The key to keeping website costs down, is to do your homework ahead. Think about the pages you might need, which means working out what you want to really say, and write some text in say, Works or Word. Do a very basic layout on a sheet of A4 paper. I can take that stuff plus as many pics (don’t worry too much about the quality!) as you have, and start from there.
And tell me which sites (not necessarily in the same business as you) appeal to you re. colour and style.
And tell me which sites (not necessarily in the same business as you) appeal to you re. colour and style.
For a very basic website, the minimum seems to be around £500, BUT that is going to be three or four simple pages only. The techie stuff of setting up takes a slug of time for starters. Beyond that depends not just on the number of pages but also on the complexity e.g. on-line forms, and how much you give me of the text, pictures, logos, etc. A usual sort of small restaurant site with all the bits like email setup, will be around the £700 mark.
We currently charge £40.00 (+VAT, as on all these prices) per hour for the work we do for you on an ongoing basis.
Hosting on a superfast dedicated-quality server: from £10.00 per calendar month, three months in advance, plus back-up and maintenance. £15 to £25 is the usual total monthly fee. The deal for websites is that I work on the theme and a look for the homepage. When you are happy with that, I ask for 33% of the quoted total and a signed contract (sorry, has to be a contract!). The rest is due seven days after going live. By the way, all things being equal, I always stay within the quote price.
Search engine work, adwords and such, costs about £40 set up. ‘Pay-per-click’ when a punter comes to your site. 15 - 50p. a hit? Bit more at the start, to ‘establish a presence’. Think £100 initial budget.
If you want to get stats on traffic, pages looked, number of visitors, etc., Google Analytics works well. Free but but a small bit of time to set up.
Domain names: for a .co.uk domain, £3.50 per year (£5.00 renewal), and £7.50 (£10.00 renewal) for a .com. First time you can buy from two to ten years, so starting with a few years can make a small saving. Domains transferred in free. I charge here, you only the discounted cost to me, which I know is about as cheap as you can get it.
Setting up email through your site - included. ‘Dog’s bollocks’ spam filtering if you need it, through GoogleMail. Gmail is free to use and provides excellent online backup as well as taking out 99% of spam. I get your messages routed via Gmail and back to your mailbox. Costs about £50 in time to set up.
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| 10 web tips |