When you start to ask about a new website the first things you shouldn’t say include
1, How much is it? Can you do it cheap for us?
2, I want it to be stunning
3, I want some twinkling stars
but unfortunately variations of the above are given to us on a daily basis, it seems people are still in love with ‘Flash’ as they are unaware of the downsides of having it on their website and they are still focused totally on the look of the website and rarely spare a thought about how it will be used and how people will actually find the website (normally via a search engine), if you are unsure about what you should be thinking about contact us and we can send you our questionnaire that lets you answer the key points about website development. The following example conversation demonstrates a typical client asking about a new website:
[Website Client] Hi I am interested in flash on our web site is this something you do? We have a villa in Florida and are looking to have a web site in the UK and USA for more bookings, i would like some twinkling stars on some of the pages, I have already got both web addresses from a hosting company, we want it to be a stunning web page so it keeps people interested in looking through the pages, but we need some sort of ball park figure? I can send all the pictures by email
[Website Designers] Yes what exactly have you in mind regarding the look? Send us the websites addresses and tell us more about these ‘twinkling stars’ – so we are assuming you have an existing working website and want these extras added to it?
[Website Client] No we havn’t got a web site yet we purchased the web addresses when our IT man was going to do the web sites but he’s not good with flash.
[Website Designers] Ok, so you are asking for a full website design to promote your villa, there are actually two major mistakes you are making in the assumptions you are already talking about and probably need to put your trust in a website design company (like ours) that have knowledge / experience and know how in how to built and promote a website to get a product or service sold or known about.
I think a good starting place will be for you to fill in the questionnaire (attached) as fully as you can but be advised that the two potential mistakes you are mentioning currently are ‘flash websites’ (they are relatively bad for website promotion and don’t display in non-flash browsers and devices like the Apple Ipad and Iphone) and thinking that you need two websites for UK and US customers. Have a look at the attached questionnaire / fill out and return and we can then take it further. Also where in the UK are you?
[Website Client] I have filled in the questionnaire and I have attached what I would like it to look like. Hope you can give me a competitive price.
[Website Designers] Thanks for the completed questionnaire and screen-shots, the majority of the pages you have send are room photo with small descriptions, this is probably not the best / most effective way of showing your property (compared with a standard gallery pages with detailed pages of descriptions of your villa and need to know if you are open to suggestions about your plan or if you simply want us to convert what you have got into a website?
Website design is simple but there is more to it that just making the pages look ‘nice’, we need to think about usability, how people navigate from page to page and how the website actually can get found by the search engines (called SEO). If you want you can phone to talk about your options, but please give me an idea of your budget for this website to ensure we are both on the same page.
My initial reaction to this request for a 20 page website that will need to be search optimised and perhaps contain a new section (blog) and have galleries and pages describing the villa and surrounding area is that this puts you in our premium plus business brochure site plus webcopy so the price will be in the region of £1299 + webcopy costs. But there are loads of variables including we need to understand why you want two websites for US and UK and will you supply the text for the site and do you want it to rank competitively in the search engines quickly etc so perhaps we can chat on the phone about these points if I need to explain them more.
