Web Design, Construction and Maintenance

[giarc25]

How does one go about finding a web designer? I have built a few websites, but it takes me so long to do it, and there are many aspects I dont know, so I want to hire someone, or a company to do it for me.

I am looking to build a site for a business. I will be selling merchandise on this site, so I will need a fully functional shopping cart and would even like to add something like package tracking as well. There would also need to be some kind of registration process, etc, so that I can log/keep track of all of my customers.

I really like flash sites and some of the many other cool things that can be done, rather than using boring html, however the budget would be strict and dont think that it would be possible to do much fancy stuff. I do however like the idea of the website being built using php or something other than plain html.

Just to clear things up, I am not trying to make this into a soliciting post to attract web design offers, but more for the aspect of how I need to go about finding someone that will be able to meet my needs. I would prefer someone locally, Austin TX, so that I can work with them directly, this would also allow me to be able to give them information easier for site updates and maintenance.

The site I would be wanting to build would be a format, or similiar to http://www.knukonceptz.com

For those of you that are knowledgable of what I am looking for, how much would a site such as my example cost to build and maintain?

Thanks in advance
Craig

 

[mdude85]

for small businesses there are a variety of software packages to help create shopping carts, track shipping orders, database inventory, and etc. one piece of software I have a little bit of knowledge with is called Everest, created by the iCode company. It's a little bit hard to get off the ground if you have already used programs in the past for inventory and shopping cart management but it's pretty powerful and has a lot of features. It is also a little bit pricey but for companies that do maybe $1 million in sales per year it might be worth it. I think the price for the basic package sits at about $ 15,000. But to make an entire company's website, inventory their products, create shipping labels and all this, you might be able to charge them $10,000 (because they'd know that they'd need to pay $15,000 for the software and THEN learn how to use it, which is the worst part), and once you know how to use the software, you can apply it to many small businesses and you'll be able to recoup your initial loss pretty quickly.

www.icode.com

There is also another, more affordable alternative that is for small businesses, and it's called Miva Merchant. The company I worked for used this software before switching over to Everest. Miva I do not believe has shipping tracking and the like, but it does have a very good web-based shopping cart system. Miva is not as powerful as Everest but it's rather simple to use, and I picked it up in a few days. That package is only $1,000. But to track orders you might need some other software, which is not hugely expensive. For a small business like the one you're thinking about, I think Miva is better than Everest simply because Miva is less powerful and easier to use. You might be able to charge your company $2,000 to do their site, and then you'd make money off the bat.

www.miva.com

good luck. to provide a basic answer to your question, to build and maintain a website with a shopping cart and tracking for an extended period of time and constant updates and support, you're looking at paying a developer probably 5 figures.

 

[MarvynDT]

Try sites like Craigslist or Guru to find a designer / developer in your area. Or open up the phone book and start calling around and talk to companies, ask questions, view their work. For a smaller site, sometimes its cheaper to hire a freelancer to do the work, rather than a larger company. But in this field, you really get what you pay for. Somebody who does websites for around $300-$500 a pop generally does not have the same design capability and programming experience as to somebody who is willing to do it for no less than $10000. If you don't have an eye for design, there are numerous design forums where you can ask for opinions on a submitted design (I generally don't include this forum, as people here are more code/build oriented)

As a commerical/ecommerce site, I'd limit the use of Flash. Flash lacks the proper technology to fully support SEO, page linking, and security. There are hacks to overcome some of those limitations, but it just makes things more difficult. As for PHP (or any other web development language), I'm assuming it would be used if you're going to have dynamic content. But I'm not sure if you understand what PHP does for you when you say, "something other than plain html" as PHP is language that runs on the server and sends HTML to the user.

I'd also suggest maintaining a budget for promotion, ie banners, email campaign, etc. I've dealt with a lot of clients who believed that just because they have a site, traffic will magically appear. Don't fall into that mistake.