Website construction

[Poly Hive]

Guy I know is nonplussed. He is offering a fully functional web store for £49-50 and is getting no takers. Does the panel think it might be too cheap? I think it includes a years hosting and back up from him. He had done three for me and seems to know what he is doing, sites that is not shops.

PH

[Afasoas]

That is very cheap. Would lead me to think I'm getting some sort of template site.

[Phil W]

Post a link to the offer and demo store.

[woollypigs]

There a few companies/persons around here that offers the same. Roughly a three paged site that you pick from a handful of templates. Probably all done with wordpress and stored on a simple web hosting plan.

[tonycollinet]

Webstores are tricky things, because you're dealing with peoples money. If you are wanting to do that, you've got to be confident the guy setting it up for you knows security.

Not even sure that is possible for a one man band (at least only by using third party payment services). I know my way around wordpress, and can create a site very easily. I'd never consider offering a site with payment services though.

[Poly Hive]

I am passing this on and have been asked NOT to post a link through. Sorry.

PH

[jsabine]

Seems odd that he wouldn't want a link posted. Makes constructive criticism a little trickier ... after all, price is one thing, but if his demo site is rubbish he wouldn't be getting any customers at 50p let alone fifty quid.

[perpetual dan]

Does the panel think it might be too cheap?

First hit on google for this sort of thing was Go Daddy. Their cheapest seems to be twice the price.
If I were in the market I'd be
a) wondering if it is too good to be true / get what you pay for design
b) wondering whether a no-reputation company (don't know what claims are being made, so guessing) is a safe bet for customer details / money
c) wondering whether it is based on free stuff that I deploy for free myself, but I'm not the target market

The "too cheap" hypothesis can be tested quite easily with a price rise!
But, hitting the right potential customers and having at least one good example in the portfolio are as likely to be the problem. It's a busy market, apart from price what makes your mate the one to choose?

[contango]

Guy I know is nonplussed. He is offering a fully functional web store for £49-50 and is getting no takers. Does the panel think it might be too cheap? I think it includes a years hosting and back up from him. He had done three for me and seems to know what he is doing, sites that is not shops.

PH

A lot of web hosting packages will provide free shopping cart functionality that integrates with PayPal or similar, so if all he's offering is setting it up for someone then it could be that people who know what they are doing will do it themselves and people who don't know what they are doing will worry that he's not part of a "professional outfit" so they're afraid of ongoing nasty surprises once they are committed to him. Or maybe he looks too much like a one-man-band and people worry that they won't be able to get support from him if they need it.

[davelodwig]

I do this sort of thing for a living, both for the corporation I work for and freelance (occasionally now). I generally don't charge anything less that £700 to £800 for a content management site, and more for e-commerce sites as they require a lot care and confidence (and the fact the customer is paying for 14 years experience).

I don't do off the peg templates, and I cover the costs out of that fee which includes the SSL Certificate and setting up payment gateways etc, if the customer wants to handle Payments directly on the site then it goes up even more because the complexities of PCI DSS get harder and the requirements for storing the data securely.

So is he too cheap, I'd say yes, for that sort of money I'd be worried about what was being delivered.

D.

[Pickled Onion]

A lot of web hosting packages will provide free shopping cart functionality that integrates with PayPal or similar, so if all he's offering is setting it up for someone then it could be that people who know what they are doing will do it themselves and people who don't know what they are doing will worry that he's not part of a "professional outfit" so they're afraid of ongoing nasty surprises once they are committed to him. Or maybe he looks too much like a one-man-band and people worry that they won't be able to get support from him if they need it.

It has to be either this, or he will install one of the open source/free commerce packages, with, as you say paypal integration.  So he's looking for customers who are not committed enough to spend 1K+ and also not techy enough to do it themselves. But if they're not able to do that themselves, they would find any of the free ecommerce packages massively complicated to populate the catalogue and run. They would need far more handholding than fifty quid would provide.

There are loads of small independent retailers who would like to have a web shop but can't afford the upfront cost of a fully customised site. I'm sure if he could demonstrate to them exactly how they would use it, on their premises, and they are comfortable they can do it,  I'm sure he'd have loads of takers. I'm also fairly sure that fifty quid won't go anywhere near covering the sales effort involved.

[Chris L]

It does seem incredibly cheap and I think most of his target market would be worried about how much of the work they'd be expected to do themselves and whether this is a way of getting locked in to a supplier.  How do the charges work once the site's live?  If he's trying a Software as a Service charging model, I'm afraid that's been tried a few times before and retailers simply won't put up with someone taking a commission on their revenue.

Selling ecommerce software/services to the SME market is a pretty painful business IME.  Most models have been tried and met with modest or no success, so I think he needs to be clear that what he's offering hasn't been done before and that he's sure it's compelling for the retailer.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Looks like he's using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v1.5.2.8 as the plugin to drive the site content.

For anyone interested, I think it is this guy:
http://www.bdthree.co.uk/web-design-bradford/

I reckon he is offering the stores for £49.50 as a loss-leader into more business, nothing shonky about it.

http://www.bdthree.co.uk/e-commerce-web-design-bradford/

As to why he isn't getting any business, I think he has two problems there. One is that his website has too many words. Cut them down by 80%. He comes across as a one-man band (nothing wrong with that) but he still needs to be professional.

His second problem is that he's offering a web store but no mention whatsover of payment security. That is very important.

[jsabine]

If that is him, he's lost me at

bdthree as everything you need
Save your self a cart full of money ...

He gets another black mark for presenting that text as an image without (AFAICS) meaningful alt tags.

[ian]

To be critical, if that's the site, the problems are as stated - it's not well designed, too much text (you've scrolled down through the basement before you find a order button), blurry and amateur-looking graphics, poor accessibility, and as mentioned, ecommerce needs to be convincing. As does search optimisation (which is a bit more than using a plugin, that just makes Google see the site).

There's lots of bottom-end site-and-hosting packages from bigger providers. Wordpress-plus-basic-hosting is peanuts, but they're loss-leading their hosting packages. That's the competition to distinguish against (and there's lots of it). The price-point is very low and not going to buy much bespoke work or help, so why not go with a reputation? Truth is, you'd expect to pay at least 10x that for a genuine hands-on build and consult. More if you're really looking for front-end design and more sophisticated content management and e-commerce.

[bobb]

There are many, many more companies and individuals offering development services than there are people on any given day thinking "Hmmm.. I want an e-commerce site". Further to that, any person or company that does want an e-commerce site will either:

a. Use whoever they've used before
b. Do it themselves if they are confident/capable enough
c. Ask someone they know for a recommendation
d. Look for a recommendation online

Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people will go to Google, sift through the millions of results, find somebody they've never heard of and think "Great! 50 quid! I'm in!"

I would say he won't get any business through his website at all. Ever. Maybe get the odd enquiry, but it will never come to anything.

I've been in this game quite a long time now and even if there were a thousand days in a year and a hundred hours in a day, I'd still not have time to do all the work I get offered. And every single gig I have ever got has come from a recommendation.

Contacts are way more important than a website offering your amazing skills. Even at £49.50 a pop.

I dunno how he can make some more contacts - I started building mine whilst I was permanently employed. Starting as a freelance developer from scratch with just a website advertising yourself is next to impossible.

[red marley]

I'd suggest that changing the price, or even attempting to build up a network of contacts won't be enough without a substantial improvement in the web design and implementation. To be brutal about it, the site linked upthread (assuming this is the one we're talking about) is poorly designed, full of typos and poor grammar, about 10-years out of date and does not inspire confidence. The best they'll get is someone signing up who doesn't know any better.

Compare with, for example, http://www.squarespace.com (albeit a DIY option), that offers adaptable design, good SEO, e-Commerce, 24-7 support, modern templates etc. for about £140 a year.

[vorsprung]

If you want to do ecommerce you can use ebay.  There might be charges but it has the advantage that people are searching on it for stuff all the time.  And the charges bear some relation to the amount of business done

[Jaded]

I hope his customer's like apostrophe's.

[Jaded]

Also,

From the first phone call to bdthree to the design of the site Lee made the process very easy, we never had to chase for an update.
The site only took 3 days and has work fantastic in how many clients we have had from the new site.
I will be using bdthree again and will be recommending them to our clients Thanks again
John Bricknell, Autowfix

Follow the link to "Account suspended"

[jsabine]

http://www.squarespace.com

I tried that link 3 times today and each time got just a blank white page with no content. I probably wouldn't want a site from a company that makes non-viewable sites.

Works OK for me

[mrcharly-YHT]

http://www.squarespace.com

I tried that link 3 times today and each time got just a blank white page with no content. I probably wouldn't want a site from a company that makes non-viewable sites.

Do you have javascript blocked?
The whole page relies on javascript.

[jhob]

I make my living running my own web design business.  I wouldn't have a business if I sold eCommerce stores for £50.  Then again all of my sites are bespoke designed and developed to the customer's exacting requirements and not 'off the shelf' which is more the model this chap is going for.  For an eCommerce store with me you be looking at upwards of £2k.

For his own site I agree with others - there's too many words.  It's very unfocussed and not that well designed (e.g. blurry logo, too many options competing for your attention, out of date design, not mobile optimised).  I would suggest that his site is putting off customers.

[Pickled Onion]

Also it looks like his price is 50 set-up plus 10 per month for the hosting, so it's more expensive than the squarespace offering above for the basic package. I imagine his fees for maintenance and service are likely to be better though.

From the link to the guy's site:

I have seen it time and again, people get their new shiny site and expect people to come flocking to buy the products but the fact, as harsh the truth sounds, they do not.

As harsh as it sounds: oh the irony.

The offering for hosting is bizarre: http://www.bdthree.co.uk/web-hosting-bradford/ choose between 100 and 800 email accounts, etc

Oh, and last suggestion, when he's done his new site I hope he gets someone to proof-read it for him, there's a grammar or spelling error in virtually every sentence. (This looks like dyslexia rather than sloppiness, but customers might assume the latter.)

[Phil W]

And the hosting is by these guys, so why not go direct as there's a one click install web shop?  As for £49.99 he can't be doing much more than that, and reselling the domain. You're not go into to get design for that price , so it must be a pretty standard one click web shop that stands out NOT.