words

let's assume that you'd design your own website if you could.

your site - this crucial interface between you and the world - needs to reflect your work and yourself with clarity and flair.

so let's see what we can do about that.

the first step is for you to check out the sites in my portfolio. if you hate what you see, thanks for looking, and sorry I couldn't help.

if you like, however, the second step is for you to contact me and try and explain what it is you actually do, and what the website is for.

I'll then have a little think, and eventually (don't rush me) I'll show you a first draft - Mark I - of a home page and one or two linked mock-up pages.

then we'll discuss whether or not these represent something that might work for you, and, if not, why not.

I'll then work on a more detailed draft - Mark II - and we'll confer again as to whether or not this is heading in the right direction, and, again, if not, why not.

once we've come to an agreement about these initial prototypes, I'll continue to work on the design until it's complete - Mark III - whereupon you'll have a final chance to tweak and twiddle until you're completely happy with what you see.

(NB - 'tweak and twiddle' means minor adjustments within the overall design of Mark III - at this stage I cannot 'go back to the drawing board' in any radical sense, although some tweaks might quite conceivably involve what might appear to be radical adjustments, eg re-locating images, revising the order of images within an album, etc. I'll advise as to what revisions at this point might count as legitimate tweaks.)

it's your responsibility to supply the images you want included on the site in an optimised format - ie as .jpg or .png images - adjusted to your liking and cropped to a resolution of 72ppi preferably (not crucial, but this is the standard resolution for web-based graphics). images do need to be supplied larger rather than smaller, however (but no larger than 650px wide and 50Kb size), to allow for any resizing I might have to do. whereas over-large images can be scaled down without loss of quality, too-small images cannot be scaled up.

any Photoshop adjustments I need to make will be reflected in the original estimate.

similarly, if any editing of audio or video files is required, that too will be reflected in the original estimate. for instance, a hearty lunch would be charged as a dinner out if you wanted me to embed a video or two which I had to edit and convert from a .wmv file to a .flv file (and if you understand that you could probably do it yourself anyway!)

please note that the quoted prices are inclusive of design, purchase of domain and one years hosting.

('hosting' is the process by which a website is physically 'hosted' on a remote server and made accessible on the world wide web.
the 'domain' is the unique name exclusive to your site which will be typed into a web browser by anyone wishing to access your site - eg as 'www.yourname.co.uk')

subsequent renewals of domain name and hosting will be billed either annually or biennially according to the package required. (details on request - average annual cost of a small to medium-sized site on a .co.uk domain would be around £40 - £60.)

MAINTENANCE & UPDATING

if you wanted me to maintain the site, that is, ensure that it stayed online, that there were no broken links, etc, I'd charge an annual fee of between £100 - £250. the lower figure is for basic maintenance, the higher for regular updating of the site (eg updating a news page on a monthly basis).

alternatively, there is also the self-editing option - either making the content of the site updateable through a simple passworded browser interface (a CMS, or Content Management System), or including a simple self-edited updates page - a blog - into the design. CMS works for people who are already familiar with the basic principles of word-processing, uploading and downloading.

SEO

a word about Search Engine Optimisation.

my experience suggests that SEO is a very inexact science indeed, and that no amount of tweaking metatags and twiddling keywords will make a blind bit of difference to a site's overall search engine placement unless it's attracting traffic in the first place through its content. I therefore make no unrealistic promises as regards ensuring a high Google ranking. I can, however, advise each client individually as to how their ranking might be improved if, after a few months of being online, it were to remain invisibly low.