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custom website design
An engaging, well designed website is essential for any modern organisation - however, using an 'off the shelf' template rarely produces the ideal site for your needs. So, by finding out as much as we can about what you want the site to do, your organisation, business and target audience - we can come up with a range of customised solutions for you to consider.
The final choice depends on factors such as your budget and running costs, the time you have available to manage the site and how you see it developing in the future.
planning your website
These are some of the key things you need to think about before building a website:
1. What is it's real purpose ?
- What outcomes would you like gain from building the site?
- What do want it to do - for you, your organisation and your customers?
2. Who will be using your website ?
- Who are the target audience?
- Why do you want them to visit your site?
- Why should they visit your site in particular?
- How do you want them to find your site?
3. What features, functions and content are going to be needed?
- Of these, which ones are: a. essential, b. desireable, c. useful extras?
- Who is going to write all the content?
4. How do you see it developing in the future?
- What are the likely running costs ?
- How often will it need updating?
- Who will do these updates?
- What extras would you like to add in the future?
Depending on your requirements, the following types of site usually offer a good, cost effective solution:
Below, we explain a little more about the first two options. For selling products and services online, take a look at our ecommerce page.
If you need a low cost, easily maintained website that provides the following:
- a 'shop window' presence on the internet - for people to then contact you direct
- useful information for visitors - about your organisation and the services you provide
- doesn't need updating that often - ie just occasional page updates, or an annual price/contact details update
Then this is usually the cheapest option. Please note that 'low cost' does not mean 'low quality': the website you are reading now is an example of this type of site - ie it provides an online advertising presence, contains plenty of useful information, doesn't need updating that often and best of all , costs only £50 per year to run!
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| A six page website similar to this one would cost just £380. For a ten page website, it would be £500. |
| Running Costs: from £50 /yr |
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key features
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low setup costs - typically £200 set up, then £30 per page or £50 per double page
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custom design - full photoshop artwork and a new template specifically for your site
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search engine optimised - includes submission to the major search engines too
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flash panel - a great feature that adds movement and interest to your site
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email accounts - so you can have an email address: anything@yourwebsite.co.uk
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low hosting costs - typically £50 per year for a .co.uk or £60 for a .com
- visitor statistics - allows you to monitor site usage and performance
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free blog - for latest news, photos and self updatable information - dates, prices etc
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free photography - we can also visit your workplace or organisation to take good illustrative photos for the site
Basic annual updates are typically from zero to £50. If you need substantial page rewrites or new pages adding, then these are charged at the same rates as above.
Not Enough For You?
If you need a site that you can manage yourself though, which allows you to add, modify or delete pages and content whenever you want, then it's time to consider:
ii. content management systems
If you are a website owner still relying on web designers to manage your site, you will be aware this can be both time consuming and costly if you have to expand or change the site regularly. This is where content management software comes in. Websites built in this way allow you to edit, expand or modify the site yourself whenever you want.
The content management system we use is a piece of software called 'CMS Made Simple' - which has been specifically designed to be both easy to use and fast to learn. This software is ideal for small business use, or any environment where minimum training is required to get you up an running.
You can easily add text, images, links and other information to your website in a coordinated style (for the more ambitious user - flash movie files, slideshows, ad banners and a host of other content can also be used). New pages can be added and edited, moved around the site, or switched on and off any time you want - and the system always keeps them appearing in the right place.
In short, it provides a fast and easy way to create a web site and manage its contents. In terms of experience required, the software can be used by anyone capable of managing emails and using a common word processor such as Microsoft Word. It really is that simple!
general site features
- full editing control - you can update your site any time, from anywhere in the world!
- auto generated menu- each new page is automatically added to the menu in the right place.
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reasonable set up costs - from £400 - £1000 depending on the size and complexity of the site.
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custom design - full photoshop artwork and a new template specifically for your site
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search engine optimised - includes submission to the major search engines too
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flash panel - a great feature that adds movement and interest to your site
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email accounts - so you can have an email address: anything@yourwebsite.co.uk
- visitor statistics - allows you to monitor site usage and performance
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low hosting costs - typically £100 per year for a .co.uk or £110 for a .com
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free photography - we can also visit your workplace or organisation to take good illustrative photos for the site
custom functions
- keyword search - allows visitors to search your entire site for keywords and phrases
- print this page - generates a printer friendly version of the page
- blog - let the world know what you think!
- latest news - similar to the blog, but with more functions - allows you to archive and categorise postings
- photo album - allows you to easily display photo galleries on your website
- file uploading - allows you to upload and store work files (word, excel, images etc) - very useful for remote working
- forms - lets you generate online forms that customers can fill out and submit
- user management - allows you to set up user accounts and different permission levels for your employees
- google sitemap - keeps every page on your site categorised and up to date with the worlds biggest search engine
NB These are the most common requests, but numerous other functions are available too, including:
- newsletter - allows you to manage a newsletter system
- calendar - sets up and displays a calendar of events on your website
- polls - allows visitors to vote about anything you choose
- comments - allow visitors to leave comments on your website
- rate this - allow users to rate a page using star rating system
- reservation - a hotel reservation system, handles booking process and different room types
- flash gallery - allows you to create flash slideshows to use on your site
- guestbook - adds a visitor guestbook to your site
The beauty of this kind of system is it's versatility, as you have unlimited scope for expansion - ie as your site develops, new content, features and functions can be added down the line.
the bottom line
Set up costs for each self managed website are quoted for on an individual basis, as you can appreciate that the amount of work required is highly variable - depending on the complexity of the site and how much content you need uploading to start with.
Typical setup costs are around £400 for a fairly straight forward website - to up to £1000 or more for complex sites requiring multiple page templates or a variety of advanced functions. Uploading of pages is charged out at £30 per page or £50 per double page as normal - you can of course do this all yourself, but we recommend having some initial pages loaded up for you as working examples.
Training in the use of the site takes a day and costs £150 for a group of up to 4 people. Amongst other things, this involves the uploading of various web pages under tuition (which will be checked and signed off) - so this can also form a part of intial uploading.
In General - if you need a site with 10 pages or more of content, or you are likely to change or add more than a couple of pages a year - then this is probably the best option.
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