Building YOUR site.

Building a web site is easy - any fool can do it, and many fools do.

The usual thing is to put together a page in Word and save as HTML (bingo! instant web site), or knock something up in FrontPage using their standard fancy graphics (which look great initially, but there are millions of sites up there which use FrontPage templates and look just like millions of other FrontPage sites). The most common thing is to build a site with great enthusiasm, but little understanding of design, resulting in something that looks like it was made by a 12 year old as a school project - usually after buying a Web Sites Made Easy type magazine and following their tutorials ...

Don't get me wrong, FrontPage is a great programme and web design tutorials can provide some great ideas for beginners, but there is a big difference between building a site and designing a site. Even then, some sites which look good up front have major problems hidden in the code.

For example, I have seen web sites that have been built by "professionals" who charged £48 (plus v.a.t. at 17.5%) per hour which look really nice, but don't appear in the search engines because they haven't been tagged properly (if at all!). The thousands of pounds spent on an all-singing, all-dancing site have been wasted as they can't be found by prospective "punters".

I have seen sites that have been enthusiastically over meta-tagged to get a high rating in the search engines, but have been rejected because they have over used the wrong keywords or set up automated revisit commands which have been set incorrectly.

A classic example - I was talking to a senior partner in a law firm who had spent £5,000 on a web site but it wasn't generating any viable work. The site had only four keywords - law, sex, solicitor, conveyancing - and solicitor and conveyancing had been spelled wrong! The only keywords that the search engines were picking up on were law and sex - it makes you wonder what type of clients those two keywords were attracting!

Putting text and a couple of graphics on a web page is easy. Designing a site that is eye catching, stands out from the crowd, loads quickly (universal broadband usage is still a long way away), is easy to navigate and use, and is coded to be search engine friendly is a lot more difficult - for the average person. I am not an average person.

I can use both Windows PCs and Apple Macs (though I use Macs by choice), use top flight software (such as Dreamweaver, PhotoShop, etc.) and have a creative bent. I can also recommend a very cost efficient source for hosting and domain name purchases (many sound cheap initially, but you find that "extras" such as e-mail redirection, databasing, no adverts etc. - all things you need to have a professional site - costs an arm and a leg).

If you are an individual, business or group looking for a web site my rates are very reasonable (certainly not £48/hour!).

Depending on what you are looking for, I would expect an average, static site to cost in the region of £200-250 for a complete build of the site in your own colours and with your own logos (to a maximum of 35 pages of content before I ask for any extra on the price).

More complex coding (such as a Flash animations and /or PHP database functions) will be priced on top of this. How much depends on what you want done. For example, a fully functioning online store with an admin section so you can add items for sale, special offers, mass email clients etc will add about another £350-£400 to the bill - and will take considerably longer to do!!!!!

If you are based outside of the UK I will still build you a site and you can send me your Euros, Dollars, Shekels or whatever via PayPal - cash works well too!

The sites will be fully optimised for Search Engines, and all graphics will be "fine tuned" and optimised to provide a balance of clarity and speed. The site will be meta-tagged to provide site specific keywords to make the site more likely to be found by search engines.

Your site will also be submitted to the major search engines and relevant "Directories".

In short, I do the whole package for you, and for a very nominal fee.

Contact me with an idea of what you are after and we can talk.