Web Design Cost £3000+?

Wingz · 25 Jan 2008 at 17:43

Hi all, my friend has ask a company to design one website for his 4 restaurants which will mainly show the locations, menus, pictures, opening times, news and events etc and was quoted around £3400 for the design and hosting which I think its a bit too much? so does he go somewhere else or is that the average price?

they sent a proposal showing what they intend to do, and the main points were...

ASP.NET2.0 for functionality
CSSand XHTMlfor layout
SQl Server 2005 as the database

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Website Content management Systems (CMS)

any comments would be helpful.

Thanks.

elkdanger · 25 Jan 2008 at 17:58

For an ASP.Net 2 and SQL Server site + hosting with full news, events and "etc" on the site + CMS, then I'd so far as to say your friend is getting it fairly cheap. That's the sort of price we used to start at for such a site at my old place.

There's no harm in getting shopping around for a quote, but I wouldn't have thought prices would be much different. Not if you get it done through a web development company, anyway.

Tripnologist · 25 Jan 2008 at 18:44

Yeah, that's not a bad price. Liek elkdanger said, shop around but I don't think you'll find it too much cheaper from any company that isn't run by amateurs.

HTMLHugo · 25 Jan 2008 at 18:57

seems like a fair price to me also.

In fact they under priced be wary lol

swinnie · 25 Jan 2008 at 19:30

Thats a good price, but compare the options and check feedback and their portfolios etc etc.

Wingz · 25 Jan 2008 at 19:45

thanks for the advice guys, guess I'll tell him to go for it then.

blade007 · 25 Jan 2008 at 19:45

Seems about right to me. Perhaps even very good value.

Sagalout · 25 Jan 2008 at 20:49

sounds very cheap to be honest - too cheap to be bespoke. We've done a few restaurant sites (50 + branches) and have charged 10 x that for each.to be honest though their designs are a bit 'basic' but still decent value I'd say. If you think about it, a half decent agency will charge 300 - 700 a day, so they are doing it in 5 to 10 days (hence my reasoning for it not being bespoke)

Wingz · 25 Jan 2008 at 21:06

**delete**

psyr33n · 25 Jan 2008 at 22:47

Looks fine to me—it doesn't seem like a big firm, hence the low price. The markup on their site is horrendous, though, which would put me off. :/

monkeysmith · 26 Jan 2008 at 12:03

IT is a good price, but their website lacks company details, data protection details, terms, etc etc... which are signs of a one man band at college. There are regulations that a company needs to provide these details, registered address etc.

That would put me off.

arfur · 26 Jan 2008 at 12:16

SEO is such a rip off, I designed our new website, yeh it might be swanky but it works and it got in the top 4 keyword searches on google for several phrases within 3 months, maybe I should charge myself £1500

kibblerok · 26 Jan 2008 at 14:21

arfur said:
SEO is such a rip off, I designed our new website, yeh it might be swanky but it works and it got in the top 4 keyword searches on google for several phrases within 3 months, maybe I should charge myself £1500

Depends what sector really... it would all vary.

tsinc80697 · 26 Jan 2008 at 14:38

All SEO really is in most cases is designing the website and coding it properly. Setting up the CSS with the text correctly, having everything in order so that the search engine can read the site in the correct order and correct keywords.

blade007 · 26 Jan 2008 at 15:06

tsinc80697 said:
All SEO really is in most cases is designing the website and coding it properly. Setting up the CSS with the text correctly, having everything in order so that the search engine can read the site in the correct order and correct keywords.

I'm afraid you are miles off with that statement.

Augmented · 26 Jan 2008 at 15:59

blade007 said:
I'm afraid you are miles off with that statement.

Not really. That's all SEO should be. However, unfortunately there are people whose sole intention is to spam keywords, set up false link strategies and all the other associated 'SEO techniques' just to earn a little PPC ad revenue. It is these people who are trying to to beat the system, regardless of whether their content is meaningful or not, that makes that statement miles off.

As far as I'm concerned, anything other than writing clean semantic markup and good meaningful content is a black-hat technique.

blade007 · 26 Jan 2008 at 16:53

Augmented said:
Not really. That's all SEO should be. However, unfortunately there are people whose sole intention is to spam keywords, set up false link strategies and all the other associated 'SEO techniques' just to earn a little PPC ad revenue. It is these people who are trying to to beat the system, regardless of whether their content is meaningful or not, that makes that statement miles off.

As far as I'm concerned, anything other than writing clean semantic markup and good meaningful content is a black-hat technique.

I can't agree with that.

And that your definition of black-hat is your definition - no one else's. That's the beauty of a forum - so many opinions.

"However, unfortunately there are people whose sole intention is to spam keywords, set up false link strategies and all the other associated 'SEO techniques' just to earn a little PPC ad revenue" -I think that is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in a long time.

Unfortunately there are some SEO companies that do overcook things, or on the other hand there are those that don't do very much. Gives the SEO industry a bad name. However there are companies out there that do a good job with proper targetting and cool use of all the tags and research keywords and deliver results within the Google, Yahoo, and MSN terms of service.

An example of SEO. What's the use of an ecommerce system, beautifully designed, XHTML compliant, some nice CSS, spent £10K on it but it sells nothing because they'are at Google no 200 ?

I've seen many companies invest, and then 1 year later the company has gone bust because the web design company designed them a site that looks good to humans but had no use of headings, keywords, title tags, - not even the standard things.

On the contrary I've worked with quite a few clients and we've built up business from the internet by re-working the sites with targetting. One of my clients has moved from a £5K turnover a month to £60K a month. They are the same products, and prices, the same site, same graphics, same ecommerce system. I worked heavily on the SEO with them (because it didn't have any). The sales are primarily from generic keyword targetting,and then optimising every product within the shop, doing it properly. When a lot of those keywords and products are found in the top 3 you have the best audience possible.

That's the value of SEO. No spam. It's planning and execution within terms of the search engines.

The net result is that it can help MAKE a business

arfur · 27 Jan 2008 at 13:18

Augmented said:
Not really. That's all SEO should be. However, unfortunately there are people whose sole intention is to spam keywords, set up false link strategies and all the other associated 'SEO techniques' just to earn a little PPC ad revenue. It is these people who are trying to to beat the system, regardless of whether their content is meaningful or not, that makes that statement miles off.

As far as I'm concerned, anything other than writing clean semantic markup and good meaningful content is a black-hat technique.

agreed, if people understood more how google is suppose to work, then people wouldnt pay as much for SEO

tsinc80697 · 27 Jan 2008 at 13:54

blade007 said:
However there are companies out there that do a good job with proper targetting and cool use of all the tags and research keywords and deliver results within the Google, Yahoo, and MSN terms of service.

but had no use of headings, keywords, title tags, - not even the standard things.

To me that isn't SEO, that is building a website correctly.

Like I previously said, using header tags, title tags, ensuring every page is named correctly and laid out correctly. That's just common sense to me and second knowledge, I'm sure its not just me that works that way, if you're going to make a website, make it properly and you won't have many problems.

The only time I can see real SEO is when the website has been created poorly with bad coding techniques, then SEO = changing page titles, keywords and use H1/H2 etc on certain parts of the text.

To me its not really SEO, its about making the site correctly in the first place, or changing it if someone else has previously made the website as quick as possible and screwed things up, so I suppose in a way it is optimisation as its improving things but its the initial creators fault to need to do so.

blade007 · 27 Jan 2008 at 15:06

SEOs worth is based on results and is not just h1, title, and meta tags like a lot of people think. The end worth is what it achieves.

It's obvious that people are very suspicious of SEO and either have had their fingers burnt or they think it should be done as part of web build and development. Or, even .. I'll stick a heading in, do a few meta tags .. and say it SEO'd and charge client for work - I've many heard people say that.