A very common question we get asked, sometimes I reply with ‘how much do you think its cost you in lost business, time and stress already’ this is especialy true when the client has tried to get his website completed ‘cheaply’ or by a ‘friend’ that once took IT at school and likes going on the Internet. Here is an example conversation from someone in a similar position
[Website Owner] Reference our telephone conversation earlier is it possible to give me a rough price on how much it will cost to put the website right and how much a month a seo package would be? Then can see how much I need then we can arrange a meeting.
[Webdesigners] As I said on the phone its hard to price what you need / want without chatting but I can try to give you some estimates / choices, have been reviewing your website again and hopefully you remembered what I said about SEO projects normally needing other website design / webcopy updates to make them effective. On reviewing your site again I have found lots of things that are bad practise / generally incorrect and harmful for SEO.
To ask for a price estimate is hard at this stage it’s a bit like asking a mechanic to make your car perfect, there will be lots of minor / major faults and some cosmetic faults, some you will want to live with and some you will need to fix for safety / legal reasons.
My initial review has found the following website design / code / SEO problems that need attention and can be addressed as part of any overall plan that we create to get the site working for you:
1, Need clickable Phone numbers
2, Need an Email address clickable and at the top of page
3, Facebook / Twitter Social Icons added (if you use them)
4, Coding (HTML / CSS) is amateurish (inline css) and full of errors (52 html errors / 29 warnings on first page)
5, Calls to CSS route to a 3rd party website
6, Website coding to make the website responsive doesn’t work well (icon overlaps telephone number or goes off the right of the screen)
7, Contact form doesn’t have an anti-spam measure within it.
8, Google reviews are all from 2 years ago and all anonymous.
9, Image slider has the same image on all 7 slides
10, Services menu doesn’t includes all the services on the services page.
11, Lock Upgrades needs its own page / content
12, Would like to see the services page with images for each service
13, Mouseover function for links (see services page) isn’t correct
14, Website is not legal by not having a visible email address and full address (company name / number required also if limited company)
15, Blog should be called ‘News’ and the pages are in two directories (blog/blog)
16, Most pages are over-optimised (trying too hard to rank for local search terms) this may be causing a Google Penalty
17, More Testimonials needed (longer ones)
18, Would be good to have a Photo Gallery on the site
19, Website is not registered to you or your company, its registered to a 3rd party address
20, Website hosted on a slow server in the USA.
All the above are vital and took me about 2 hour to find / document. I expect I will find 40+ urgent / essential ponts by the time I finish evaluation.
Reviewing the points above, knowing that you initially just mentioned SEO, to make your site and SEO the best it can be I would like to re-design the complete site to make it on WordPress (Industry standard Content Management System) that is bomb-proof, easily updatable, user friendly, secure and search engine friendly (it’s the BMW X5 of the website world) This would be done so it’s completely and correctly responsive and will enable us to create more pages, galleries and add to existing page easily / quickly and in a search friendly way.
Your requirements are below:
1, Transferring the domain / emails / Taking over hosting your domain and emails. We transfer this and take care of it every step of the way even helping you setup your emails (we can do this remotely or if you bring you tablet / laptop to our offices in Stanford-le-Hope)
2 Redesign of website. I recommend a new website that is ‘responsive’, is a CMS (you can update it), we promote it (SEO Friendly CMS system). This will be the most suitable for you requirements. This redesign will take care of the 20 points above that will probably end up being 30-40 essential updates.
3, Promoting your website (SEO) to make it rank higher in the search engines and bring in more enquires (by increasing your website visitors)
4, Customised Blog to be built into your website. Will be built as part of the premium+ website if you choose that option.
5, Webcopy (text for your website)
If we re-created the website how it should be done then that would be a premium+ website and include 1 Months SEO but as we have built it and know you need to get it ranked higher quicker we will extend this to 3 months so you will get a CMS based professional and perfect responsive website with no faults and a 3 month SEO program. The only extra cost will be the webcopy we create (if you want us to) and any stock photos you want to add to the site (approx. £3 each)
Depending on your choices I would recommend all the above. So an indicative package can be calculated I will assume you want it all and give you a discounted cost once we agree what you need during our meeting.
Website Transfer, Setup and Hosting
Responsive / CMS Website – Premium Plus Website (including News section (Blog) and SEO)
3 Month SEO program
New Gallery (if required)
Webcopy (evaluate all existing copy and create more for any the new pages if required)
Stock Images (pro images to make your website look more professional)
Depending on your exact requirements we would be willing to do all the above with a deposit of 50% required to start work and the final payment at the end of the project.
Any package will include the website transfer / hosting / domain / email setup / the redesign / optimising the site for the search engines / review of all the existing webcopy on the site (and adding more where appropriate) / Google Analytics setup / Google Local setup / Google Webmaster setup. In short there is nothing missed or nothing that will be charged for as an ‘extra’.
[Website Owner] Thanks for your response,once we have a meeting and decided what I want how long does it take to get up and running?
[Webdesigners] Time to start any website / SEO project varies depending on what projects we are working on but currently I estimate that once we agree what you want and a deposit is paid we will be able to commence work within 4-5 working days and have a draft design for you within 3-4 days, webcopy may take 4 days then will be passed back to you to review before we put it on the site.