Exactly, a quoting thing like that will take min 1 day to code, and 1 day to test. That’s after you spend a day deciding exactly what you want and explaining it to them.

From a commercial point of view, I wouldn’t have a quoting thing in the site. Too much of a risk for potential customers to come in, use it, make mistakes and have an incorrect view of the company and the prices.
The caveats are that the OP knows both the market and customers, what the competition is doing and what their websites looklike better than me and that all the designers have more experience of what has or hasn’t worked on previous jobs and will advise accordingly.

Just crack on and build it yourself. No harder than fixin a bike, and plenty on here would have you belive that can be done by a monkey.

Seriously a simple site done using WordPress or joomla could cost you nowt but a bit of time. A bit of reading about SEO should get you up in google.

It would also give you a bit of knowledge so you can understand the difference between a $500, $5k or even $50k website.

In my experience web and software companies can be some of the worst for promising the earth and producing a steaming heap of smelly stuff that helps ruin a business.

And how would the app show the customer what they are speccing? It would have to be very visual (ie, you could just ask them to tick a box next to a description of ‘mid-oak worktop in natural finish’ – they would want to see pictures. They won’t know what a 500mm corner larder unit is not if it would fit in their kitchen.

£5k won’t come close to getting you a web app to do that.

You would be better off spending £5k on some professional pictures.

Any idiot can make a website look good, it’s making it visible that appears to be the tricky part.

No point paying a lot of cash for a website that nobody knows about.

So, to return to just about the first question you were asked – why do you NEED a website? Other forms of advertisement are available and probably more cost effective.

Yeah, and we can all fit kitchens. They just won’t actually be as good as the ones the OP fits…

oxforddan – Member

Hand made kitchens and furniture. Obviously a very competitive market so will need the site to display our products and generate enquiries. I need it to rank well in local search results and maybe have an online quote system where people can pick and choose units, work surface etc and get a ball park figure.

OKay missed that in my previous reply.

Errmm … might be a bit expensive but have a look at website that sell customised computer components. Theirs are a bit like mixed and match the components you want while fitting your budget as you choose.

🙂

Other forms of advertisement are available and probably more cost effective.

Yep. If this is the first time you have had a website up virtually no-one will just pop by to see what you have unless they are doing a very specific search. At least to start off with you will need to complement it with some online advertising such as Google AdWords. Facebook isn’t bad either. A website by itself won’t really add much (yet)

but you do need to do it in the end unfortunately, even if it is only for people who already know who you are to see more pictures

So what form of advertising then?

So what form of advertising then?

Google AdWords works pretty well but not cheap and you have to work at it to get visitors who buy rather than just visitors. It’s not just fit and forget as you’re always paying for it. You have to pay attention to why people are visiting and then make sure at a minimum they land on a relevant page that will make them read and do something

edit – to give the OP an idea, I work for a small non profit and I would say that the bulk of paying visitors actually come directly from offline campaigns, next up is Google AdWords which is significant and bringing up the rear is facebook (for the moment)

But if he’s not got a website? I thought the argument was to spend money on advertising rather than a website…

I’m not sure you have a choice nowadays. At a minimum you need an online presence but if you imagine that the purpose is to bring in extra business by itself then you are wrong. You need extra spending on advertising to do that

If the purpose is only to complement offline stuff then you may do the site differently

Is the online quote function really worth spending money on? I am currently in the market for a new kitchen and if I came across a website which offered quotes or ‘ball park figures’, I wouldn’t really bother – there’s no way you’d get an idea of cost that was meaningful IMO. Plus, think of all the money you’d have to spend updating the data that provides those figures.

But if he’s not got a website? I thought the argument was to spend money on advertising rather than a website…

😆
Advertising would depend on the market and the OP’s objectives for the business.
Will he be able to cope with the flood of new business that this all singing, all dancing web site will bring in? Or would they be better with a couple of ads in local papers and a feature? Turning away customers because of insufficient resources isn’t a good thing.
I imagine the web site is needed because it’s what customers expect and the public measure a company by its website.
Conmen know this too. 😉
Getting face to face meetings and building rapport, I imagine, is the key in this environmnet.

I would also ask about the infrastructure on which the website guys plan on hosting the site; do you need load balancers, redundant hosts, PCI compliance? How does it plug into payment gateways? What are the hardware SLAs? Is your bandwidth burstable? How much does it cost? Who handles your DNS? Is it multicast? Who pays if you get slashdotted? if they can’t answer these questions I would walk away.

allthegear – Member
Different companies will provide a different service. Some will just stick the text and images into a stock template, color it in and hand it over. Others will look to see how they can help you build an online presence that helps you reach particular goals with your business.

Thats the answer right there. You need to work out what the site is for.

If I were looking at a kitchen site the last thing I’d want is to be choosing units from drop downs. I imagine that would be a bit tedious and people would leave your website.

Building the site is just the start, you need to get people to see it which is where the work starts. Then you’ve got about 10 to 20 seconds to get people interested or they’re ooot.

I think the variance in price can also be answered by how much they factor in for the lifetime support type calls.

I think the variance in price can also be answered by how much they factor in for the lifetime support type calls.

🙂

Pay once, own your soul. Recently had a really aggressive call from a client because their Twitter feed had stopped working. We explained that Twitter had changed things and stopped allowing free access to feeds and that it had only just changed. When we said we could fix it in an hour and charge for it all hell broke loose – they seemed to think that by buying once, they should have lifetime support (they chose not to take up a support contract).

We asked them what happens if someone buys a car from them and it breaks down once it is out of warranty…

If you have text an content ready and you’ve chosen a web address nothing stopping you putting together a small site yourself using somebody like 1&1. you can then register your site with google, DMOZ, yahoo, bing etc. It’s good to make sure you’re on their maps/local page. A Facebook page is really handy for a bit of “word of mouth”.

Having a basic site hosted is inexpensive and gives you some professional e-mail adresses to use.

That’s the very basics of what you might need, but should be much cheaper than going with the pros. You need to think outside the box if you’re going to shine in the search rankings if you’re playing against the big boys.

Bear in mind even companies the size Ikea struggle to build and maintain a useable design and quoting system. not everyone has time to play kitchen designer online – isn’t that your job?

When my folks took over their business the it took me a good while to wrestle control of the site out of the hands of their old webmasters, I thought the charges were ludicrous for what we were getting, especially when I looked at the quality of promotion provided.

Bespoke (high end) furniture makers need seamless websites that really swoon people into believing they are paying for something very special indeed.

Have you seen Clive.com?

Makes me want a hand crafted, gold-leaf, family-emblem en-crested dining chair, and i don’t even have a family emblem!

I’ll bet that website cost more than 5000 though.