When You Hire a Big Web Design Company (Our Competition), This is What You Get

• Big Companies doing web design can have hundreds of employees and thousands of clients. Doesn’t that make you feel small and insignificant?
• If they loose your business they think “So what? We lost a faceless name in a crowd of strangers.  Business as usual.”
• With hundreds of people to pay the whole team feels it’s OK to charge clients huge sums of money if they can “get away with it”.
• Big Box web design companies  justify charging 10 times the price that a smaller company charges because: “the client charges a lot too so they deserve to be charged even more”.
• Since it’s hard enough trying to deliver on the items they sold in the first place, the big box web design companies just can’t afford to be flexible… so they can’t possibly base their offerings on the clients needs and desires the way a small design company can adapt and custom configure.
• When the big box company looses your business they don’t even blink. Loosing customer is so common they get used to it pretty fast. The big company feels their individual clients really are not important. They have thousands more if you leave. The smaller company feels each client is important.
• The big companies frequently use salespeople who get paid on commission. They try to sell clients more and more so they make more and more. The small company wants you to have the right sized package for your needs and budget.

Perplexed. Unable to give an answer. Shocked – unable to speak. Utterly devoid of any reasonable answer.

Yes – that’s fairly common with the big companies that charge 10 times as much as they should for web design. When you ask them questions like that it catches them off-guard for a second. They don’t have a canned response that will work. They know a hundred true answers but they have to scramble for the best lie to tell you and if you’re lucky, you can catch them like this before the gears in their head click and they come up with an appropriate fabrication.

At Web Design Workplace we answer all your website affordability questions.

No matter what you ask, we have an immediate answer because we stick to the truth. It’s easier that way. And we’re here to help you. We take pride in our work. And if you need honest answers we can chat your ear off. No matter how much you want to know we could write the book on website affordability – ask us anything.

Website affordability is a non-issue here. We frequently charge up to 90% less than the big box competitors for a better product with better support. You know the old phrase “If it seems to good to be true than it’s probably not true.” Well Web Design Workplace is from the “Show Me” State in spirit. We build a live mockup of your website so you can check it out and kick the tires before we go live with it. We build the read deal. Affordable Web Design and straight answers every time you have a question.

Want to see for yourself? Call the Boss – Mal Milligan at 201-696-5375

Web Design Workplace has an affordable web design philosophy.

We can take that same 10 page website that the big box company made for $10,000 and we can sell it for as little as $1,000 depending on your content requirements. That’s a 90% savings… and that’s just the up front savings in the purchase price. There are more savings we can talk about later. Our site will probably rank faster on Google and Yahoo and Bing / MSN too because we use WordPress. Our sites have a structure that lends itself to good SEO (search engine optimization). And we make sure every page we put up is fully optimized. Every page we go live with has the “under the hood” features Search Engine spiders are looking for.

So our affordable web design philosophy is:

To provide the customer with a beautiful hand made product at a great price. Simple. Elegant. Perfect in every functional detail.

Web design Workplace for all your affordable web design needs. We are also world class experts at SEO and we can provide search engine optimization services whether you need to rank on Page One for Google, or you need to get your listing in the Google Local Maps directory. We work with Bing and Yahoo Local as well. Our SEO philosophy is also to provide the best service at an affordable price.

Call 201-696-5375 to talk with the Boss – Mal Milligan.

The book is organized into coherent sections. Images of the homepages of the websites in the book are grouped by:

1. type of website
2. design style
3. design theme
4. color
5. element
6. structure

My favorite part of the book is that it gives dozens of matching color palettes. I am always trying to learn more about colors and everything I can get my hands on goes into my shopping cart. In most books that offer color palettes, I might use 2 in the entire book. That is the case so far with the Web Designer’s Idea Book. I liked a lot of the palettes but in my work I found places to use 2 of the palettes on new sites.  So that is good really.

For most designers, they will find the best part of the book is being able to thumb through it and see hundreds of websites to generate ideas. There are several book series out now that offer the same convenience, and I give this book a Thumbs Up rating for executing the main theme beautifully in comparison to the others. Except for a couple of the initial homepages being standard fare (in everybody’s list of top 100 sites), I found a lot of new sites I have not seen before and I got a lot of great new ideas I can use without doing a straight rip-off copy.

I just saw there is a newer version of this book hitting the Bookstores soon and I cant wait. I’ll buy it the minute I see it.

Here are a couple comps I was given by WordPress Designer Lauren Billings. She is one of the best WordPress Designers in the world today and certainly the best I’ve ever worked with. There are literally tens of thousands of HTML designers in the world and there are only hundreds of true WordPress Artists. The WordPress artist can fit a beautiful design onto an existing website framework. That makes it better than HTML because it takes advantage of the dozens of features that make WordPress a superior platform for most business and personal websites.

In 2004 I was approached by a board member from the New York Sailing Club to redesign their existing site. The existing web design was more of what I would call “functional”. It had been put together by members of the group who were volunteers and not professional designers. Now this was the group that organized the 1976 American Bi-Centennial Tall Ships event in New York Harbor. And for a group like this, they eventually grew out of their home grown 6 page website and they needed professional support.

So I began to unravel the intricate web of arrangements within the non-profit organization and it took about a year to get the new 23 page site launched. First lesson – you need patients to work with an established Non-Profit Group. And in general, projects like a new website can literally take a year from start to finish.

Originally, one one club member owned the domain name, another who was an attorney maintained the disclaimer, another was the designated webmaster, still others were in charge of the Newsletters, another board member scheduled all the events, and so on and so forth. So I learned the most difficult part of working with an NPO is finding out who owns what and how to contact them.

The next part I discovered was that I was not working for a single boss, or even a management team, but this club would allow every member to make comments and suggestions about every single detail of the new website. There was a clear cut management withing the group, but these were boat owners and they tried to implement a pure democratic ideal where everyone could share in decision making as much as that was practical. They were also a group of highly educated and successful people such as lawyers, doctors, nurses, and so forth. So management decisions like “what color background do you want” took a long time. And after they were implemented, they were often changed.

My original 23 page site was built with HTML, CSS, and Project Seven Javascript Menus using Dreamweaver and Photoshop. It was artistic, it contained a lot of nice images, and the hierarchical order of the menu system made sense and it worked. So the site functioned well for the next 3 1/2 years and I started building out sites using WordPress exclusively. So this would seem like an easy “Affordable Web Redesign” upgrade case. Wow !!

I started with a Studio Press Child Theme called Serenity, which was one from the Genesis Framework. And when I was finished I had an 84 page site with almost 150 photos and the club members were thrilled. Some of the comments I got were “stunning”, and “could not believe how nice it looked”.

One of the keys to success with this affordable web redesign was getting a beautiful design that I could get 50 club members to agree on. My friend Lauren Billings worked on the art and color palettes. She’s one of the best WordPress graphic designers I’ve ever seen in the business. I needed something unique and sharp and that’s why it’s best to put a project together like this using world class experts in their areas. And ones that are patient !!

Cheers – Mal Milligan

Buy a Custom Website Recommendations

1. Write down your budget and website goals before you go shopping.
2. Ask friends, family, and business partners for their recommendations for a good web design consultant or company.
3. Do an internet search and narrow your field to 10 companies and consultants.
4. Compare the demo examples from your 10 finalists and anyone that was personally recommended to you by your personal network.
5. After all that, call Web Design Workplace and discuss your situation and get 25 years worth of professional hands-on experience for free !!

What to Look Out For When Buying a Custom Website

The final thing to recommend is to look at the proof any company or consultant offers you that they can get a website ranking. There are so many cyberspace claims that a company “knows SEO” when in reality they are really good story tellers and they have nothing to show in terms of ranking high against competitive sites. There are thousands of websites used as examples by web design firms that you can see have absolutely zero Google PageRank. So the proof they are showing is that they can launch a website and get all zeros for search. Will sites that earn a PageRank zero help when your potential customers are trying to find your product or services using search? No way. Web Design Workplace charges up to 90% less than other firms for comparable web design and SEO services. And when you ask to see the proof we can put many examples right on the table.

Here is a website we designed in 2008 using a Brian Gardner design – from his original WordPress Premium Theme Company “Revolution Themes”. It was one of his game changing themes called the “Pro Media”. This particular site has been described as “stunning eye candy” by many surfers and design professional alike. And in terms of SEO… it has been #1 on google for the very competitive phrase “Manhattan Bakery” since 2009. It gets over 40,000 unique visitors a year and since February 2010 it has consistently done around 9 or 10 GB in bandwidth a month. That’s right – 10 Giga Bytes of bandwidth a month… for a bakery site.

Now if you want a stunning site custom made for your business – at up to 90% less than anyone else for a comparable product – give the owner of Web Design Workplace – Mal Milligan a call at 201-696-5375. If we can outrank 1,000 bakeries in Manhattan – and we can – we can help your business to look great and rank well on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

• it’s free
• there is support via forums and dozens if not hundreds of sources
• it ranks well on Google
• and it’s easy to use.

The new version to be released sometime in May 2010 will be even better geared for the average NPO.

WordPress 3.0 Has Better Features for Non-Profit Organizations

NPO’s can always use free stuff that rocks, and WordPress is one of the diamonds in the freebie bag along with Open Office and Linux. The next version will have drag and drop menu building which will make it so much easier to use. Along with the super flexible menus, version 3.0 will be Multi-User right out of the box. Yeah !! You know medium sized NPO’s rarely have just a single website. They more often than not will have a different web for each regional location or each category of support. By having a Multi-User option, administrators can setup and manage all their different websites from a single control panel. In terms of manageability, this puts the average WP installation into a new league of power and control.

In addition to the major features, there are a good hand full of other enhancements like a new default Theme called “Twentyten”, customized post types so there is more variety than just “posts” and “pages”, authoir templates, and the ability to use URL shortcode -  you to get a shortlink for your post based on your own domain name.

And did I mention it’s FREE !!

A Web Design WordPlace professional website will enhance your business and probably pay for itself many times over the costs.

Advantages to our Professional Website Offer:

• bring in more calls and leads
• get you more exposure as an expert authority to qualified prospects that are shopping on Google, Yahoo, and Bing / MSN
• assist with your internet reputation management
• act as an attractive representative – sharp looking websites make sales
• prevent internet savvy prospects from turning away if you don’t have a website
• get you extra internet listings in Google Local Business Center (also called Google Local Maps)
• leave a convenient place on the internet where prospects and clients can access a quick contact form to email you
• allow you to challenge your competition in a more cost effective method than print media
• provide a central location for web videos, podcasts, case histories, testimonials

Of course the number one answer is to make more sales. Professionals and businesses that have beautiful websites make a better impression on prospects and clients. That leads to more sales and higher margins. Professionals frequently realize having a beautiful office can help their business, just like nice clothes, a nice briefcase, a classic watch. A website is in the same category now. Most clients expect it. If a prospect is 40 years old or younger, statistics tell us that if they see you don’t have a website, they will automatically assume you are not keeping up with the times and your lack of current technology is more frequently than not a deal breaker. Having an old or cheap looking site is also a negative.

Internet surfers spend an average of 7 seconds on a web page and they make several judgments and decisions during that quick time span. If they’re looking for a professional or a business, during the 7 seconds they spend on the web page, they will decide whether to go off the site and look for something better… or they will be suitably impressed and look for the phone number to call. A beautiful website with relevant content engages user interest and they stay on the pages longer… they go to more pages on the site.

When you don’t have a website, you’re leaving your reputation to chance or to the discretion of others – like your competitors. When you have a professional website, you control the information web surfers find out about you. With a professional website you can also setup internet references to yourself more easily with social networks and places like LinkedIn and Facebook. So if you setup a website and then add yourself to a hand full of social networks, you can push out internet information about yourself that you did not create in most cases.

Google Local is a fantastic tool to get business exposure and having a professional website defined in your local profile helps get you seen on the map. Sure old time businesses with no website can get on the Google Local Maps, but, the more information you provide in your profile, the better your chances are of getting those higher rankings. Subsequently that gets you more looks – and calls.

When you have web videos you can use them to your advantage better if you have a professional website to link from. It’s great to have business videos in YouTube or Vimeo or MetaCafe but it can garner you Google PageRank and real competitive search engine optimization power if you add those videos to your website.