Website Packages, good or bad?

   Welcome back to the Exodus Computer Blog. Today I want to discuss the pros and cons of web packages. I'm sure you see design firms who list 3-6 bundle options, each with a limit of pages and cost increases. Most of the time, the first package only includes 2 or 3 pages. That would make for a very plan site that you have no reason spending high costs for. Before you consider any package, you have some things to keep in mind.

   Here are some of the basic questions that you need to ask yourself before contacting a website designer.

1. Are you marketing a product? If you are, then you may need a shopping cart or multiple product pages. Or even a gallery showing everything you carry.

2. is your site meant to be more visual or display a marketing message? This could affect how the site is even built or how much text is the focus of the site.

3. How many tabs do you need? An about page? Product/services pages? Blogs? Contact us pages? Gallery or photos?

4. Do you already have most of the text ready for the site and how much text is needed on each page? This is very important for a lot of reasons. The more actually creative writing a company has to do, the more it will cost you. And you need to make sure your site text will have some keywords and full on useful information so help on the SEO side of things. If you have too much text for each product/service, you could drown out your message. More content is better, but it has to be managed properly and not condense too much into each page. A careful balance has to be obtained.

5. Does your site need to be edited often? If you have a site hard coded and built from scratch, you will need a programer to edit every aspect from text to photos. You will never be able to change anything yourself without help. Exodus Computer does prefer an easy to edit flash builder for some sites. Obviously, we can't do every site this way, but for basic business sites, it's a great option. This way the client can change colors, text, or photos with a few clicks.

   Now that we covered that much, you can see the most simple packages rarely fit your needs. How much will it cost you per additional page, to add links, to create site text and does that cost include keywords? It's not the first time that you expect a low cost package to cover your needs, but then have 10 things added to increase the costs. Try to plan out your site the best you can before contacting a design firm. Not all firms are either close enough or even willing to site down and help you plan your site. Packages are good for the programers so they have something to build off the initial costs, but can be deceiving to the clients.

   This is the pros to the packages and why you will prefer this option. The next best choice for design quotes is based off labor per hour. Even if you get a programer claiming $20 an hr, he could easily set the project to 50 hrs of work. It may only take him 30 hours, but you have no idea. There isn't really a standard for this either, they all work at different paces. The other pro is you know what your paying for with package rates. If you only need two pages (not usually a good option), then that package will cover most of the costs. Honestly, if your paying to have a site built, shop around, ask questions, and get the best looking one you can get for the cost. Otherwise, your buying a plain template filled in and it looks out of date. Might as well not have a site if no one wants to visit it.