I am thinking about a website for my business. Could you give me an idea of what is involved and how much I should expect to pay?

Firstly, you could save a lot of money by being organised. Our design prices are competitive and offer great value for money, but you would be surprised by how much of the budget is spent on researching the answers to questions such as how does the company make profit, what is its current business challenges, where does it fit into its market segment - in other words - what are the fundamental issues that the website should address?

Knowing who are your target audience and what do they really care about in relation to your product or service is also of great value as this will determine how the site will be used by them, addressing their wants and their needs. Some desired business objectives to aim for would also be useful as a focus for the developer. These should be simple statements such as  We need to sell more products, We need to attract visitors to sell advertising, Our customers need to be informed, We need to establish credibility quickly etc. Even the emotion you are trying to communicate will determine the 'tone' of the site. Is it to be conservative? cool? intellectual or amusing?

Sites that you have seen and liked and think reflect your core values should be bookmarked and offered to the site developer as a guideline. Of course the most important factor is the actual content. Can you supply photographs or illustrations? Do you have sales material such as brochures, business plans or powerpoint presentations? Any content you have which you consider to be the essence of your business should be made available. Could you list the sections of the website you consider to be required? For instance: About, Products, News, Gallery, Online Store. Do you know what add-ons you may want - Feedback form? Blog? Survey/Poll? Site Search? Shopping Cart? Newsletter? The more you are involved and contribute at the initial briefing for your website and can supply information or material that otherwise would be the task of the site developer then the less you will expect to pay.

As far as costs are concerned a standard website with custom design and no additional programming requirements is around £750+VAT for a a five page site. It largely depends upon how many pages the client requires. If you require to gather a great deal of information and provide facilities such as search, a database driven site may be required. An example of that would be an Estate Agency who would need to add, edit and delete properties from a database and also enable users to search the database for a property by location, area and price. We have designed database driven sites for as little as £1200, however depending on the functions required for these types of sites please contact us for a quote. Ecommerce websites, or online shops, cost slightly more due to the complexity of the programming in particular the process of online payments through services like Paypal. As with all of our web solutions and website packages our prices are extremely competitive, please ask us for a quick no obligation website design quote.

I am trying to improve my search results, any tips?