Recently had a new client that requires 3-4 websites to cater for his new business ideas, thought it was useful to document my thoughts and replies to his request for an ecommerce website, a graphic designer’s portfolio website as well as a main or master corporate website.

Due to the general nature of the initial request we were unable to give a  general / ballpark figure or estimate of the work required. To find out exactly what the client requires we normally need to meet them to discuss requirements additionally we use a website questionnaire to capture more business information about the required websites, as the client is  thinking of having multiple sites, we apply our  ‘multi-site discount’,  currently 10% of 2nd and subsequent sites.

Ecommerce sites – vary enormously and you can have a site that sells 3 things that never change and we can apply one solution or you can have a full ecommerce solution that has full back end database and admin functions to allow you to control your store and stock. estimated cost £599 – £1999 example site http://www.pinkonwhitewalls.com/ (click on clients to see the ecommerce functions) another example site that we are currently coding is http://www.dollyrockerkids.co.uk/shop/

Static business brochure sites (suitable for a porfolio site the client mentioned) comes in 4 sizes and they are detailed here depending on the clients exact requirements, http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/business-website-choices.html these have an estimated cost of between £399 – £1199

We give a discount for multiple site and always think it would be valuable to have a meeting / chat with new clients about their plans for their business and their websites and how we can ensure this is a success for them. There are loads of things to consider at this early juncture and we will need to chat to you to tell you more about the process and whats involved and to get a better idea of your requirements. This webpage goes some way to document our website development process.

Once the website has been built its inevitable that changes will need to happen, maybe phone numbers and addresses need updating, products need adding, changing or removing, services need to be added or a whole range of other reason that your website will need to be updated. Its recommended that sites are updated and improved over time to keep them fresh and interested and we can help achive this. We can provide a wide range of services including web design & development, graphic and logo design, multimedia and flash animation all done with discount pricing to our clients.

Regarding your Website Maintenance its normal that your site will be facing challenges like:

Keeping the Site Fresh
Adding content
Adding extensions to the site like a WordPress blog
Browser Compatibility (to keep your site looking good and working well with all the new browsers)
Graphics Optimization

We can help you face the above challenges with our comprehensive Web Maintenance Services.

Our services Includes:

Modification / Addition / Removal of Website Content
Image Manipulation and Addition of images to the site and galleries
Shopping cart Product updates
Contact or Booking form updates
Bug fixing on existing code
PDF creation and uploading
Complete backup of your website

Completing regular updates and maintenance on your site is a great way to add value to your business and Increase your ROI from your website design / development and hosting costs.

Contact us to discuss anything regarding your website maintenance requirements.

We aim to build long term business relationships with our clients and we are never happier when existing website and SEO clients ask us our opinion or advice about their websites and the promotion of their websites. The reason we get asked is that we become a trusted and valuable business associate having contributed in a big way to their business by giving them a website, re-designing and updating their existing site or promoting (via search engine optimisation SEO or search engine marketing SEM) their site.

A good example of that business relationship is shown below in iterations of a company website (An Essex Electrician company) that was actually one of our first ever clients and one that has stayed with us and had a website re-design, SEO program, logo design and a PPC campaign.

The result of the work we have performed on the site is shown by version 3 of the site below (launched 31st May 2010) that shows a site that dedicates one page to all the main services, is user friendly and search engine friendly in design.

Version 1 Pre 2006
We took over the website from another company
http://www.reactive-electrical.co.uk/index2.htm

Version 2 2006-2010
A budget redesign of original website, site highlights main services and is XHTML compliant
http://www.reactive-electrical.co.uk/index1.html

Version 3 2010 onwards
Result of full redesign / update and content (webcopy) update that was recommended after the SEO program
http://www.reactive-electrical.co.uk

The Internet / Website world we work in isn’t perfect, which is good otherwise everything would be vanilla but sometimes things we see regularly really get to us, so here is a start of, what will probably be a long list, all the things we would rather not see on a travels around the Internet.

1, Website design companies that have great looking sites but their client sites in their portfolio are not theirs or they are completely rubbish or they are no longer live.
2, Sites that have W3C Validation icons, claiming to be valid but when the site is checked the site is not using (X)html or CSS valid coding.
3, Autostart audio and video on sites, its too intrusive and often frightens me!
4, SEO Cowboys, had a few clients come to me after being mislead / ripped off over SEO work completed (or not) on their sites.
5, How the Internet or or Internet connection to be precise, seems to only go slow when we are demonstrating things to clients.
6, Splash pages on websites, this isnt 1997!
7, Full Flash websites, ok there are some exceptions but standard business brochure sites dont need the added expense / hassle and bad SEO that Flash brings to the party.
8, Flash image galleries, yes they look nice but much better to have a javascript one thats quick and easy to update and much better for SEO.
9, Website visitor counters, not only does it give your competitors an idea how many visitors you have it just looks silly and dated.
10, High ranking sites that are over 10 years old, dont offer what you want and havent been touched / updated in that time.
11, Those widgets that invite you to book mark the site you are on in all the various social media apps.
12, Sites where you dont know what they offer within a few seconds.
13, Dead links, its so easy to check a website to ensure the integrity of its internal and external links, the web is a fluid thing and people should remember that.
14, Spam email, these people are targeting the gullible and they are probably driving fast cars and living in mansions, how did we allow that to happen?
15, Passwords, cant wait for biometrics to really take off when you get your retina scanned once per session and you are then signed on automatically to all sites that subscribe.
16, Filling out forms, I know there are auto-complete functions and auto-fill forms but please ! how many times do you think I have typed delicious webdesign !
17, Webpages that say something like: ‘news coming soon’, ‘check back soon to see if we have updated the page’, much better to have a little info instead of none on a page.
18, pages without a favicon, takes 2 minutes to create one and ensures your site is easily found among all my open tabs.
19, Online forms that ask too much stuff! people just get bored and dont fill them in.
20, Flash but just on the intro, mmm no thanks.
21, Ultra-critical people on forums that critique others but when you look at their own sites they are shockingly bad.
22, Dodgy colours, not everyone has an eye for website colours that work but there are aids out there and perhaps you should ask a friend before launching your site.
23, Images, especially on ecommerce sites, that say ‘click to enlarge’ and it gives you exactly the same sized image.

One of the real headaches for website designers is the variety of browsers out there, meaning that we have to ensure that a website looks and functions in different browsers.

I recently was reviewing the browser usage stats for 2009 and quite surprised to see that IE6, 7 and 8 are being used almost equally, you would expect that people would upgrade their browser (as its free and normally better and more secure) but some months the usage in IE6 actually increased slightly. IE and Firefox are the main browsers, Firefox is the web designers friend due to its plugins and customisation, but Google Chrome (the new boy) finished the year with a near 10% market share.

I entered my internet life with the choice between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer when Freeserve, Yahoo or Alta Vista were the home pages of choice. We now have much more choice and much more complexity to deal with to ensure that a website is functional and beautiful for as many users as possible.