to find a way of making it larger for customers to read as well as see possibly some sort of not could pop up when they hover over it so they can read it more clearly perhaps not sure. Love the title & the cherry blossom logo on the tab header when it comes up. Sorry to be pain in the pants. Much hugs for doing a fantastic job so far.

Well I am happy with what ever you can do for me love being honest I think I will take a bit of a back seat & let you tell me what will amke your life easier as long as I can edit & add new items & possibly have others do the same I am a happy girl.

[Website Company]  Anna, your photocart store has been installed and configured but suggest you have a play and familiarise yourself with it, we will shortly integrate it into your menu on your website.

[Website Clients] Not only do you rock but your an angel I will take a peek today just waiting on my sl partner in crime to get in & then I can take a proper look. I am so excited

Here is an example set of questions and information we send to new potential Essex Website Design clients

Here is the standard questionnaire that we would ask you to complete and return (please ignore questions that are not relevant and either highlight your answer or delete the answers not applicable to you)

As you have indicated you want to keep your costs down initially and want to have a budget website I would like to to think  about bringing down the costs as much as possible by agreeing to:

1 Agree that you will provide all the text and images for this site.

2 Give me as much detail about what you want (screenshots and example sites are great)

3 Tell me exactly what you want on each page and how many pages you want

4 Tell me How many galleries (outside of the ecommerce suite) you will need to showcase your work (a gallery being something like the ones on our example website I directed you to previously.

Once I have a firm idea about what you want we can put a quote to you but  £1400 is probably going to be below the very minimum we can accept for this work so perhaps I can suggest that if you only have that money available now that we can take a deposit, develop the site, launch the site then take the 2nd payment and then defer any outstanding payment to a later date (to be agreed between ourselves) I suspect that the final quote will be about £1750 but not much more taking into account your circumstances, the fact that you will do the graphic and text work and the fact that it would be great to be involved with a very different business  like yourself. I am very flexible and open to suggestions and hope this sounds reasonable to you.

I confirm that as part of any quote we give will include domain name / hosting / databases / updates etc etc included and 2^nd and subsequent years involve an ongoing hosting cost (currently £45 per year)

Hope this sounds fair and reasonable and look forward to starting your project

[Website Client] So nice to talk to someone who actualy understands what I am talking about. I will warn you now I am unsure if I have filled your questionnaire as you woudl need it but I think after you see what I have in mine provided in the zip you will see what I am aiming for.

1 Agree that you will provide all the text and images for this site. – yes this is not a problem (had this planned a long time ago)

2 Give me as much detail about what you want (screenshots and example sites are great) – never a problem I am a very straight forward woman

3 Tell me exactly what you want on each page and how many pages you want – this is slightly harder due to the amount of items already able to be sold all taga format at this point in time which when zipped is tiny any way.

4 Galleries -  Loving the websites like the Essex water softeners website you showed us during our call, the style is not far off the idea I have put in the zip for you. I hope poked the other half & he asked what payments do you take might be able to save you getting charged any silly ammounts by paying you by other means other than paypal. More than happy with what you have suggested on the paying for everything side really makes my life a little easier as well as able to concentrate on getting my customers happy to the site as well as new content made. Trust me when you see the content of just three of my mega packs you will probably cry at the time I spend making sure my customers are very happy with everything they buy from me. Just takes them time to get use to using a different platform where its paypal instead of L$ (linden dollars) being used.

If I have missed anything please call me I am arround all the time unless I am being dragged out for shopping (hates shopping unless for kimono on ebay)

We have website quote requests all the time, not all of them at taken up but the vast majority of them are as we take time to learn about your requirements and while doing that explain that we can offer you exactly what you want and need plus more to ensure your website actually ‘works’ for you. Here is a recent conversation:

[Essex Website Design Company] Ok we are talking about a 8 page brochure website that you can update yourself (CMS) with a blog (diary) and think that would give you a great grounding for your website. We will be allowing you a CMS system (website pages you can update yourself)  where we can create it such as you will  have a admin menu and access to all your page’s text when your site is build and put live. You would need to tell us what pages you want to control. This would ensure you got an industry standard / search friendly / easy to update CMS system.

Design of website – Recommend our Premium (8 pages / gallery and CMS) website package http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/website-packages.html with a blog http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/blogs.html

So as a package price we can work out some discount for it as long as it includes the customised blog option as we will then be able to off you our standard discount of 5% to existing clients to make the price £850 (we will need a deposit of £350 which is required to start work and the final payment at the end of the  project when you are happy) This includes the hosting / transfer / email setup / design. It doesn’t include any professional photos / stock images or webcopy (text) you need us to create or provide.

[Website Client] As discussed please find enclosed the completed form which you sent. In order to bring the costs down further I’d like to cut back on certain aspects. The only things we cant move on are the photo gallery and updating of the news/events section. Saying that this will only need to be updated once or twice a year.

Also, I’ve already purchased a domain name  which I would be keen to transfer across to you in order for you to create the website. I’ll provide all of the text and images needed but as a starter for 10 we would like the colour scheme to match that of the guide website. Having discussed this with my work colleagues the costs are slightly too much for us to contemplate. For information, the current thinking is to go down the DIY wordpress route. Thanks again for your time and should things change I’ll let you know.

This client failed to give a budget and as such didnt let the website designer build a package suitable for them. At Delicious Webdesign we ask you want you want to spend on your website project to ensure we build something for you that gives you what you want and need and can afford. All websites can be added to or expanded at a later date as its much better to get a small website up early then add to it at a later date, than waiting 1 or 2 years for a larger website.

We actively seek to recruit website designers with good skills and a hard-work ethic, if you want to apply to us you can use the following information as a guide as to what we are looking for:

I am intersted in your Webdesign vacancies, please find below a few sites I have done or still do development on when needed.

Since I left college since doing website design I have always enjoyed doing Web Development it just gives me inspiration to do great looking sites.

First of I have been doing webdesign now for around 6 years and I have used WordPress & Joomla, also I have done a few sites in E-commerce with Prestashop, oscommerce, zencart, photocart and Opencart which covers the  best FREE open source ecommerce packages. I have seen its very flexible and they have plenty of experience using add on modules.

I can use Photoshop I have the latest Version and I have Adobe Dreamweaver which is very useful as it has features in it now to develop mobile designs. But I like to rather hand code from scratch I usually use Dreamweaver if I am doing Table Data.

I am more of a Front-End Developer so I can do PSD to WordPress PSD to Joomla etc.

Please find attached a list of websites I have done or still work on.

our reply – as the standard of some of the sites wasnt up to our high standards:

I think you should make some changes to the site of yours:

1 make it w3c compliant

2 make your logo more defined / precise as its pixelated / blurry at the moment

3 remove the wikipedia images / links

4 rethink the nav to use text nav not image nav

5 the menu is not correctly placed (checked Firefox / Safari / IE / Google chrome)

if these changes are done then would like to review your changes to see if you do it to the standard required (sorry if that sounds high and mighty but all our sites need to be SEO friendly and W3c compliant)

Looking at your websites and blogs we assume you generally purchase a wordpress theme and customise it further for clients

We have never used opencart – does look ok but did you really do the opencart  site ? its a US site

This is a message we recently sent to some Billericay companies.

We are very dedicated to: great quality, great communication and good reliability. We are focused on deadlines and the clients are our top priority. We can offer services in WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Modx, Magento.

I believe that giving us one change, will lead to long term collaboration, successful for our busiess and yours.

We feel like the prices we charge are very reasonable and fair for the quality you will get and time that we will spend on your website. Please feel free to let  us know if you think the prices we charge on our website packages are affordable for your budget.

We are always happy to welcome college and university students for work experience and we receive numerous requests for work placements and happy to accomodate these type of requests when we can.

I am a student studying a BSc Hons Degree in Web Applications Development (hoping to achieve a First) at Westminster University  and am required to find a work placement for my 3rd Year. This placement is a 12 month placement starting anywhere between June and August.

I would like to be able to undertake my placement at delicious-webdesign in Essex with you if possible, having looked around your website and some of your clients I feel that I could learn a lot from receiving a work placement with yourselves and believe that i could bring something new to the team if given the opportunity.

I have skills in the following areas:
Website and Company Logo Design – Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver and other graphics software Web Development (Languages) – (X)HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript, Jquery) Java Databases (SQL and Oracle experience) E-commerce

If you would like to view an example of my work please feel free to email me and I can give a list of my previously created websites.

As stated above, I would love to have the opportunity of working with yourselves for a year (and the possibility of returning once my Degree has finished).

If you would like any further information about myself or my skill set, please do not hesitate to ask.

we replied

You have come along at a good time, we are very busy and could do with more help, we are in Essex and we have one main office but we have people working for us that work remotely, would that suit you? If so we can consider this application further.

Beware of SEO cowboys or link building scam emails or telephone calls, the following is a collection of those  received by clients – invariably they go on stating the obvious and promising to give a ‘comprehensive report’ that turns out to be anything but comprehensive:

——————
[Essex SEO Company] I enjoyed exploring your website. I have prepared a  on your website’s online presence and its performance. If you are interested we can discuss on this report. I can schedule a online conference with you and share my desktop and show you the report. The report has important insights on:

How your competitors are doing?
How your Keywords are performing?
Number of indexed pages to your website?
Your current Pagerank.

Please forgive the direct approach I was looking at your website which currently has 4 links and a Open Site Explorer homepage score of 19/100. Your backlink profile (other websites that link to you) is the single most important factor determining where you rank in search engines. (You can see more details of your links at open site explorer)

The main targetted keyword for your website receives over 30,000 searches each month in the UK on Google alone. I wondered what difference it would make to your business if there was an increase in relevant / local traffic making it to your website that would manifest itself in more emails / phone calls and invariably sales.

Your title tag may not be optimised to position you to complete with websites of similar authority and subsequently drive the largest amount of targeted traffic possible.  Your website could see a significant increase in traffic by building links to it as well as optimising the structure and keywords of the content. I’d like to offer you a free in-depth website audit covering these and many other important factors along with what could be done to improve your current rank.

I’m sure you receive many generic sales emails offering business services. I hope in taking the time to find out a bit about your website before contact you will go some way to proving our SEO project is a credible professional business that goes the extra mile for our customers. Hopefully, together we can establish a positive internet presence for your website that would bring you more business and in turn greater ROI. There is no obligation on your part to hire us after the conference.

[Website Owner] Hi, Your suggestion comes at a good time as we were talking about this recently. We would be interested to see your report and welcome your reply, we do not see the need for a online conference but if you can send a report to us in word or pdf format we can consider your findings and perhaps engage you to work for us to make the website better.

[SEO Company] Thanks for your quick reply. As per our discussion, I am providing the detailed analysis of your website below:
Page Index By Google: 251
Back-ward links: 6
Canonicalization Issue: Found
HTML Validation: 6 Errors
Reverse IP: 198 other sites found.
Let me know if you have any updates for me. Waiting for your reply.

[Website Owner] This is hardly a detailed analysis ? I expected a report
—————————

On investigation both companies that send the SEO emails had new websites with only mobile addresses and no postal address on the site (against regulations) additionally both website werent even optimised!

Have you ever wondered how people view your company, could it be through recommendations, small adverts, leaflets or by your 24 hour marketing tool, which is your website.

Is it doing justice to your company? If you are 100% happy with it then I thank you for taking the time to read so far but if it isn’t please take a look at the websites we have designed and developed for local companies and international companies that are probably due to the range of business sectors we have worked on undertaking similar work to yourself.

If you like what you see and you think your company could benefit from up to date branding and or website designed specifically for your company please feel free to contact us where we can offer a free non obligation meeting to discuss your needs and desires.

This Essex web design company currently specialise in new and redesigns of websites. If you ever feel your current website needs a new look or update, you get in touch with us so we can explain how we may be able to enhance your site.

We come 100% recommended by Freeindex users, have over 200 Facebook fans over 200 Twitter followers. Revamping your site would cost just £399. We have also recently teamed up with Google and until the end of the year we can include £50 worth of free Google advertising credits to help you announce the relaunch of your website on page one of Google.

We also offer custom Facebook page designs to encourace interaction between you and your customers, promote special offers and generate new custom.