With technology moving forward at astonishing pace, the means of advertising and marketing change quickly. It used to be fairly simple, having started your own business you would advertise in Yellow Pages and local newspapers and magazines to reach your potential customers, and you wouldn’t complain for the lack of new orders. Now, with over 75% people looking for potential services or products online, it’s not all that effective anymore. Everyone tells you that you should get yourself a website, but where to start? We will try to explain that in as simple terms as possible!

First of all, there’s a lot of different website solutions out there, with prices ranging from £150 to £2000+, so you might wonder how much it will cost you? The answer is it depends on your needs, and the quality of the website that you are after. So what should you consider when choosing the right web design Berkshire service?

For a small start up business, you can easily go for the budget solution and get yourself a simple £100-£150 website just to keep some basic information online for your potential clients to look at, and maybe a few pictures of your work, and of course contact details. It’s a good starting point, to establish online presence and showcase your work in a simple way.

Moving forward, for already established small to medium businesses, you should consider getting a CMS website. It is basically a Content Management System build under your website, to let you easily amend and add new content, pictures and so on, without any knowledge of programming or professional help. It is also great for SEO Berkshire, which is crucial if you want your business to be found in Google and other search engines, which is really the whole point of having a website! Cost wise, a CMS website will set you back anywhere between £200 to £700, depending on the quality of the design and complexity of the website you require. It is also very flexible, so should you decide later on you’d like to integrate an online shop into your website, it can be easily done with addition of some plugins, the sky is the limit with the CMS!

Lastly, for big businesses that are well established, you should be looking for a fully bespoke solution, both in terms of the design and functionality. Open source CMS engines are great and flexible, but not without their drawbacks, so if you can afford a fully custom made system, by all means go for it! Just make sure it’s provided by professionals, rather than some amateurs who will charge you a fortune just to deliver a faulty and generally bad system.

To summarize, the cost of the website really depends on you, and what your requirements are. There’s no point in spending a fortune on the website if you’re a local handyman, simply because you only need to reach your local people and show them the quality of your work, explain what is it you do, and provide contact details. It goes both ways too – if you are a well established business operating nationwide, getting a cheap website will just drive the potential clients away, as they won’t take you seriously.

Hope this will help you choose the right web design london service for yourself. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your requirements with professional web designers and developers, please contact us directly!

Web design services in London & Berkshire

There’s a lot of myths and legends when it comes to the area of web design london. This is probably because it is such a vast area of expertise, not to mention the variety of website systems to start with. This can be a little misleading at first, but we will try to shine a bit of light on the subject to help you along!

Different types of websites

First of all, there’s a few basic categories the website fall into. They differ by the amount of work required to create the website, as well as the cost associated with that.

The basic is a standard HTML website – nothing fancy, just the structure code and styling, sometimes with a bit of JavaScript goodness. This is the most cost effective option you can go for, as it is the most simplified form that requires less work than it’s dynamic brothers and sisters.

The next step up is the CMS, or Content Managed, website. This, unlike the standard HTML website, includes the CMS system that lets you manage the website yourself without the knowledge of programming or coding, using a graphical interface much like a Microsoft Word or similar text processor. Having a CMS engine at your command, you can create new pages, amend existing content, add some pictures and much more. When it comes to the pricing, CMS websites are at least twice as costly as the HTML ones, or even more expensive if it involves creating a bespoke CMS system, rather than using the open source solutions like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.

The third option is the eCommerce website. This is basically an online shop application, which can be either a dedicated online store, or a CMS website with integrated eCommerce, for those who only have a couple of products to sell. Each eCommerce website will always include a CMS system of a sort, ranging from free open source solutions like Magento or WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, to fully bespoke systems developed solely for your needs.

Summary

So that’s your basic options, to which all the websites will fall down to. It’s good to know the difference it makes to the pricing – any bespoke system will set you back a significant amount of money, but will be of course tailored to your needs. Open source solutions are few times cheaper, and cheapest of all will be the simpliest HTML website of course. Always look for proper web design berkshire suppliers, stay clear from students and graduates that have no clue what they are doing, yet they will still charge you the same if not more than the professional would.