Website Design for Small Business

[Zealot]

I've been helping a friend of mine prepare to launch a small publishing company, and it's time to create a website. I'd like to give him some good leads on professional website design, and so I thought I would ask for advice here.

What are the average costs of doing business? Ideally he'd have a place to showcase artwork associated with the books, an online store, a news page, and possibly a forum.

Are there any reputable companies out there that excel at business launch (i.e; start-ups without a lot of money to initially invest in a website)? In looking around myself I found names like Ameronix, DBurns, and Blue Fountain media, amongst others, but I haven't pinned down anything regarding their reputation or costs.

If anyone knows of any questions I should be asking but have left out, that would also be appreciated.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I can't help as far as recommendations, but I do have a couple questions you should be asking: What is the draw? That is, why would anyone want to go to their author's publisher's website? I can think of very, very few of the publishers of the books I read, and of those I can only think of one (Baen Books, who i'm not even sure is an actual publisher) whose website I have ever visited. Similarly, who is the website for? Readers? Authors? Retailers? The answer to these questions should inform your design.

[Cantih]

What is the draw? That is, why would anyone want to go to their author's publisher's website? I can think of very, very few of the publishers of the books I read, and of those I can only think of one (Baen Books, who i'm not even sure is an actual publisher) whose website I have ever visited.

This.

There's only three publisher sites I go/have gone to.
Pocket Books, because my mother dedicatedly read Star Trek novels back in the 90s/00s, and had me keep up with the release list.
Image Comics, because I keep an eye on the release schedule there, and they have a reputation for quality such that I also bother seeing if any new series are worth starting. (I would do this for Boom! too, but their release schedule part of the site is fucking useless.)
And Angry Robot, like image, because they're a publisher that's showing some above average ability in finding authors that results in having enough gems worth sifting for.

And Baen is a publisher, only a moderate sized one, but with a legacy. And for ideological reasons, they have a way of doing things that have put them in a position that they have a website people have a reason to go to.

[Bardicrune]

I do go to author's websites frequently, but primarily only to find the bibliography page so that I know what order to read a series of novels. The only publisher's website I can recall visiting is TOR (now McMillan) as it was a major publisher of sci-fi/fantasy series and would let me find new authors to read. The major draw of a publisher's website should be to have an Author database with both links to the author's own website/twitter/facebook/etc. and a list of books it has published for that author including publication dates.

[Emirii]

Purely price wise, this is what I do for my day job - I build websites for small businesses.

What are the average costs of doing business? Ideally he'd have a place to showcase artwork associated with the books, an online store, a news page, and possibly a forum.

So the few things you should know before a consultation to get the best price is to get ALL the information you want on the website up front. Things you can do on our own are is answer all these questions:

1. How many pages you want (home, about the author, gallery, store, news blog, forum). You're already up to 6 with those.
2. What general theme do you want your overall design like, would you like a light/dark theme, would you like specific colors, would you like a light and air-y theme (simplistic), or very graphic and whimsical
3. Do you want people to be able to access the site on a mobile phone easily? If you would like a mobile friendly design this might cost extra, but it is cheaper to ask for up front rather than "i'll get it later when i have the money"
4. Will you be adding the pictures, paragraphs, and details to the shop items, or would you want to hire someone else out to do it? People might charge per item, and if you have 50 items in the shop that can get very pricey very quickly, not to mention re-hiring them every time you add a new product.
5. Do you need a forum, what would it's uses be? Who will be moderating this forum, you'll have to pay people to do that too. It's a job to keep it away from spam.
6. Be aware of the hidden costs involved in making an online web shop. You will need an SSL certificate, you will have to pay fees to your payment gateway (ex Paypal/Payum/Verisign) and be in charge of people's personal information such as address, names etc (your website SHOULD NEVER store credit card info)

So if I take a little liberties in answering some questions here's the breakdown you might be looking at:

note: these are NOT outsource prices, and I wouldn't recommend outsourcing unless your ABSOLUTELY desperate, bad things happen when you outsource. I'm not going to go into it but... you get what you pay for. With a shop, I simply wouldn't risk it.

A Wordpress/CMS developer - ??? (some charge hourly, but if you are in a tight budget i would find one willing to work with you on a lump sum basis)
Domain Name = 12$/yr
Hosting = 100$/yr (you should not pay more than this per year for a small website with little traffic)
SSL Certificate = 12$/hr for the cheapest, up to 50$ a yr for more secure


Initial web design and setup would be anywhere from $2,000 - $3,500 for 6 "pages", one of those including a shop and a forum, assuming you have around 30+ items in the shop you want them to add. Again, this price will be a lot cheaper if you don't want them to create every product for you and manage it. This is a ballpark estimate, like telling some contractor "Yeah i want a porch" and roughly some dimensions but failing to say you want rails and a canopy also.

From my own experiences, its very hard to get business owners to manage their own websites. Not because they can't, or can't learn how, it's just that they are too busy. So they must factor in the cost of maintaining the website after it's built also.

Some helpful things to keep in mind when choosing your developer/design firm:

If you don't like their first design, how many re-designs are included in the base price?
After the website is first presented, how many revisions for "tweaks" are included in base price, and how many days after the site is live will you be able to make tweaks?
What is the grace period to bring up things that are wrong with the website (say 30 days you discover a bug in the payment checkout) before being charged?
Will you own the domain, or will your designer firm own the domain? This is important to ask because they can hold your brand ransom!
Do they have a contract? Warning signs fly off if the developer does not have a contract. Read contracts carefully.

[Zealot]

Excellent advice, fellows. I thank you.