My wife’s business is going through a rebrand..
What started as a small aesthetic business (with logo designed by a friend for £50, and website made by DrP-web-industries!) has grown now, and we’re rebranding.

We’ve been quoted about £3k for
-new logo design based on our brief
-website design and hosting for a year (WordPress). £12 inc per month after
-email account
-website SEO stuff
-business card

Now..this industry is really NOT known to me, so I struggle to appreciate what’s involved, what’s needed, what ‘website home page structuring’ means in real terms…etc etc!!

There’s a website chap and graphic chap on board. The Co. doing this are family of a close friend (friend is a proof reader and is already involved in the social media side of the business (she’s a betterer righter than I are…)

This isn’t a rant at all, it’s a “i genuinely don’t know if this is a good price, a great price, or other..)
The friend has spent a lot of her own time speaking with my wife and ‘coming up with plans’ so if this is a ‘bit more’ pricey than usual, then that’s fine as I think a few £00 of her own time has already been spent…

Thoughts appreciated!!

DrP

Assuming they’re actually building you a site, I.e. Not just buying an off the peg $60 WordPress theme, that does seem pretty much on the money to me.

Huge, wild variables depending on what the website is actually needing to do for you, but ‘typically’ there’ll be…

A day ish on logo and accompanying branding work
A day or two on designs, depending on complexity etc
A day or two on build, again, assuming they’re not sticking a shonky theme in place (these are, by and large, what causes most of the problems with WordPress which, in itself is an excellent platform)
Who’s writing / supplyinn copy & images?

Seems cheap. I would want to see other work from them that was priced similarly for that.
The website is likely to be a purchased theme that is then tweaked for your needs. Nothing wrong with that if done well

Sounds cheap to me, especially if you’re getting printed business cards included in that price.

“Website design” is a bit of a vague description. There is a world of difference between a couple of static pages knocked up with an off-the-shelf WordPress theme, and a fully featured custom website with e-commerce and who knows what else.

“I need a new bike and I’ve been quoted a grand, is that a good price?”

As said already, Its a bit ‘how long is a piece of string’. If someones sticking a logo on a wordpress template, then they’re having you over. If they’re building you a bespoke site then its on the money

I design branding, including visuals for websites and then give them to tech blokes to make it so. Its unbelievable how many supposed web companies will then totally ignore my visuals, and I’ll get back a site that looks absolutely nothing like my designs, because they’ve just banged a wordpress template together, and trousered the money. Hence me recommending the same web guy I’ve been using for ten years as he actually does what I tell him! Most don’t. And the results generally look awful.

Edit: just out of interest I’ve just had a look at a site I designed about 12 months back. The web guy they insisted on using did the above. The site looks awful, and all my bespoke touches are gone, and in their place? A load of stock images. Great! Nothing screams ‘quality business ‘ more than a load of generic stock images you downloaded from istock

Still… they paid the invoice promptly, so they can do what they like

*sighs*

I appreciate the vague question…!! I know it’s a bit like “I want a bike” really!!

I think it’s a bespoke site design..Will look at the quote again..

I’m unsure on certain aspects..like I think we make/fill the content, but the website design is done by the chap….
I’m a modern man, but idongeddit!!

DrP

Edit..yeah, bespoke website, bespoke logo etc..

That’s sounds cheap as chips for brand refresh and website in the general scheme of things. Impossible to be exact tho without seeing the tech spec for the site or a run down of what the brand work includes.

From the quote:

Website design and logo
• To design and create a bespoke logo incorporating the comments taken from the brief. The logo
should represent a clean, clinical business and be unfussy with no flowers or curlicue aspects. The
logo should not be associated with anything ‘beauty’ and should instead show class. The logo will be
provided in a vector format so that it can be used across multiple items and accessories such as
business cards, workwear and letter heads.
• To design and create a bespoke website design around the comments taken from the brief whilst
incorporating the same comments taken from the logo.
• To design and create a homepage website design on which will comments and feedback will be
invited
• To provide a style guide that will show the components which would be used across the website
• To design and create additional pages which are not deemed to be simple content pages (which will
be put together during development)
• To design and create a double-sided business card design which will be provided in a ready-for-print
format
Website development
• To develop the signed-off website designs into a bespoke WordPress theme
• To provide each component created within the design in the form of ‘flexible content blocks’. This
enables the client to create new pages where they see fit using the designed components.
• To create an online ‘contact us’ form which will send an email upon successful submission. We will
incorporate a ReCaptcha field on every form to reduce robots and other spam-like systems from
automatically filling in the form and sending unnecessary messages.
• To install an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate to enhance security and show users they are safe to
enter their personal details on the website (via a data capture form). This allows any data transferred
between the user and the website to be encrypted, the same level of security you will find on any well
established e-commerce website when entering your credit card details.
• To add Google Analytics tracking and Google Webmaster Tools to enable Titanium to keep a close eye
on new and returning visitors, bounce rates and location based traffic. We will revisit this in a month to
see if we are able to help gain more visitors and more business.

To provide a production environment free of charge for the first 12 months after the environment is
made live (whether that be in the form of a ‘coming soon’ page or the initial launch – whichever comes
first). The hosting fee is then £10 + VAT per calendar month for each month after the first 12.
• To provide a basic ‘coming soon’ page for the registered domain names, if required, which would
contain contact details and the logo (once signed off by the client)
• To provide a staging environment for the initial build of the website. This would be used after the initial
launch of the production website so any amendments or further changes can be reviewed and signed
off before being deployed to the production environment.
• To set up an email account for the client, under their chosen domain name and advise accordingly

To take backups of all environments every 6 hours and store them in a secure, offsite location which
can be easily restored after data loss, whether it be human error, hardware failure or natural disaster.
WordPress installation – Content Management Systems (CMS)
• To set up and install WordPress on both the staging and production environments
• Allow specific components to be chosen within the CMS, to give the client flexibility to create their own
pages using existing components from the design.
• To set up the client as a user and provide the client’s user login details via email. For security reasons,
the password provided via SMS.
Copywriting
• To check every aspect of the website for spelling and grammatical errors
• To provide a report on all the changes required before launch, to show a detailed log of what has been
checked, what mistakes have been found as well as how and why they should be corrected.
• This service will be provided free of charge as Babette is donating her time to do this.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• To review the local competition online to make a distinctive list of actions, keywords and phrases
which should be used across the website to gain the correct clientele
• Once the website has been developed, we will provide a report of the changes required to make the
website SEO friendly and provide more insight to search engines in the form of page titles, meta data,
content and schema.org tagging
• To update the website via the CMS to ensure all page titles and meta tags are correctly inserted
• To set up and maintain Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager implementations to allow insights
from traffic for potential future campaigns
• To advise the client on social media account setup and URL names

This may be coming in at ‘mates rates…

DrP

Sounds good. The only thing missing for me is a costing on any work required to keep either the core or themes up to date with security updates unless you intend doing it yourself

Get quotes from elsewhere and compare.

Sounds quite cheap to me and that’s just looking at the rebrand work before getting to background IT monkey stuff.
(That’s london small agency prices with a few D&AD/Clio awards on the shelf so I guess regional prices/smaller clients would be a bit less)

That’s not bad, providing the design is well considered.

Bear in mind that rebranding is more about a pretty logo – it’s about visually positioning the business for the intended market, so I’d hope some market research is being done to inform the creative.

That’s not bad. My boss got quotes for rebranding his ‘proper’ business.
First quote was from an outfit in Aberdeen, it was in multiples of £10k

I put him in touch with a MTB / graphic designer mate – much less.
Both parties very happy. While more than your quote DrP, it was definitely much better value. You’ll be fine.

upshift..this is why I’m temper to go with this quote…
The friend is very good at ‘seeing the market’, and she’s helped out a lot with social media…
The web chap is her son, and the graphic designer works with the web chap… I think, even if there was a quote £500 cheaper, this ‘package’ just works for us!!

DrP

I would just go with it. Price is good and sounds like you have a great working relationship. That’s worth an awful lot as long as you are happy with the design.

Sounds a good price to me. The quotes I’ve had for a brand creation and website are around double your quote. One place wants £8k just for the website 😆

his may be coming in at ‘mates rates…

Sounds a good price to me. Are they freelancers? I’d probably expect 5k+ from your average agency.

It’s still a piece of string through. I’m guessing it’s a relatively small brochure website, a handful of pages and a contact form. Even so, to do the design from scratch (including rebrand) create the WordPress template from that, ensure it works on this, this, this, and this. Knock the business cards together, mess around with content, make all the minor adjustments. Style guide sounds pretty thorough, but I guess that could mean anything. Realistically it’s easily a week’s work (possibly 2) at £600-£700 a day, which is what an agency will charge you.

If you were to add any complexity to the website, that cost could increase exponentially.

Main thing I would do, is check their work. Have a look through their portfolio. Ask them any questions about stuff they’ve done in the past. And decide for yourself whether it looks good value for money. And do you feel comfortable with them? Don’t go from the quotes alone. Go primarily from the quality of the work and how you feel they can help represent your business.

A couple of things I noticed which indicated these people know what they’re doing and have a professional attitude; one is the logo being kept clean, simple with no fancy curlicues and provided in a vector format – vector allows pretty much infinite scope for sizing, with no pixelation because they’ve chucked something together in Paint, and secondly they’re creating a style guide, a very handy thing to have to make sure that anyone producing any third-party work has a clear idea what is required and to not start chucking in their own idea of what they think you want.
Been out of this sort of work for a long time now, but like others have said, it looks like a good deal.

DrP – just be cautious with them being friends/family. We’ve had no end of customers come to us because the familiarity of the client to the agency meant deadlines were missed, best practice not followed, briefs not properly listened to etc. Get a contract with clear deliverables and make sure they’re stuck to.

Best of luck with it. You may find that in the end it’s one of the most invigorating things you’ve ever done for your business!