Bob McMichael Consulting

Growing small businesses

What is custom website design, really?

Unlike the zillions of “custom website” companies you can find on the web, we offer truly custom design, from start to finish. Those cookie cutter companies take your money and plug your photos and your copy into their boilerplate templates. We do it differently. We think that if you’re going to be on the web, your site should support your vision for your business, not the reverse. Below is an overview of our process to deliver a truly custom website. There are no short-cuts, and we don’t take any.

How we make your custom website

1. We talk to you
We actually talk with you about your business. We find out what your goals are for your website, what you hope to accomplish with it, and what your market demographics are.
2. We learn your business
We ask about the growth you hope for in the next five years. This is critical. Few web designers care about this because if you don’t plan for growth, you will need another website in a year. This is expensive. We plan on the front end for long-term growth by choosing a platform that can expand as you grow.
3. We organize your content
We create an intelligent site organization sketch, showing the information architecture we suggest for your site. We discuss this with you, modify it as needed, and go through this process with you until you are happy with the structure.
4. We design your site
We create a mock-up showing the look and feel of the site based on our interaction with you to this point, presenting different color schemes you might have chosen earlier, and different logo designs if you wanted a new logo or brand identity.
5. We suggest things to add
We suggest things you might want to include to best utilize your site, like social networking, search engine optimization techniques, blogging, and other marketing tools.
6. We deliver the site you want
We deliver a working draft of the site for you to test (the “alpha site”). We discuss your impressions and incorporate any revisions you want to make, and then deliver the final draft (the “beta site”) for your approval before taking it live.

How much it costs

Below are the four basic types of websites we offer. These are rough descriptions and price ranges, and can vary significantly depending on the type of work involved, how much content development and programming we do, and other issues. Prices include graphic design work but not the cost of purchasing images or photographic shoots.

Simple website: $1,000-$1,750
Clean, simple design with copy & images, little dynamic content. Basic, lightweight informational site.
Medium-fancy website: $1,750-$3,750
Slightly “heavier” (more pages, graphics/images & copy), some dynamic content (Flash galleries, form submissions, video, blog interface).
Fancy website: $2,900-$8,500
Database-driven, user-interactive, dynamic content site. Price range depends largely on features & programming time.
e-Commerce website: $2,900-$1 Million (hey, we like to dream a little)
Clean, fast, highly optimized online store website with dynamic content, high-resolution graphics options, and client-administered back-end for secure order processing, updating and changing inventory, maintaining customer lists, etc. Price range depends on programming time and number of store items.