Archive for the ‘Website Clients’ Category

We aim to build a long term and profitable business relationship with all our clients. Our prices are very competitive and we guarantee our work is one of the fastest around without sacrificing quality.We here at Delicious Webdesign work on the main principle that there is no budget too big or too small and all our work is undertaken with the same calibre of expertise. All our designers and web developers are hand picked and we know that every single one is unique in their area of expertise. You’ll have intelligent and elegant solutions to your projects that you simply won’t find with other companies.

We have a portfolio available upon request of our current and past work.We can take on any web development work you may have; whether it be graphic design or raw coding we can do it, which will leave you to focus on the main purpose of your company. We enjoy working with our clients and we will gladly put you in touch with any of our existing clients for testimonials or references.

We really believe we can reduce your costs and increase your profit margins by working with us. We’ve already got over two hundred companies making significant savings already, and getting their work completed faster and to a higher quality than they would have been able to produce without us! We look forward to hearing back from you and hopefully potentially establishing a great long term working relationship.

You must comply with the law when you have a website and one of the easiest things to fall fowl to is missing off your address, to illustrate this here is the reply you get when attempting to submit a site to our business directory if you don’t put an address on your website.

Thanks for suggesting that we list your website within our directory. We list such websites where they are based, irrespective of area covered, but we can’t find this information on your website. If you ever add it, preferably by adding an address to a Contact Us page, please resubmit your website to the corresponding category. You might not be familiar with current UK legislation on this matter. We are courteously explaining  why we won’t list it in it’s current form and what you need to do to make it acceptable to us and in UK law. There’s a good summary here:

1, Include the name the company / individual that you are acting as need to be stated on the website. Its possible that this is not your trading name so you need to state that your website name is the trading name of your Limited company name.

2 You need to include your main email address. If you have a  ‘contact us’ form you need to include the email address also.

3 Your registered business address

4 If you are a limited company, the registration number needs to be given, you can check yours online at companies house website.

5 Membership details of trade or professional associations

6 Give your VAT number, if you have one

7 Prices (if given) should be stated clearly, additionally prices need to be indicated if they include or not include tax and delivery. Basically don’t hide any costs.

8 Place of registration should be stated (e.g. “Delicious Webdesign Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 5858585″).

It currently has website traffic to it.
Website, Blog and Email setup and all access details given immediately on purchase.
Time can be spent on getting more website visitors as the website is already built and optimised.
Domain may have a Google pagerank.
Branding / Logos already created.
The website has ‘age’ which is a factor in Google’s ranking factors.
Full of relevant / unique content.
Existing Links to it (hyperlinks).
Generally there is more chance of the website being a success than starting a brand new website.
The website is operational and ‘up and running’ already.
Has an existing client base.
The previous website owners will lend support.

We currently have three clients within the top 10 for the search term ‘Essex Builders’ so can claim that we are pretty good at building and optimising Essex Builders Websites, here are some pointers that have helped us achieve high rankings for Essex Building Companies

1 Before / After Building Photos -  These are good for the gallery but not ‘ideal’ for the main page – imagine someone looking on your site for 5 seconds and just seeing a ‘before’ image they would probably click off and look at another site that just contains professionally completed  main images. The before and after types photos could be within the site for interest within a Gallery. There is no other builders website that has this before and after on the main page and thats probably for a reason.

2 Improve the website -  As we have previously informed you the website is crying out for more pages about your services. If you moved your business your  new address would be built into these new pages to ensure you are optimised for all your services in your new area. We have other builders as well as other building related / tradesmen sites that have a huge % more visitors than your site purely as they have engaged us to ‘optimise it’ (SEO) and create the webcopy (text) for the new pages. This option is obviously the best but also most costly and happy to talk about this in depth as I believe its your best bet long term. Some choices:

Optimise current site for new area (1 hour)
Create new pages on the website with new webcopy (text) on current site specifically for your new area (x hours depending on amount of pages / text)*
Advertising on Google (adwords / pay per click) more details here  http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/seo-ppc-adwords.html

Optimising Essex Builders Website-

Option 1 – Quick review of complete site then optimising site specifically for ‘loft conversions in essex’ -  2-3 hours £80-£120

Option 2 – Full Review of site. Optimising all services and specifically optimising for ‘Loft Conversions in Essex’ and all loft conversion related search terms. Creating new pages for each of your current 6 services and adding 1000 extra words on the site over all services  – 2-3 days £300-£350

Option 3 – As option 2 but additionally adding a total of 2000 words to the site and adding 6 pro stock images, full onsite and offsite ‘optimisation’  Adding text to all pages including adding another page of faqs specifically for loft conversions. If you have lots of loft conversion images will add these to your loft conversion gallery. 4-5 days £500-£600

Option 4 – As option3 but additionally adding a total of 3000 words to the site / 12 pro stock images / New pages for FAQs / Loft Conversions etc info / Loft Conversions Types / Loft Conversion Gallery. £600-£700

Option 5 – As option3 but  with a new website of 10 pages specifically for loft conversions that will include another 3000 words / 12 pro stock images / 3 Galleries £1500

For the benefit of your website’s promotion (SEO) I recommend you getting a free listing on this site, its a new site and is offering free listings to Delicious Webdesign clients. Try to find a category that most closely fits with your business and tick the areas you operate in (like Essex / Kent / London).

The free listing is for 18 months but we will manually change that to give you an upgrade to 24 months free membership once you add your website to the site as long as you fill out a description and upload your logo to it.

www.uk-builders-directory.co.uk/

Always a tricky one when someone wants a quote for a website before telling you their full requirements but we do our best ‘if pushed’ for a quote to give an accurate estimate as the following exchange demonstrates:

[Website Client] We are family run business based in Rainham, Essex. We are currently looking to update our website to make it Bright and modern, incorporating a logo. Bright & clear home page with not to much text. we would like to photos with prices attached, as no one else does this. if you could contact us to discuss ideas and costs.

Some more information about us:
We design, manufacture & fit shop fascias, vehicle vinyl signs & wraps, logo design, handmade advertising boards. We are a family run business, established in the local area for 20 years. No job is to large or to small, we cater for all. We support the local community as much as possible and many of our business customers are on our doorstep. We also support the local drama group & provide them with banners, stage props & scenery free of charge.

We would like our website to be easy to use and would like to have photos of our products changing automatically.
We like to think of ourselves: As Reasonable prices, friendly, professional, creative, reliable.
Or objectives are:To provide more detailed information on our service & products. Also to compete with local competition.
Customers: Most of them are local based companies, they are local shops & business. Large companies and all mobile contractors.

[Delicious Webdesign] Believe we talked about a redesign to your business brochure site and webcopy (text) think that would give you a great grounding for your updated business website. Here are some links that show you what’s included in business brochure sites and webcopy (links given)
Hope this sounds understandable ( I sometimes use techy terms so sorry if I confused you on the phone)
Please take a look at our Website Design Project questionnaire and if they are relevant please answer those questions or tell me when we next talk / meet.

[Website Client] Sorry I have not responded to your email, it has been a very busy week.
I have printed a copy of the planner, shall go through it this evening and foward to you tomorrow.

[Delicious Webdesign] Great, Lots of information for us on there, please confirm these are the sites you like and want us to use as ‘guide’ sites for your redesigned site

Website 1 and 2: Clear Design, not to much text
Website 3: We like the toolbar for products. text on Signs, easy to use and navigate.

Website Sections / Pages
I see you like the local main competitor website, will you want the same products that they have? I have included your products and their products in the page list below, ideally you would have one page on each with unique text / images for each but that will obviously cost more for webcopy (text) and be more work for us building the website so perhaps you can tell us if you dont wall all the products / services then highlight the ones you want to have their own text / pages:

Home page
About us
Products / Services
Exterior signs (Shops)
Interior signs
Vehicle graphics (vinyls and wraps)
Exhibtions
POS / Displays / Banners
Digital Signage
Logos
Full digital printing & laminating * full vehicle digital wrapping
Pvc banner printing
Shop facias & window graphics
Architectural signage
Printed corex boards
Engraving / laser etching
Label printing
Acrylic & metal fabrication
Health & safety / road signage
Testimonials
Gallery
Contact

Webcopy
Do you want us to provide your webcopy for you? or do you want to do it yourself? here is some more info on webcopy http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/webcopy.html a guide price is 12 pages / 3000 words with your guidance will be approximately £300

News page
Do you want a news page (blog) that you can use to create new sections / pages when you require them? you could take photos of all your work and describe new jobs as you complete them (excellent for the website’s ‘health’ in the search engines and great for the potential customers to view)

We are confident we can produce you a website to exceed your requirements but need to know answers to the above to start to get a better idea of whats required / costings etc.

[Website Client] Yes these are the web sites that we liked. Can you please give me an estimated price for a site with 10 pages, as we are looking at costing.

[Delicious Webdesign] Hi Julie, hope you had a good weekend, If you answer the questions in the email send on Friday then we can give you a more accurate price but if you want an estimated price then a simple 10 page website with contact page / gallery and other services pages but without a Blog / News page and without us doing the Webcopy using your ‘guide sites’ as examples as the site you want and taking your answers from the ‘website design project planner’, the cost will be approximately £600, if you look at the website projects page it gives full details about what is included (your transfer and hosting for the first year is included obviously)

I think if you wanted a page for every service and page for all the heading below (23+ pages) and want us to incorporate the blog it will be classed as our ‘Premium plus’ website package and will cost between £1200 – £1299) you can reduce the price if you want us to do less ‘SEO’ (website optimisation) on the site. The Premium Plus website comes as standard with a one month website optimisation project.

[Website Client] Many thanks for your time. This information has proved very useful, we most certainly want your company to take care of our website, will arrange a meeting next week to organise payment and final details, we always thought we would be using your company’s services this time for our website redesign.

One of the more amusing parts of running a business is hearing excuses for not paying or not paying on time, you will find us very flexible and open and easy to work with but money makes the world go around and services have to be paid for. We dont keep others waiting for payment and expect to be treated with the same business respect, therefore we have started to record some client ‘excuses’ of a few Essex based website design companies that have shared then with us, for our own (and your amusement), these are direct responses to overdue payments:

1, Just keeping you upto date a cheque im waiting on has nt arrived and wanted to pay you out of this, ive been assured it will be here in next day or so, and im hoping to have it cleared by end of the week, and then i can send ur payment out would this be acceptable, i do hope so, i dont normally have this problem but with my accident i had ive been very low on work, i do hope you understand and am keeping you upto date as dont like to let people down, if id known about this it would have been easier to have put this away for you. Kind regards and I await your reply on the same

2, I will see what i can sort out but am not 100% sure but will let you know asap. Could possibly sort for the following week, which would be better for me, but leave it with me and i will let you know, Hope this is ok.

3, oh right ok, well this was never told to me via my other website design company, nothing was explained to me, as she set it all up and never told me anything and i didnt know any of this, i will try and get this paid in the next couple of weeks hope that is acceptable as at the moment have no work coming in as was in car accident and unable to work, i do apologise for asking you to explain, kind regards

4, Im not too bad thank you, i was told i wouldnt be paying any hosting when my previous website design company transferred it over to Delicious Webdesign this is the first ive heard of it, I await to hear further from you.

5, Just to let you know I’ve been told the cheque will clear tomorrow so will do a bank transfer for the amount of the website hosting tomorrow for you, hope this is ok … Just to let you know a bank transfer was done for the website hosting today, sorry its 5 weeks late but it has come from my partners account as my bank wasnt open, its come from him and we did give them the invoice number etc so it should tally up, please let me know by confirmation of email that you received this message, thank you once again for being so patient it was greatly appreciated.

6, Sounds silly but im not on my usual laptop and am using my pc and nt sure whether i have outlook, i dont know where to look lol

7, Firstly, I do apologise for not getting back to you sooner, I only came out of hospital on Friday and i am still unable to do much. I hope also that this email finds you to be well.

8, Sorry for not getting back to you until now but have been trying to sort the diary to find time to email you.

9, Hi James, sorry but there is no sign of that promised invoice in the post. Can you get it to me asap, please. [after a read receipt was received three weeks previously when the email with the invoice was opened and read]

10, I’ve not been around lately online as have had a few problems personally.

11, My laptop was stolen and I forgot your company name.

12, Even though your hosting costs are reasonable I have been thinking, I would to like to have the control of the hosting and email. How do i do this, if I decide to? If I no longer want your hosting, webmail or ftp access services, can I request a refund, and what happens from there? How can I have the domain handed over to me?

Our reply
Yes you can transfer it away if you want but the reason to host with a website design company is that its cheaper for yourself than having a hosting account of your own, your domain is now renewed for the year so there cannot be a refund here as we have renewed you already (your domain renewed 11 days ago) and we gave you fair notice and even paid your hosting on trust after it had expired, as you said you would pay when you had the money and once it renewed, Sorry. We can give you control panel access and for interest all our new hosting accounts get control panel access by default.

Give me a ring if you want to have a chat about what your trying to achieve and maybe I can help. It sounds and looks like your not sure about things and would like to help. I assume you saw the other website that I sent to you that is the same as your one now.

13, I dont want to pay for something i havent had or never asked for I appreciate you carried on i will have to speak with my partner as i have a medical condition now, not that affects me with speaking but my business partner now deals with all the stressful things in life xx

Because we have done a fair amount of websites for Essex Kitchen Fitters we have seen a rise in the amount of spam emails they receive, one recent trend is to approach them as if you are an official ‘directory’ of the brand of kitchen you are fitting, here is a sample email:

We are looking for Kitchen Fitters or Companies to install Howdens Kitchens near you. We have tried to search on Directories, Rated People and Checkatrade with the correct town and still get fitters 50 miles away or more! How frustrating. It would be nice to find what we want first time without having to sift through pages of kitchen fitters.
Our research has shown that Howdens Kitchens are the highest searched kitchen manufacturer on Google in the UK. And yet, Howdens do not install kitchens or recommend kitchen fitters to the general public! I don’t know what you think but that’s like hanging a Carrot in front of a Donkey!

So, we have set up a website to find EXACTLY what customers are looking for first time.Example: Type into Google a howdens kitchen fitters Essex. Please Note: This website is not owned or linked in any way to Howdens Joinery Ltd. This is a directory of Kitchen Fitters that fit Howdens Kitchens.

As the website name has the ‘howdens’ name in it I predict they may shortly get a letter from howden’s solicitors and that website (and its recently ‘fleeced’ customers) will be left high and dry. If you want to get your kitchen fitting website promoted honestly and naturally then we offer a package just for you. Take a look at our SEO package. If you want to see some Kitchen Fitters in Essex then look on our Portfolio pages to see

Update: The link directory company trying to attract Essex Kitchen fitters to advertise are now trying a bit of a hard sell! See their recent email text below:

Bad News: Some of you didn’t get a page on our website… but you still could do.

Good News, Those who did, you are on Page One of Google already! [delicious webdesign - they then give an obscure / non-competitive link to prove they have a listing in the top ten - big deal ]

The website has only been live for 3 weeks and I cant believe the amount of interest this site has had in such a short space of time. Most of Essex, Surrey and Hampshire is full with more requests still coming in for pages that have already been taken. Although we have a “First come First Serve” policy, this does not mean you will not be able to be listed on this site.

I have started a “next 1n Line” list that you can go on, it gives you all a chance of getting a space when a page becomes available again. This could be for a number of reasons. If you are fortunate enough to already have a page for the sole purpose of getting a link to your website without returning the favour, it will be very short lived. We have a growing “InLine” list of companies who will be only too happy to take over

Not all website clients play ball the way that they should, the following conversation between an ex-website client and a website design company demonstrate when the client tries to ‘hoodwink’ the website design company by denying that they completed the required work on the site. This situation rarely happens and is avoided if a clear project plan is created / agreed upon and adhered to. Staged payments at agreed milestones ensure tbat both parties (website client and website design company) get exactly what they want and get it on time. There is always the chance a website project can turn out bad and there will always be ‘bad’ people that refuse to pay for work completed but luckily those type of people normally dont stay in business long. The moral of the story is dont upset your website design company as they are normally (at least in our case) expert at SEO and know the ways the search engines work in your favour or how they can work against you. The following exchange happened after an invoice was re-sent to a client after no-reply was received for 2 months.

[website client]  What have you done on our web site? You haven’t accessed it since at least 5 months, Which fees are outstanding and what are you doing for the website?  How can you do SEO without having access to the website? SEO is about optimizing words and phrasing or thats. at least what I thought

[website designers] The Website Project we completed was  for a full site rewrite and SEO program, you had paid for the site rewrite but not the SEO program, we have already optimised every one of your 500+ pages for the search engines.  I priced this work just to break even and not to make any money from you as you were talking about doing multiple other websites and wanted to do these with you. Think you should agree you got a massive amount of work from us for such a little money. Now I would you to complete your side of the agreement and make a  like a fair payment for our work.

Yes we can do some more on-site work as there are some more tweaks and fixes that have been required since you changed the access details and we are willing to do that but that is only a days work. The vast majority of the work is done on your site. and the proof is in your visitor number / ranking increases.

We have improved your ranking and visitor numbers substantially and have before, during and after reports of this, I have a ranking reports to show the progress and your visitor numbers have trebled in the last year alone.

I hope we can finish this program and that both of us can go away happy from it, just to restate that we have done the vast majority of the work already and only need 1 day to finish the work, if you do not want us to complete this work I can reduce the invoice by two hours work (£50) and give you a list of things that need finishing and let you pay the remaining money and we can finish up with this project. I would like you to pay the outstanding money and for us to finish work on the site to complete this ‘long’ project that has shown many improvements for your site in terms of website visitors and increased enquiries directly from the website.

[website client] How can you do anything one the web site when you don’t even have access to the website? SEO is about optimizing pages? You said you would create a web site for us and at the end you produces 10pages and I did all the rest.

[website designers] The pages were optimised (each and every one of them!) and your improvement in rankings show this, we spend many many hours creating your website and optimising every single page and for you to say we done 10 pages is just stupid.

I certainly am not joking about this, you need to review all emails and work we have done and see where you site is now compared with where it was before we started work, we only want what is fair here and if you dont want us to complete the work, as stated below, we will accept a lower figure and give you a list of whats needed extra onsite. Your comment about us doing 10 pages is really pathetic and expected more of you. If you dont intend paying for our work we need to know now.

Your refusal to answer my emails, pay the outstanding balance and suggest that we didn’t complete our work on your site has left me in a very awkward position. You have pushed us to give you one last chance to pay, I suggest you pay today as we have just noticed that on our site is something that you originally had on there from your original website build that we have found to be  IP Protected / copyrighted that you have been using on your site for the last year, you have 3 days to pay the outstanding balance if you do not then I will report this to the IP holder. Even at this stage if you find and remove what you need to I have taken a copy and backup of your site, the copy I have taken is classed as ‘evidence and / or proof’ of your illegal use of the IP / copyright. The IP holder ‘will’ ensure they collect their payment of you which I have found out will be £1900 (or local equivalent) plus legal costs.

I really hope you take this seriously and sorry you have decided to treat a ‘friend’ and valuable business relationship like this, we have done so much for your company and website and now when you look at its rankings compared with 2 years ago you have made massive gains interms of search engine rankings.

Once you pay the balance I can tell you what you have got illegally on your site so you can remove it.

I will send a paypal invoice or you can pay via the bank (details below) which I expect to be paid (this will be minus the £50 which covers the 2 hours work we need to do on your site but cannot as you changed access details)

[Website client]  Why you never reply to what did you do on the SEO. I can come and visit you to sort this out. Please don’t play around with me, our business needs the website to work correctly and to attract customers. Please tell me what you have done with no access to the website. Its strange that you never reply to this? Why did I do 90% of the pages when you where supposed to do them?

This email was also forwarded to my lawyer inLondon and he will contact you soon about this.

[website design company] Regarding SEO I have optimised all pages and have a full report ready for you once you pay your outstanding balance. I have replied to all your emails.

And dont think for a second that I am one bit worried about your lawyer. We have completely and professionally dealt with you and your website project.  It’s you that has left me with no payment for the work we have carried out. I have full details of what we agreed and what we have done.

You have the option to pay your outstanding balance and the details are below, your choice is simple pay the outstanding balance or not, you have 3 days.

Sometimes we  get sent a website design request from an Essex based business like a Billericay business that includes some conversations from other website designers, this is always interesting to read the other website designers comments and have included them put together here with some of our normal sarcastic comments

Website Designers – We’re getting there. Not something that you can just produce quickly from a visual as there are so many web browsers out there you have to make sure the site works in all of them. We don’t want to launch a site that only works in Internet Explorer. And we know the money is there when its launched so its not as if we are not working on it as hard as we can. There is no design left to do, it is all the development now. We are allowing you to edit every section with ease so wont be an overnight job. Was a bit busy last week so should be able to make a giant step this week as I haven’t got as much on.

Essex Website Design Client – Excellent, I realise that there is a lot more to web design than i probably realise, do you think you could let me know an ETA? I have only seen one picture of the website design so far and  i must say i was very impressed. Thinking about the photo gallery I have attached some more pics that i took of some of my recent work, may be a bit better than some of the current pics you have. [Delicious Webdesign - we try not to start a project until all webcopy and photos are received from the client as it duplicates a lot of work if photos are received throughout the project development]