email new business website enquiries

Common and Example Email Questions (and replies)

Enquiry 1

Client: PADI dive centre

Could you give me some idea of pricing as I need to start looking at how much this is going to cost, have started getting quotes, but would obviously rather stick with you on this as you will be looking after it, doing the SEO and hosting it, like everyone we will still have strict budgets to work with I am afraid.

Anyway no immediate hurry, but if you could get me some idea of pricing for hosting, complete design, writing unique content, seo and ongoing costs etc etc so we can get an idea of what we are looking at.

Cheers and speak soon,

Reply 1

Ok will give you a pricing estimate by the end of the weekend (latest Monday)

As you know we produce some quality sites and as such wouldn't like to cut corners and do 'cheap and nasty' but think that whatever price we arrange it will be very very competitive and know you would get much more value for money out of us than other website designers and hope that you decide to use us instead of going elsewhere.

Would emphasise the need for a holistic approach to this for you and the need to ensure the site looks great and is highly usable and the navigation / accessibility is spot on along with the promotion and SEO of the site.

Would much prefer us to do everything from the beginning to ensure all the site is W3C compliant and is very search engine friendly and the text meets all the requirements for the search engines and is 100% relevant and unique and passes the checks required to be in the appropriate flesch / kincaid readability zone.

So in General this is what I think you need:

New website
business premium site-http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/website-packages.html

included as standard:

• cms - update it yourself (common pages allow to update yourself)
• logo - banner (new logo and banner)
• hosting
• advanced SEO - every page optimized individually for search engines
• webstats
• enquiry booking forms  
• w3c standard coding
• xhtml / css / php coding
• email accounts
• setup and training as required
• photo gallery

 

Extra on business premium website -

• number of pages 100 pages - 110 pages
• table diagrams for dive sites / dive boats
• multiple dive galleries
• online video (embedded and w3c compliant video !)

 

Content Writing

This will be the difference between a standard / normal site and higher ranked sites as most people employ on site SEO already in your sector

Content would be written by two professionals (one english teacher and one office services company) the text would be unique / relevant / error free / included important keywords and search term relating to the page / topic) the text would also meet Google / Search Engine standards for readability (readability metrics taken) each page will be complimented with relevant images and diagrams where appropriate

90 pages including

• every padi course (30 pages) including every specialty
• local dive sites and local dive boats (10 pages)
• liveaboards (10 pages)
• student pages (15 pages)
• news pages (2 pages)
• about us (2 pages)
• about phuket (2 pages)
• idc pages (10 pages)
• internships (2 pages)
• resorts (5 pages)
• faqs (3 pages - diving, courses, phuket etc)

 

SEO

Advanced onsite and offsite promotion of the website including adding to directories and general promotion
This will be a similar program to what we done for Indepth but If we do the content and website build / design the cost will be significantly lower
You will get a 3 month program with lists of directories / blogs / forums / social media that we have created accounts for and posted on and links created.

 

We Require
To go forward with a better understanding please acknowledge by assumptions of what you need above and possibly:

Website -  start to give us an idea of what type of look you want for your website giving us examples of sites you want yours to be based on / similar to (give multiple examples please)

SEO - Targeted search terms / keywords - what's the most important key search terms / keywords for you?

Content - How much will you want to create / can you create for the site? I think you will need to proof read / accept all our text that we give and possibly add to it if you want to but should like an 'about us' 'our history' type pages from you

Enquiry 2

Hey James,
wow, I appreciate your time on this!!!! thanks very much.
Some of the stuff you wrote was in English!! the rest will take me a bit of time to translate!!
Will take a look to see what we can do. it might take us some time. Now, I know that you have already taken up a lot of your time, so I don't want to take up any more right now, but, so that we can make a decision, can you give us some idea of what it would cost for you to tidy stuff up for us???

Oh and by the way, we are using IE. Are you using Firefox? or some other browser. Up until now, we haven't checked to see how the layout appears elsewhere.

Reply 2

Don't worry about taking up my time, its Sunday and I'm a bit of a workaholic and don't mind helping and giving advise as you want.

We use All the major browsers including Firefox 2 and 3, IE 6,7 and 8, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera and have tools that checks that they all work, its one part of this job that really takes time and we all learn to hate IE 6 and 7 as it has so many bugs that webmasters have to be aware of and code for accordingly.

It is sometimes said that position in the SERPs (search engine results pages) is all that counts and flashy graphics and 'flash' animation just distracts from the site. but if a site has fundamental browser or display / placement errors the chance that someone will just click on you then click off is pretty high.

Its true to still say position is the main thing (as most people don't look past page two on Google search results) but presentation / content and usability of the site must be 100% right before high positioning is totally effective and site visitors turn into clients / customers / divers.

I can see that I have used some web / IT terms but most are common and easy to find and most I have enlarged upon here (including 404, favicon, CSS, XHTML
http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/website-design-uncovered.html
and also they will be in your Dreamweaver book


Having a customised 404 error page ensures that old links and mistyped links are not lost as site visitors. This works for any mistyped pages after your URL

I have downloaded your site to have a closer look and I also spotted a few technical SEO problems that we will resolve

I also love
the banner and the term 'Don't Teach Courses - Teach People' its very true and I know you practice this also

My Quote
If you want me to do all the things below i can group them into tidy work parcels and quote them like this, these are very very good rates as I would value working with you and obviously still love diving and enjoy being involved with the business. We are currently pretty busy and have 4-5 people that work with me but I would do the majority of this work myself. There is a lot of work to do and you have nearly 30 pages of HTML and 200 images.

I consider the General SEO / Website Revamp / tidy up to be the highest priority and have listed it first . You would have to provide content for the new prices page and online payment section but I would simply give you a framework for you to put your course name and description in and I would ensure the payment options worked. I normally require a deposit to begin work but if you want to pay after work is complete then that's fine also.

You would also need to signup / join with Paypal and Google checkout if you haven't already done this

• Approx Images 225-240 - HTML pages 25-30
• General SEO / Website Revamp / tidy up
• Time to complete 1-2 weeks
• Price £190
• Encrypt your email address
• Create a contact form with encrypted email address to stop spam bots
• Use your heading tags H1, H2, H3 wisely and delete empty heading tags
• Put your style definitions all on your external stylesheets
• Your navigation buttons / bars crash into your main content
• Create a custom error page (404 page)
• Resolve the non WWW address
• Create a favicon (favorites icon)
• Remove empty links on front page (PADI IDC Platinum Course Director)
• Add alt tags on photos (some are there some are not)
• menu is not in the same place for all pages
• You have a lot of outlinks / do they all link back to you ?
• Page Titles / descriptions / headings / keywords all need reviewing and improving
• page names / folders should be in lower case and have no spaces
• Some images overlap the menus
• new pages

 

prices section

• 
  online payment section with paypal / google checkout
  some keywords in your meta tags are not used in your pages (divemaster on index page)
  you have not been added to any social networking sites (del.icio.us or digg etc)
  Add Yahoo Webmaster / Google webmaster and Google analytics packages (get a weekly email or site statistics)
  Webmaster errors investigated and fixed
  
  Code update / re-write - 25 - 30 pages of HMTL
  Time to complete 2 weeks
  
  Update your code to XHTML 1.0 / CSS (currently your using HTML)
  Make your site W3C compliant for code and CSS currently you have 19 HTML errors !
  
  
  SEO work
  Time to complete initially 1 week then ongoing monthly review / updates
  for updates / extra lnks and review every month for 1 year then review
  
  Increase your search engine position for "sharm el sheikh padi idc" and "egypt idc"
  you have very few inbound links with the anchor text 'padi idc'
  
  
  • Get important Links from sites with high page ranks (min 5 links from PR 2 – PR 6 sites) to yours
  • Full 30 page report detailing the state of your report so you can refer to it before and after
  • Key Search term / Keyword analysis report showing:
  • Search volumes for last year by month
  • Most popular months in terms of search terms
  • Average volumes
  • Highest to lowest search terms covering your key terms
  • Review of Content (checking for duplications of content)
  • Image review to ensure you haven’t used other agencies copyrighted images
  • Submit to all the search engines that you currently are not included in (over 100)
  • Submit to digg.com (social networking site) and get 5 diggs
  • Submit to delicious.com (social networking site) and get 5 tags
  • Full review and update of your Page Descriptions
  • Meta Keywords / Page Titles / All images optimised
  • Update the site monthly (update course dates / news )
  • Test pages with all browsers
  • Page Descriptions, Meta Keywords
  • Image search optimisation (add search friendly text to images and add them to google enhanced images)
  • Inbound & Outbound Links - Review and update
  • Statistics taken on current position and report of before and after our SEO work
    
  Additionally if you are happy to complete all / some of this work yourself I can help you / guide you and if you want to do some and leave some to me then I can slightly reduce the quotes.

 

Enquiry 3

I took over a diving company 2 years ago and had a new website designed. Over the past year it has been slipping down the ranking and I need some help. Please could you advise me how to improve the rankings of our website.

Reply 3

Hi, you probably found us as I have done a similar website promotion job for another dive center am currently doing a project for other dive centers for a website re launch and website promotion, or what we call search engine optimisation (SEO) We have also just taken on another PADI IDC website (steve prior) and am at the start of that project. If you didn't know I personally am a PADI Staff Instructor (not in teaching status) I love diving and know what makes a diving website work.

 

We treat website creation and promotion together so when we start a project we look at the big picture and find out what your current website strengths and weaknesses are, then plan the SEO project, which will involve changes to the website, technical SEO and off-site promotion. We don't concentrate just on one aspect (like link building) and we do it ethically and in accordance to Google's Webmaster Guidelines which makes us 'good seo' or 'white hat seo'. In diving terms we are the equivalent of a dive centre that offers every service and adheres to PADI's regulations. As you can see from some previous SEO results this seems to work >> http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/search-ranking-results.html

 

I have spent a short while looking at your site and see plenty of quick wins where we can change / update and optimise to give your site a quick boost but there are plenty of long term / more difficult changes required that should also be addressed as part of a SEO project, one of these would be to address your website xhtml errors that are a minor part of the SEO picture but could be an increasingly important one in the future, your current front page has 28 xhtml errors.

 

Your website has plenty of strengths, especially its age and the amount of current links it has, which makes us excited about providing an SEO service to you as to pull your rankings up would be much easier and quicker than if you were a brand new site. This reply isn't a list of 'ways to improve the rankings' or a critique of your websites problems as that can come later. If you are like most website / company owners you want to see the work in terms of results and that's where we will deliver.

 

To move forward, we would normally propose a SEO project (it looks like it will need to be a year long one initially with a 3 month intensive course of work to begin with.) There is a lot to discuss and as high season will be with you before you know it. I suggest there is no time to lose, the good news is that we can move quite quickly and I have a team of people including one in Phuket that can get on with this project within one week to 10 days.

 

We can talk via email or on Facebook / MSN / Skype or via the chat tool on the website and once the project has begun I have a guy in Phuket that you can visit or he can visit you to iron out any problems you may have.

 

To begin work we need your FTP details, control panel details, Content Management details (if applicable) the deposit and we need to agree a list of keywords / terms that you want to target, we take metrics before during and after the first 3 months to log our progress and to see that we are heading in the correct direction. We may also need a resource from yourself for content creation or if you cant spare the time and want us to create your new content (if we think you need it) then we have web-copy experts that can create unique / relevant text under any subject.

Enquiry 4

Could you please estimate a cost for building a basic web site for our company (name removed) Ltd. I have already purchased the name and already use the email facility. We would like a web site to be uploaded to our page (website name removed). I think all we need is a front page detailing who we are and what we do - general building works.

 

Also we would need a contact page and I was also thinking about a projects page. On the projects page would be links to .pdf documents which each show a different project.

 

These would be added each time we complete a job i.e. brickwork, re decoration, house extension, complete house build etc.. We already have an existing web site at (website name removed). I don't mind if it looks different or similar but would like a link between the sites. Also it give you an idea of the type we use. Kind Regards Steve

Reply 4

Hi, Looks like the type of site you want is one that fits into our 'niche' of Essex based service companies, which is good all around as we know what type of things you want and need and you can see some similar examples of what we have done for other Essex based companies.

 

We have a lot of good ideas for you and ways to best show off and promote your work and can discuss them at length when we meet. Your requirements about adding projects as you complete them is something we can do for you or let you do them yourself by creating your website as a 'user-updatable' (CMS) type website, again can discuss this with you.

 

Ok so your website for general building works (website name removed) it may be good to talk about the website name, sounds pretty straight forward and you can see similar sites that we have done previously

Our previous websites: http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/testimonials-website-design.html

builders / tradesmen websites we have done previously
http://www.edenwood-building-services.co.uk/
http://www.essexcleaningcompany.co.uk/
http://www.superstar-pa.co.uk/
http://www.clarity-services.co.uk/
http://www.ifa-essex.co.uk

I cant tell exactly what website will be best suited for you as you didn't mention if you wanted us to create your text content (webcopy) and you didn't mention how you are going to enhance / promote your website in the search engines so our range of business brochure websites that could be suitable for you go from our starter site at £399 to our premium plus websites at £1199 further details here >>
http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/business-website-choices.html

Options

Webcopy
If you want us to create your content for you then you can see what unique and search engine friendly content we have created on any of the example sites above as we created the content from them all, a guide price for content for 10 topics / headings / pages starts from about £250 so the text on http://www.edenwood-building-services.co.uk/ will cost approximately £250 and we will need your input as to your main services / headings to what you want to offer / promote.

 

Search Engine Optimisation (website promotion)
Once your website is built you then need to be focused on how to promote it and get it featured highly in the search engines, the premium and premium plus websites have more promotion work done on them with the premium plus one having a 3 month SEO (website promotion) project built in. Details of previous websites and their improved search engine positions here >>

http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/search-ranking-results.html

 

What next ?
Will phone you within a couple of days and I have a questionnaire that you could fill in if you decide to go ahead and meet up for a proper project requirements meeting with us

 

Enquiry 5

 

Please explain about your website package, we are currently thinking your premium plus package is the one for us, also do we need to visit you as we are very busy at the moment.

Reply 5

 

If you choose the Premium+ package this comes with a content management system (currently we are using Joomla) which will allow you to add, edit and delete content, menus and images / pictures on the website. The other two packages don't come with that  so from what you said you require I think that this will be best suited to you and we can easily create this for you, you can always upgrade to a CMS at a later date if you decide you want to take control of your site yourself.

We can do everything over the phone and by email, if you feel a meeting is necessary to get your ideas conveyed correctly to us then that is fine, on average we have face to face meetings with about 75% of our cients.

Regarding the design concept for your site we think that a striking  design is essential. We want to create something very much focused  around images of your products that will work well with your website  We have lots of stock images and access to professional stock image galleries will have lots of photographs. Our designer may want to discuss this with you in much greater detail.
Are  there any sites you like the look of in particular?