15 November 2011
Hi Shane

Wordpress is a great CMS product and themes and templates can be customised to give your website a more bespoke look and usually the price would obviously reflect what ever work is involved, it's difficult to say if you are getting good value at 700euro without knowing exactly what kind of website you need and without knowing how much custom work is being done but if the web designer is just installing wordpress and setting up a standard theme with no customisation I'd say 700euro is quite expensive.

It sounds from your comments that you are after more of a completely bespoke solution. I would say do not accept having a design forced on you as I am sure you have ideas about how you want your website to look and any web designer worth his or her salt should be able to deliver a website that looks and behaves exactly the way you expect.

If you want a price for a totally bespoke website drop me an email to contact@theisleofwightcomputergeek.co.uk with some details about the kind of site you want and I'll send you an accurate quote.

Best Regards

Jamie

www.theisleofwightcomputergeek.co.uk

15 November 2011
Hi Shane

I can offer you an easy to update CMS website for much less than you were quoted. I specialise in high quality creative bespoke website design. Please check out my website www.wildpurpledesign.co.uk

Good web designers should always consider the websites target market and the websites aims and objectives and design each individual page with this in mind - templates often do not fit the bill.

I would like to hear more about the sort of website you need and I'm sure I could provide you with what you want for your website at a highly competitive price.

Email: helen@wildpurpledesign.co.uk

Best wishes - hope to hear from you,

Helen

Wild Purple Design

www.wildpurpledesign.co.uk

15 November 2011
Hi Shane,

For the price of 700 Euros it comes down to what value the Web Designer is adding by charging that value for the work being down.

We can all take an off-the-shelf theme / template, modify it to your requirements and then add your content but that is not the full story when it comes to designing a website.

The website has to be able to acheive good results in search engines by ranking well for keywords and also promote your business successfully.

So, you're initial priority is not the website, it's about your business and your goals. Understanding your goals (Business Objectives) will help define / design a website to meet them.

For that price and using a theme as a base, I would expect a lot of SEO work (Search Engine Optimisation) to be done in terms of researching keywords, having great layouts on the page and ensuring the structure and content is created to an appropriate level of quality (using the keywords and more) that will have your website:

1. Rank on seach engines for appropriate keywords
2. Promote your business successfully
3. Entice visitors to make contact

If the Web Designer is
1. Adding your content and images (as you have provided them) to the theme
2. NOT offering to add value by helping rework your content / images
3. NOT researching keywords that you have a chance to rank on that would generate people visiting your website who are interested in what you offer (ie: Targeted Visitors)
4. NOT reworking the base theme to your requirements

then we'd say its not correctly priced but would also say your website won't acheive what you want it to.

Joint Plan offers and delivers websites that do rank in Google / Yahoo and other search engines and can help you achieve your business objectives.

We'd be more than please to talk with you to get to know and understand what you're trying to acheive. We'd openly discuss options, pricing and how we can add more value.

We look forward to talking with you.

Many Thanks,

Joint Plan.
0800 08 07 017
www.jointplan.co.uk

15 November 2011
Hi Shane,

If (other than the gallery) there are no plugins, or other components to the design, then it does sound a lot, for what is likely to be a few hours' work at the most.

I think you will be able to find someone who will be able to download, install and configure Wordpress, then install the template in a couple of hours, for a fraction of that price.

If however, they are tweaking the template, populating the site, optimising it, and installing all the required plugins to make Wordpress more SEO-friendly, then this is more of a fair price.

We charge £350+VAT for a day rate, so based on this, 700 Euros is around 16 hours' work if that makes it more tangible.

If this is your first site, you should ask the question: "What do I need my site to do?" Then make sure that whatever is being proposed to you, will do it.

If it is going to fall-short then consider upping the budget or going elsewhere to make sure that it will.

By ringing-around some of the guys on here, you should get some useful tips and probably a much better site.

Hope this helps.

Ed.

15 November 2011
Shane,

Our template websites have all been designed by our in-house design team, so we don't charge extra for specific themes.

Of course, for something bespoke built on Wordpress, you'd recieve something unique - not something we've taken off the rack somewhere else.

Take a look at http://www.leveninternet.com if you want to see more.

16 November 2011
Shane

Given that you have provided us with such limited information I think it's a little unfair for anyone to comment here.

I'm also quite surprised at the way some people are using this as an opportunity to poach business from a fellow web designer. It looks like vultures circling and I'm sure many of you would be upset if someone tried to take your potential clients from you in this way.

I always try and impress on people how important it is to check out a web company before hiring them and also to shop around but once the deal is done, it is done.

Shane, if you have an issue with your designer you should take it up directly with him. If you think he is charging too much then you should ask HIM to explain what you are getting for your money. At least give him a chance.

It's easy enough to set up Wordpress yourself if you want to, but you are hiring him to do it for you.

He is providing you a service because he has expertise in that area, therefore you must pay for that service.

As for off the shelf templates, yes a lot of web companies do this. Whether it's any good depends on the template itself.

But in the end, if you think you can do better, shop around and ask other web designers to give you a quote before you do the deal. But don't ask one designer to comment on whether another is giving you a good enough deal.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

19 November 2011
If the designer is only installing WordPress and the theme and activating this for you, that can be done for anywhere between EUR50 to EUR150.

But what we do not know as of now is, if he has bundled some excellent hosting and an year of maintenance which means if you need something updated on the website, he will help you with that or update it for you. This is something that might add to costs.

Even for the initial setup, if he is setting up all the seven pages for you, that will add to costs but not to EUR700.

Naveen Bhalla
Quarter Pie Interactive http://www.quarterpie.com
UK (London): +44 (0203) 129 3926

21 November 2011
Hi Shane,

I agree with Moghill... I don't think we can't criticise if the work is worth the money because we simply don't know how much customisation he/she/they are going to put into the project.

You are paying someone for their time also, this could include hosting? Domain name? SEO?!!? the list is endless and if the costs are 100/150 + time

You have to ask is it worth it not to do it yourself?
For instance I pay a local hairdresser £50 for a cut, or I go to Toni and Guy and pay £100s! My point being that quality of the workmanship and reputation increase prices... have a look at their portfolio and check out the references.

All the best with your project.

Phillippa
ODM

23 November 2011
Personally, if the site is an integral part of your business going forward then I would advise you do not spend that small amount nor using a cheap template, there is nothing to stop anyone copying the look of your site and your site will end up looking like all the other cheap web sites out there.

You have to bear in mind that a quality web design agency will take each section of the site and design the pages around the content and purpose.
This takes time and costs money. We develop our own CMS as well as use WordPress, some of our WP sites are >£10k so just because it is a free platform doesn't mean it should be cheap.

You do get what you pay for.

If you pay 700 EUROs then you are going to get between 1-7 days worth of work. You have to look at the portfolio of the designer to judge the quality for yourself.

This is a great website to see what sort of quality people are producing.

28 November 2011
Hi Shane

Don't ever accept someone telling you what your site will look like, this should be entirely your decision.

There are lots of templates out there for wordpress, and indeed web development in general. If they are putting in the work to construct a really great website with all the features you want then great, if they're simply installing Wordpress and applying a theme without any customisation then it sounds a bit much.

I would say take a few minute to familiarise yourself with how Wordpress works then make sure your website is different enough from the norm that it requires some work, otherwise I would look elsewhere.

Whatever happens as with anything in life, its best to shop around first

30 November 2011
Hi,

Wordpress can be used as a CMS platform for your needs and you can choose best and affordable pricing for the design, development and hosting for your hosted wordpress project.

The customization and setting up cost will be there.

We are India based web designers, so that you will get most affordable designs more and more cheaper than other companies world wide.

Contact us for a better affordable wordpress website package quote...
Finsoft IT Solutions

20 March 2012
I assume you have this site already made, but just in case someone else comes across this.

A designer using a template isn't necessarily a bad thing if the template is good quality and does what you need it to do.

If the money you are paying them means that you get more in the way of SEO or other services then it might mean the difference of your site working well or not.

So like some others here have mentioned, it's about the value of what you get.

Kind Regards

N: Alan Fair
P: Managing Director
W: www.contactmultimedia.co.uk
T: 0141 246 5743
M: 07793 544 852
E: alan@cmmc.co.uk