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Here at WSI we are proud to announce that we are now managing the online presence of Saras Hope Foundation gratis. The first task is to get the current website up to date while we get to know the inner workings of this wonderful charity.

Our next step is to design a custom content management system to allow the volunteers and directors to keep the site updated themselves so we can concentrate on the marketing and help to achieve Saras’ dream faster. Read Saras’ story and help this childrens cancer charity achieve their goals. As the directors are highly active on the charity facebook page we will be building a similar environment for them to update the website.

If you have any suggestions for the new website please feel free to post them here or email us at info@totalwsisolutions.co.uk

As soon as people find out that web design is one of our many services this is the first question we get asked. At a recent networking event I was asked this at least five times during the 2 hour event so I have decided to use the latest blog to answer (or not as the case may be) this question. The simple answer is your website should not cost you anything it should pay for itself ten times over and more if it is designed and managed well.

For the site itself you have two costs to consider the first is the domain name and hosting. The domain name can vary between £3 - £10 per year for an average domain and run into the £ 000’s for premium ones. The hosting of the site and emails again can vary from as little as £5 per month for a basic site which does not require much band width up to well over £100 per month for a high traffic site with big bandwidth demands.

The second cost is of course the website its self and again this can vary massively depending on how many pages you require, the quality of the graphics, the functionality of the site and if you need a Content Management System (CMS). For a small brochure site with around 5 pages of mainly text and a contact form you could probably get a site for as little as £200 made from start to finish by a local web designer. This would be fine if the site was just for fun or perhaps a personal site documenting a local group you are involved in however I would tend to recommend just setting up a blog for this sort of thing.

If the site is for business use you should be looking at having a professional create it for you with professionally designed graphics and a basic CMS to allow you to add to the site over time. In this case a site of 5 pages with a contact form will cost between £500 and £800 and should be designed to achieve your business goals. This cost is based on you supplying the text content so remember if you need to have copywriters create the text content for you this will be an additional cost.

Stepping up to the next level for a site of lets say 20 pages which has a contact form and an email newsletter sign up form as well as a CMS you would be looking at around £1,000-£1,500. As you step up again to a site with more functionality such as very basic Ecommerce sites you can expect to pay between £2,000 and £4,000 depending upon the amount of content and the number of products. Anything bigger or more customised than this would require more of a bespoke solution and you would really need to talk through your requirements with a consultant as the price can be anything from £4,000 up to £30,000 and beyond.

Now for the part that most people forget about and this is why most companies view their website as a cost. You need to market the site online through various techniques such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing and many more. There are millions of websites on the internet with thousands being added daily so if you do not market your site it will never be found and it then becomes a cost rather than an investment which gives you a return. We will get into the various techniques and average cost of each of these later, but for now think of it like this. Your new website is a big name Hollywood actor or actress and you have just spent a lot of money getting them to star in a TV commercial for you and then you do not buy any airtime so nobody ever sees the advert. I hope this answers a few questions or at least gives you some basic information on which you can base budget projections.

Websites are dead – An online business solution can change the way your business performs online.