Its natural to worry or be concerned about anything but when you start on your website design journey its our job to ensure we understand what you want and need and describe it for you. Here is a typical example conversation where the website owner is not perfectly sure what they want / need / require so we do our best to explain things:
[Website Client] Everything was going very well with your answers until you sent me this in a nutshell, now I am a bit confused, I have no idea if this is what I have asked you to do in a nutshell and do not want to agree this when I thought I could agree to what we had agreed to our answers/questions back and forth. Some of this in a nutshell does not seem what I need.
How can I agree something I don’t know what it is i.e.: what is a brochure website? Why do I need one month’s SEO? Is my photography website bit going to be cheaper than a full on photography website build as I will only need a small section of what photographers need? Now thinking on this…..could this be added to my website at a later date when I would like? Why have you mentioned stock images? The whole point of this website is to use my own photos! I have attached a photo and are sending you a link to a couple of photos to show you the type of quality of my photos to use for full screen.
Perhaps you can let me know if the quality is good enough. Can you get back to me asap so that I can give you the go ahead to quote me please.
[Website Design Company] Sorry if I confused the issue for you, I was simply trying to make it easy to understand by summarising what we were going to do, again sorry if it confuses. What I gave is simply an overview of what you want / need from what you described over all the emails. A brochure website is what we call a ‘standard’ website compared with a pure e-commerce / blog / directory / flash websites. This is the type of website you need. SEO for one month after the website is built is a ‘standard’ offering on our top end websites. This is one of the reasons why our client’s websites rank higher than their competition (for example if you search ‘essex builders’ we have 4 clients in the top ten).
The photography part of the site is going to be a full ecommerce system specifically for photography (photos), the way I understand what you want is that this is required but obviously without it your quote will be a less. When you describe your ‘photography website bit’ I understand that you want a full ecommerce system and there really isnt any half measures, you will either have full / complete functionality or not. I can demonstrate the full back-end side of this during a face to face meeting if required. This part can be added on at a later date as your website will be built with future additions / improvements in mind.
Stock images are nearly always used on websites (at least on the front pages) you didn’t attach your images or send any links but I think professional stock images are essential to have especially for your full screen website, regardless of if you want to use your own / professional images we only charge for the ones you need so if the quote part for images is for £50 and you only use £30 in stock images then the final balance reflects that.
Just for completeness here is the highlights of the photography ecommerce system (all the photography sites I have sent you have these functions) …………. Full function overview given
[Website Client] All I can say is whoever hired you made the right choice…you are a true professional and being able to explain everything to a lay person like me by text is a real gift! Thank you for taking the time to explain everything in full also. I Have really appreciated your patience and understanding with me. One thing ….I want you to know that I have set my heart on having my photos of my services/dips on the site…no stock photos…even if this means having professional photos taken for me of my services etc.
In the mean time I am sending you an upload to a view photos I had tabbed to put on my new site. Please can you tell me which of them have the quality good enough to put on… as some are semi pro shots!
Last thing I need to know :
1 Please could you give me a quote for the website WITHOUT the e-commerce photography bit.
2 Please can you give me a quote WITH the e-commerce photography bit.
[Website Designers] We will await your photography samples but in the meantime here is our quotation for your website, Website Project
1 Bespoke Designed Business Brochure Website (Premium Plus Website)
Booking form / Multiple Galleries / 10 – 12 pages / 1 months SEO
2 Full Photography Ecommerce system
Bespoke system allowing full control of photo galleries / portfolios / prices / postage / customers / orders / customer login and management
3 Transfer of Domain – 2 years Hosting / Email setup
4 Webcopy
Recommend 10-12 pages (3500 words)
Total Cost: Website / Ecommerce System / SEO / Hosting / Transfer: £ Your budget plus £1000 – Duration: 4 weeks
Cost without Photography Ecommerce system £ Your Budget + £250 – Duration: 3 weeks
Deposit required to begin work: 50%
[Website Client] I like the way you work, and have a good feeling about you/your business. I was wondering if you would build my website for me ( doing everything you have quoted me for and everything I need ) but without the photography ecommerce bit for the time being for the price I gave for my budget please? Funds are a little on the short side at the minute. I could then and definitely will add the photography ecommerce bit at a later stage at my leisure with you. I could Bacs you the deposit tomorrow!
[Website Designers] The price mentioned is a bit too low for us sorry, there is so much work involved here to get it right for you, really want to work with you on this as you know I have spent hours with you on emails but to justify the work going forward we need to do to get this done correctly we need the minimum amount stated in your budget and you will get a website exactly as you want it that will naturally rank highly bringing you in a steady stream of business.
Hope the small package discount I am offering isn’t insulting but the prices were very keen already and we never really discount. If you want to accept I can create an invoice and give you it tomorrow, we will also need your hosting / ftp details to transfer the site prior to the development stage.
[Website Client] I hope you were not insulted by my offer…it by no means belittled what you do! Deep breath, yes I will go for it, the project is on then. But only if I can use my own photos stock images just does not portray what we do we are different to everyone else our photos is what brings us all our business and without these we are nothing. As I mentioned before the whole and only point of the new website is to showcase our pictures. Without these photos I could muster on with the old website until a later date. I want everyone to see how special and unique our set ups are and how much effort we put into our attention to detail.
On another note just for your info I have already been working on condensing pages into pages and rewriting headings for my home page navigation. I have worked out all the completely new headings for the home page navigation buttons and with all the headings that will open out. When you need me to email them over to you I can do so anytime for you. You will find me extremely proactive and on the ball to work with , as I like to turn things around immediately. Whilst I am thinking on things the look I want to obtain is classy, up market, special but also fun, bright and happy. I would like my colours to be gold, black, white with hint of champagne bottle blue. Bling is part of who we are…as our set ups are sparkly. I am a big fan of bling and would love lots of diamante sparkle incorporated somehow…so that things twinkle, but sparkle not in a cheap way. Perhaps you could show me some examples…..I have seen some that look very striking , eye-catching and very impressive…that can be used for text etc.
Any chance you could change the colours of my logo to gold, black, white please? ( leaving the blue bubbles and red strawberry in the glass) then this would work better with my new site…do you think? I also would like to choose new font for my company name on the website for the home page. Please before you lift all the text from the old website , could you please talk to me first so that I can let you know which to lift and which not to lift please?
Thanks James I am sure you will make me a fantastic website I have seen it clearly in my head for 5 months now and cannot wait to get it out of my head and onto the screen. One thing I want to clarify…..are you going to work with me on it from the start until it is finished…..until it is right? I really don’t see you could mis interpret any of the build as you have the links to the sites that I want it to look like.
I just ask this question because as I mentioned before the last web builders did not do as I specified and did as they wanted , so amendments had to be made by which they complained bitterly (and charged me for !)…yet I was the one stuck out on a limb….so once bitten twice shy as they say.
