This podcast was originally released on 31/05/2022.
I think the confusion around what websites cost comes from not actually stepping back and thinking, what does the website do?
So what does it need to do?
If you start with why, why do I need a website? Then you can start to understand where the efforts going to create it. And from there you can maybe start to understand the costs involved.
Yeah, there's the design. Development could be a very simple, but could be loads of coding and like complicated stuff needed. And then the content, you know, has it got five pages with two hundred words on each page, or has it got a gazillion pages that are all a thousand words long?
And this tends to be a problem at times, just trying to get content from the client to fit into the design. We have to alter the design slightly to fit the new content, or we need to tweak the content. So there's a lot of back and forth with the client.
How much does a website cost? Well, as much as you've got to spend because, you know, we're going to use up as much budget as you've got to deliver the best version of the website we can for that budget.
Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Um, everyone's in trouble today because I'm in a bad mood.
Oh, dear.
I've just been on live chat trying to trying to add a motorbike to my policy and it was thirty minutes on live chat to add to add a motorbike and the total cost in the end two pounds forty nine.
Yeah. Live chat supposed to be quicker.
I know exactly that. Exactly that. Anyway, well.
This is gonna be fun.
Today's subject was prompted by a phone call that came in. I think you took it, Julie.
Yeah, a couple of days ago.
And the person said.
How much does a website cost and how long does it take?
And you replied.
Yeah, that was it was like, I don't even know what to say to that. Um, well, you know, it depends how big a website, how much design do you want? Well, I mean, you just can't answer that, can you?
No. Okay. I, uh, I agree. Um, just a bit of housekeeping first, I suppose we've got Julie on the podcast today with me, Dave and Alex, and we've got a podcast, Virgin say hello, Rob.
Hello, Rob.
It would have been disappointed if you hadn't said that.
Yeah. That's good. So Rob, um, sort of straddles the line between design and development.
He's a bit unique, isn't he?
He is a bit unique in lots of ways.
He's special.
Special in lots of ways. So we thought it'd be great to have Rob included in this chat because it's fair to say over the years, Rob, you've had some interesting experiences on website builds, websites, designs and builds, I think, isn't it? It's fair to say that.
Yeah. You remember.
Barry. You remember Barry from London?
Yeah. Yeah. It's scary. Look, if you look back to the very first ones.
Um.
Yeah, just just a heads up. You have to talk into the microphone.
Right, right. I'm looking at you.
You can pick it up and hold it like that. Rob, Rob, you can do that.
It's fine.
You don't have to be right there. You can be okay.
I get told off for looking at people rather than those.
Yeah. They're not. It's not too bad. I mean, Leslie works wonders with whatever we produce, so it's actually fine. I mean, the mine's actually does this very well at the moment, so I'm just.
Gonna.
Increase that a little bit.
And everyone's really, really bad.
It doesn't we don't edit it. No.
That's the garbage we're talking now. Will all stay in.
Yeah, exactly. So the um of course you know this because you listen to all the podcasts, all fifty nine of them. This is this is podcast sixty, I think. Is it? I think it might be you've listened to every single one.
Every single one. Yeah. Yeah. All the way through. So what.
Have you.
Been about then?
What have they all been about then just give us a crazy.
Yeah. It's it's so many topics.
Yeah.
Digital marketing, full confession.
Yeah. One of the team at Red evil and he doesn't listen to our podcast. Unbelievable. All the gold that's in those podcasts as well. Um, I mean, we could talk and we have talked in the past about what websites cost and you can get a template website for thirty bob and a fried fish, or you can go the whole hog and you can get full design done. And you can, you know, if the more design you get done, the more customisation you get done, then not surprisingly, the price rises. And yeah, some businesses spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on websites. Some businesses spend, like I said, thirty bob and, and, and sometimes a thirty bob website might actually deliver more value into the business in terms of generating enquiries than the one hundred thousand pound website, especially if the one hundred thousand pound website's predominantly been spent on design, for example, as opposed to what it's supposed to be for.
But none of that is particularly helpful if you sat there wondering, how much do I actually need to pay? Right.
No, but but I think the confusion I might be wrong about this, but I think the confusion around what websites cost comes from not actually stepping back and thinking, what does the website do? So if.
What does it need to do.
If you start with Mr. sine x, y. So if you start with why, why do I need a website? Then you can start to understand where the efforts going to create it. And from there you can maybe start to understand the costs involved. I had a an interesting chat yesterday with, um, a group of people I meet once a month online, um, like an agency mastermind group. And during that, we were talking about the fact that a lot of businesses, even businesses that have got chief marketing officers, maybe less so with them, but a lot of businesses with marketing people actually either don't have a budget or they don't know what the budget should be, and they don't know what stuff costs, and they don't know how much stuff they need and what stuff they need and everything else. And I think that's fair enough. They were being a little bit critical. I just thought, well, if people don't understand what we do, it's our job to explain it. Yeah, I think although you'd expect most businesses to have an idea of what they're going to spend. But anyway, I digress. What we're trying to talk about today is, is like what, what does a website cost? It's kind of like to help people understand people like the person who phoned in.
Yeah. I mean, they were wanting a, an online shop. Um, but they didn't really when I asked, um, you know, how many products will it have. Oh um loads. So.
Well there you go. It has to be a website. It's a shop and it's got loads of products. How could you possibly not know what that's going to cost.
I know yeah we didn't, we didn't really get very far in the conversation. I obviously tried to be as helpful as possible while being completely unable to be helpful at all.
Yeah.
I mean.
Yeah, just to bring, just to bring Robin. Uh, otherwise he's his first podcast is just going to be basically my name's Rob.
Uh.
I mean, you don't get involved a lot necessarily with budgets, do you?
No, not really.
But you, uh, maybe given a budget, right. Rob, we've got a budget of X or a budget of Y.
Yeah.
But I suppose from your point of view. I'm trying what I'm trying to understand is say, for example, we're going for a website that's not a template. So it's a custom designed website.
Um.
When you're given a brief, Do you. Can you or are you able to say, right, I will put three grand's worth of creativity into this project? Or can you curtail the creative process based on budget? I mean, how hard is that? Must be hard.
I guess we've been involved with the the build a lot as well. Um, if I'm working alongside Diana, the other designer and she may come up with a design, we need to chat it through just to see where the time's going to be spent building. Um, so if there's, yeah.
We need a lesson on that over the years, haven't we, where Diana's come up with some like absolutely incredible designs and then, you know, we, we then run it past you and Dave, the developers and um, they go, okay, please, please go back to the drawing board. We're not building that.
Yeah. We need to take this part out. It's gonna be a bit of a nightmare. So if we, if we don't have the budget, then almost after if Diana's got these design ideas, she might have and they look really good as well. But sometimes you almost got to cut them out because it's going to take the project over the budget to build, uh, for the development side. Yeah. But for the, yeah, for the design, I think Diana's, she's predominantly doing the designs now. So I think she's starting to get to grips with where things are going to go over budget with the build. Yeah. So it's yeah, it's just trying to get, I mean, from.
An agency owner point of view, I think I, I think another agency owners would probably identify with this quite often we will over deliver, in fact, pretty much every time on a web build, we'll over deliver. Because once we start that creative process, it's actually difficult to say, well, this looks fantastic, but we can't afford to implement.
It because.
We haven't got enough budgets. Or you know what? We'll take it on the chin and do it anyway.
Just because it's just we.
Just want to create a really great website. And yeah, it's, it's hard to then if you've, if you've seen the designs for a really great website, it's hard to then go back and go, well, we'll make it not quite as great because the budget's not there. But sometimes you have to. Sometimes. And sometimes. Also if somebody's really good and need it quickly, you're like, well, we aren't going to be able to do all this fancy stuff because you need it in a hurry. And we need to. The priority is speed. Then it's got to be kept quite simple so it can be built quickly.
Yeah. Plus you can add into that design later on. Yeah. Once you get it up live.
Yeah. If you're working on the like GDP, the growth driven design, which we like doing, you can exactly do that. You can get a nice simple website up and then like tweak it and make it, make it fancier and add more functionality and add extra bits and, you know, prettify it later.
Yeah.
Thinking about the, the creative process then, um, we like a good analogy, don't we?
Oh, normally about cars is about cars.
But you just walked right into my trap.
They're usually cars are fitness motorbikes.
Neither.
Okay, go. I'm looking forward to this analogy.
So, um, you've decided that you don't like your house anymore, right?
Okay.
So you you decide you want to move house. It's not big enough or whatever. You can go along to a bar. It's still exist.
I don't know.
Yeah.
It's still I think they maybe do. We'll use Barrett's as an example.
Or.
Remember the the helicopter advert. Yeah. Barrett's in it.
You and me are showing our age because the others are going, what are they talking about anyway?
So you need a four bedroom house and you could go along to Barrett's and you say, I need a four bedroom house and they'll go, great, you can have this one, this one or this one, that design, that design or that design. And it will be a absolutely fantastic, perfectly fit for purpose, warm, dry, easy to heat modern standards, great four bedroom house. Or you could go along to, for example, Ricky Architects who we've done some work with. And you could say, I want a four bedroom house, but I want the living room to be this size. I want all the bedrooms to have their own bathrooms. I want this, I want that, and you can then start specifying exactly what you need. Now, I think most people would understand that it's going to cost more to get a one off house built to your exact specifications. That delivers exactly what you need. You tell the architect about how you live, what you like doing, the fact that maybe you know, oh, we're all in a mountain biking and stuff like, right? So you need somewhere where you can come in out of the weather, but in your muddy clothes. So you need probably a wet room, for example, and you need a storage area.
Somewhere to wash the dog.
Somewhere to wash, you know, all of that stuff can be taken into consideration. You think from a creative point of view, that's not a bad analogy.
I think that's pretty good actually.
And it's not about cars even better.
It's an interesting analogy, though, because weirdly, I know somebody who's in the process of building their own house at the moment, and they admittedly, it's a very small house and it's, it's a kit house, basically, they've ordered.
A.
Doll's house from. No, it's not a doll's house.
I said it was small.
I don't know why I bother sometimes, But no. Yeah. So they've bought like a kit house from Norway or wherever, and they've bought some land and they're going to have somebody build this kit house for them. But they were saying before they went into the process, they were of the impression that it was going to cost them more money than it would to buy somebody else's house. And it turned out to be way cheaper. But until they'd actually started the process, they had no idea. And I think that, you know, the analogy that we're talking about here, we're going to somebody and saying, I want a custom website. I think that is really hard for people because they just don't know where the prices are going to start. And there is no right move. There's no Zoopla for websites.
You know, you make a fantastic point because if somebody came to us, say for example, a new business and said said, for example, right, we've got a budget of ten grand for a new website and we're a new business and we want to be found in Google and we want to generate leads and everything else. We would probably say, right, let's, let's get the best website we possibly can as cheaply as we can. We might use a template, we might put it into HubSpot or something like that, or WordPress, Joomla or whatever. But you know, maybe HubSpot and get, get a really impressive, simple website built from a template and then spend the other eight grand promoting it, writing content and everything else. So your website has cost you your ten grand, but the majority of the money was spent not on creating creative design work, but on creative writing work, on search engine optimisation, content marketing, conversion rate optimisation, whatever.
Which comes back to your why at the beginning. Yes, it's, you know, do you want one that's just going to knock the socks off people and they're going to look at you and go, wow, this company is really impressive. And you know, I'm going to ring them. Or do you want one that's that's going to get found in search. Or do you want one that people can buy things off? So it calls come back comes all comes back to the why of why you need a website and what you want it to do.
Yeah. That's right. So what we're saying is when it comes to website costs, design is only one bit of it.
Yeah. Design. Design can cost a lot of money because you can put a lot of effort in. And the creativity, Obviously, you know, if you want really wow creativity, you're going to pay for that. But it doesn't have to be wow, creativity. You can have something simple because it has to, um, perform a specific function that isn't so much about the design is more about the thing that it does.
So not trying to put you on the spot. So just have a think. No, not honestly. No, no, you look scared.
Looks really.
Scared.
If you were trying to explain to somebody like Barry, like a lot of people will look at a finished website and you might say, yeah, that website costs twenty grand. And they'd be like, but that's exactly like a template. And I can buy that template for, for one hundred and fifty quid. How on earth could that have been twenty grand? So where does the setting aside the creative work, I think everyone can understand. I hope that being creative involves navel gazing, staring, trying things, scribbling them out, trying something else, finessing. There's a lot that goes into that. But when it comes to then taking that design and building it, you said to me, you know, you said earlier, this is a long question, isn't it? You said earlier.
I don't.
Know.
You can look at a design and go, oh, that's going to be so expensive to implement. How do you how would you explain to a man in the street or a woman in the street why implementing that design is not going to be possible with that budget, and why it takes as long as it takes? That's a really hard question.
Uh, I guess. A lot of the time when we're building, we haven't got the content from the client. Okay. So once a lot of the time we actually build the site because content doesn't always come in time. So we put Lorem ipsum in and we fill the site out. Even the designs got lorem ipsum in. And then when the content does start coming in, it a lot of the time it doesn't match.
Doesn't.
Work. Yeah, it doesn't fit into the space we've allocated for the design. And then we've had to rearrange rematch. But we try to get the content in time. Mhm. And this tends to be a problem at times. Just trying to get content from the client to fit it into the design or the site shall say, but if it doesn't come in in time and we're trying to get the site up in a certain time period, so we're cracking on, and then we have to alter the design slightly to fit the new content, or we need to tweak the content. So there's a lot of back and forth with the client and imagery as well. It's quite a big one. Um.
But the actual build, I mean, I mean, that's actually interesting. It's news to me. I know that it's always a problem getting content off clients, but I actually wasn't aware of the impact that that had on the design process and the putting of the putting, putting the site together. Because I would have thought like, you know, we'll build a page, we'll kind of have a feel for the volume of content of page is going to hold. It's going to have like one thousand words or five.
Sometimes you just don't know that.
And we just. Yeah.
So most of yeah, like you say, the volumes here, you've got a jug and you allocate enough. I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know either.
I'm now going to sit back and get some popcorn.
Right. So no one can see this, but there's a whiteboard in front of me and I'm just boxing out.
Hasn't got the hang of podcast.
So I've done a box shape on the whiteboard. And next to it we've got an image, this height which matches the height of the content. Yeah. And then say, this is the jug. This is where the water goes in. We're allowing enough room for this amount of water. And then the client sends over like a bath tub full of water, which is the content.
Yeah.
So we, we pour the water in there.
And suddenly.
The images doesn't, it doesn't match the space.
So you need to make a new jug.
Yeah.
Big jug or you need a second jug.
Oh, we need multiple images to fill the content or we need to. Yeah, we need to rearrange.
Yeah.
That design.
Yeah. But there surely we're not talking necessarily about design. We're talking about con in content designs or, uh, content elements, uh, visual elements that are added to content in order to break the content up, make it communicate the content more effectively.
Often like the one you're probably thinking of a fairly recent one, you know, the, the, the site was built. So there was sort of like chunks where the text went with a picture next to them, and then another chunk, which was a different color with another picture next to it, you know, to make it very simple. Um, and sometimes the text came in and it wasn't enough to fill that chunk. So then you have to either make the chunk look different, or you have to get rid of it completely and combine two chunks. So there is a lot of fiddling about to do.
Yeah, I guess.
If it isn't the right kind of roughly the right size.
Ideal world, you'd get the content first. And then even if it does need tweaking, you've got a general idea of what's going to be on the page.
Is it a jog or is it a bathtub at least?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When it comes to the expense of developing or creating turning designs into websites, what sort of things significantly add to costs? Again, it's not an easy question to answer.
For the.
Time wise, I mean, I know that like, um, you know, because you predominantly work down in Newcastle. Um, but Dave who's, you know, doing development work as well, he sits behind me. So he and I sometimes choose stuff over and I ask him stuff and it's, it's the attention to detail. It's getting things perfect. It's getting things lined up properly. It's getting things so they so they actually just look right. You know, the finessing.
Yeah.
I guess it's things as well. Like on a really simple website, you'd have a chunk of text and then on the right hand side, you'd maybe have a square image. But on a more detailed design, the image might be in a circle or a blob, and it would be a different shape. And it would, you know, and it wouldn't just be a case of stick that picture in next to the text. It would all be much more complicated because the the way the image is arranged is much more complicated.
Yeah, they.
Do need to be fair.
Yeah. You need consider what you're going to use. If it is, it has got certain shapes, then certain photographs aren't or images aren't going to work. So yeah, that's a consideration. Um. It's a long.
Pause.
Yeah. Like little.
Like little lines and separators and things that fill the.
Space.
And.
How.
Detailed.
Little.
Elements that go on are really well put together web page, aren't they? That.
And then I guess there's things like calculators and sliders and things that need to be built and coded.
I mean, I guess in a way, as a layperson who knows absolutely nothing about development, the analogy that I've always kind of thought of is like, it's like going to have a suit fitted, right? If you're having a suit that's custom made for you, you're going to go and get measured. You're gonna come back in a week's time, and they're gonna put it on you and they're gonna measure again. They're gonna adjust and things. If you go to a suits warehouse or suits for you or whatever, you're in and out in ten minutes and I guess you are.
And it fits where it touches.
Yeah, that actually, I, I got a suit off eBay recently and I did a.
Really good plan.
Rob I did hear a rumor.
Okay, go tell us.
Yeah, I measured up and everything. I did it myself and I thought it's gonna, it's gonna fit close. I'll have to get it tailored. But came in and yeah, I was joking with with Paulette, I reckon I could jump off a building and I'd land safely because I was like MC hammer. It was so, so baggy. Yeah. So I've been to the tailor twice now because I did it once and then came back and it still wasn't quite right. So I've been back again. Had it tweaked again, I think, I think.
How much did it end up costing you over and above what you paid for it.
Suit was like thirty bob. It was about ninety, about ninety quid. Yeah. And then yeah, tailoring has been about Two fifty three hundred. So it's been a lot more making the changes than the actual suit. But it, it, it's doing the like it fits nicely now. Whereas if I went to a yeah, it's a tricky one because you can go to a shop and get, you might get lucky. You get one that fits nice.
But to give you an idea, when I was competing at ballroom dancing, um, you you just get made. Made to measure. Yeah. You get suits made to measure. And when you get measured up, um, you know, I remember Mark saying. Oh, yeah, you're right. Shoulders a bit wonky, you know, like I can't remember what specifically. Uh, yeah, it comes as no surprise to any of you guys that I'm a bit wonky. Um, but he then cut the suit. Yeah. To make amends for that. And not only that, because the suit was specifically for competitive dancing, where you spend the man's holding a frame for the lady to dance in. So the suit is if you just put your arms by your side, you know, you look like, like you're a muscle builder because it's not cut, it's not cut to stand with your arms by your side. It's cut. So when you move your.
Arms up the elbows.
The shoulders don't.
Stick up. Right.
So it's a very specific way. And that jacket and that pair of trousers cost twelve hundred quid. Yeah. A jacket and a pair of trousers. That's it. Twelve hundred quid. Because because of all the detailed work that goes into it.
Um but that is the perfect analogy then, isn't it. That's exactly what we're talking about. You know, you could have gone and got a ninety quid eBay suit, but it wouldn't have done the job. And I guess that's where a lot of business owners are. You know, you can go and get a cheap website or you can get one that's kind of hand-cranked. Somebody's going to sit there, they're going to measure it. They're going to say, this is what you need for this specific job, ballroom dancing, whatever.
And the thing is, if somebody, if we do build a site from a template for somebody because they don't have a big budget, it's it never, ever goes according to plan because you go, right, this is the template. This is what you get. We will put your content into this and then they come back. Could you possibly just like move the logo over? Can you change that color a little bit? And can you they never ever actually want the template. They want to put their own spin on it.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, they reckon in like in the software world, customisation kills. Is it customisation kills profit or something? Yeah. Because you build some software. It does, it does something and it and it does a heap of stuff. Most people who buy it don't need it to do all the stuff it does. But as soon as you say, well, actually, could you change it so and say twinge made a new twin, change it. So it does X, Y, and Z, and that can cost a fortune and cost. People don't want to pay for that. So the software companies like, oh, you know, they're going to buy it, they're going to subscribe to it, but then we're going to have to do all this work. And it's a nightmare. I'm not sure. Is this going to be helpful, do you think, for people who are phoning up saying how much does a website cost?
I mean.
You know, there's a famous there's a famous reply to that. How much is a website? And the answer is about the same as a car. And although it's facetious and somewhat nasty, it actually makes people go kind of, oh, right, okay, I get it. You know what I mean? Because I'm looking out to the car park there. Now there's cars out there that, you know, you'd have to pay me to drive it away. And there are cars out there. Well, there's a Ferrari came into the car park just earlier on, and it was probably a one hundred thousand pound car. So, you know, how much does it how much does it cost is a ridiculous question. How much how much are cars? Well, everybody knows that's a bit of a stupid question, but with websites, I don't think it's a stupid question. I think it's fair enough. But I think by playing it back to people along those lines, it kind of makes sense for them to sort of get it. But I still don't think it fully answers the question. And I think it does come back to, you know, what is the website for?
Yeah. And it's, it has.
To.
Be, there has to be a consultation. There has to be a conversation. We have to understand where, why they want it, what it, what they want it to do, so that we can then advise on what sort of website they need and then work out, you know, how much is, how much work's going to go into it, how much content is going to go into it and, and then give them a steer on the price. But you can't just answer it straight off.
Just to go back to the suit analogy.
Talking to the microphone.
But just just to go back to the suit analogy, um, because I went in there.
You spent ninety quid on a suit for your wedding? Yeah. And I'd be. I'd be keeping quiet about that. I wouldn't be telling the world.
It's cost a lot more in the end, isn't it?
Yeah. So if I'd gone this, this tailor, he can make suits from scratch. Like I know that now. But this suit that I've got tailored, it's not the stretchy material. So I can just tie my shoelaces, just slip on a little bit worrying. Yeah. But if I'd gone to him like he's he's the expert. He knows all about it and he's trimmed it down. It's, it's a lovely fit now, but the material, if I'd gone to him first, he could use the stretchy material, but still the same, same fit. Um, so he. Yeah. His knowledge is valuable.
You'll be dancing very carefully and you won't be eating your dinner.
No splits.
Yeah.
Splits. Yeah. He's got back to the adage, you know, buy cheap, buy twice.
Yeah.
Kind of thing.
Buy four times.
Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. That's right.
I was told that with pans as well. Yeah, yeah. Pans. Yeah. It was a if I was going to uni, I was working with a builder and I was going to get some pans. He's like not bad cheap ones.
Yeah.
And he was right because yeah, it just stuck. After the second stir fry.
You did buy the cheap ones.
Yeah, I bought cheap.
Ones and then.
Oil in your pan.
If you're listening to this because you want to know how much your website costs, you now know, don't buy cheap suits and don't buy cheap pants websites. Not so much. Alex, you look like you wanted to say something.
Well, no, I was gonna say, um, something we were kind of touching on earlier is that if somebody comes to us and said, I've got this much, we'll do a design and then kind of work backwards until it's affordable. Right. And I think one of the things that people are always very suspicious about with websites, especially when they're contacting web design companies, is, as you were saying earlier, when people ask, how much money have you got to spend on your website? And people are like, oh, they're just going to come back and say, you know, whatever, I've got the maximum amount that you have. But I think that's in a way that's kind of true, isn't it? That's kind of what we're saying. How much does a website cost? Well, as much as you've got to spend, because ultimately the final product is just going to be kind of, you know, we're going to use up as much budget as you've got to deliver the best version of the website we can for that budget. And I think that is really the honest answer, isn't it?
Yeah.
Maybe not. Maybe you'll kind of smack me down, but I agree.
And I'm going to bring in the car analogy because if because we like a car analogy, if you if you go in the showroom. Uh, I'm in the market for a new car. Then the salesperson is going to say, well, what's your budget? Yeah. And they're either going to say, what's your monthly budget? Because that's how people buy cars these days. So you're going to say, I could probably stretch the three hundred a month, in which case they'll say, right, come this way. We've got some old bangers around the back and we'll show you them. They're a bit rusty, but hey ho know you can get a cracking car for three hundred quid a month, but they are going to ask you that question. You bought a new car and I don't know if you were asked either what your monthly budget was or what your budget was to buy it when you went in there. But the point I'm going to make is that you, you kind of can't do that with websites, because if we put a bunch of websites next to each other and said to the person, a person in the street, what do you think each of those websites cost? I bet they wouldn't be massive. They might look at Apple's website, for example, and go, oh, that must have cost a fortune because it is just I don't know why. I don't know what it is about it, but it's beautiful. It just looks lovely. And then they might look at some other website that actually has a shedload of work that's gone into it and think, oh no, it looks rubbish to me. I don't know, five hundred quid. It's like, well, actually, no, it was fifty grand. And they'll have no, no idea why. And I don't know if there's a way of communicating. I mean we're trying now and I don't think.
So many aspects. I mean there's the yeah there's the design which could be really simple or something someone else has designed and you just, you know, buy a template and copy it. Or it could be really fancy design. And then there could be like development could be a very simple, but development, or there could be loads of coding and like complicated stuff needed. And then the content, you know, has it got five pages with two hundred words on each page, or has it got a gazillion pages that are all a thousand words long? You know, all those things.
I want you to define.
Right?
Fancy design.
Oh I can't. I don't know, Rob. Define fancy design.
Fancy design.
That's what Julie said. All right. People are listening to this because they want to learn stuff. And Julie said you might have a fancy design and it might be expensive. I want to know what a fancy design is.
Fancy design. I guess it's.
That's what we were saying earlier. All the all the little, all the little.
Fancy and new fangled.
Oh, oh, I don't know how much the newfangled ones cost.
You remember Rick, that's like the epitome. That website is the epitome of fancy design. It was all weird lines, strange architectural shapes, and nothing.
Nice to look at.
Yeah, look fantastic. Really different.
Really unusual. But yeah.
Yeah, when lines come in, uh, trying to get the lines lined up. Yeah, I lined up. Yeah. The lines are lined.
Lined or lined.
Up or aligned.
That's why I lined.
That's why it took so long. Because Rob was trying to work out how to explain it.
I mean, we're in the B2B space, and I think it's fair to say in the B2B space, it's about looking credible. You don't have to create something that when people land on it, they're blown away. What you want when people land on a website in a B2B context, I think is you want them to feel comfortable, like you want them to understand how to use it because it's got a normal menu. Or if they're on an iPad, it's got the hamburger. You don't want them. Caron will remember Caron's across the office and she'll remember like there's a term hidden meat. I think it's called, isn't it? People used to design websites, so you had to explore them. You had to explore the website with your mouse to wait for something to pop up.
To get.
Information.
It was almost like.
It was a gamified it.
Yeah.
And we kind of, you know, that was thanks to flash and technologies like that, I suppose. Sorry.
It was about sandwiches. What was it? What was the hidden meat in the sandwich?
Oh, right.
Okay.
Yeah. Okay. So you had to go? Yeah. All right. So there was a sandwich analogy going on there, but it was it was referred to as hidden meat. And then it very quickly became apparent that that was not a good user experience, but it was a trend for a while to make people work hard. Our job is to make make it easy. Make people feel safe. What Steve Krug's book says don't make them think. Just give them what they're looking for and don't get in the way. I mean, is it fair to say as a design graduate, Rob, that good design gets out of the way? Good design. It's almost like if it's really good design, you don't even notice it.
You don't realise.
You don't realise.
Yeah. I was trying to remember. It was a design. A person came in, a famous designer came in, did a lecture, and he was saying basically the same thing. People just say, oh, that's easy. I can do that. Yeah. Just because it.
Yeah.
It's it's witty, it's clever. And they get it. And they're like, ah, oh yeah.
But don't you think like in design terms. I mean, because it's not just web design. I think designers have a hard time full stop. I mean, you could you try and help me stop saying I mean, because I say it all the time. It really annoys me.
We'll throw things.
Yeah yeah yeah. Throw things. Um, how often has there been, uh, a design competition for, um, a visual representation of a brand aka a logo. Like if you think back to London twenty twelve, the overwhelming response to the creation of that logo was, huh? That's crap. I could have done that.
Yeah.
Wasn't it? And in general terms, it went design. It must be so frustrating. Again, going back to our friend Barry, you'd done. You'd put a lot of effort and work into creating some mockups. And his response was because, you know, he was going to be paying for the work. And his response was, I could have done that in fifteen minutes on the back of a fag packet. Just no idea about the effort that had gone into it. And I think designers get a raw deal all the time because, you know, guess what? Everyone thinks they're a designer.
It was your head as well, like because we're doing some branding at the minute and I've spent a few days now just like, doing some research.
You do know, the budget on that.
Right?
Yeah, yeah. I spent a few days now just doing research, looking into, well, just mainly research. And then I've started doing my scribbling on paper, going through it and my yeah, my head's frying. Just trying to think constantly think. Even after work. I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm like going past shops, going back to lorries, going past, like with different identities on even shapes. Shapes of.
Yeah.
Like geometry. And all the time I was thinking about it.
Yeah.
You wake up in the middle of the night with these shapes in your head and even how do you charge for that? How do you charge a client for waking up in the middle of the night and spending an hour and not being able to get back to sleep, because these shapes are whizzing around your brain?
Well, there's a somewhat apocryphal story, and it probably goes back to Saatchi and Saatchi, where they created a logo for a for a particular brand. And they just, they just hit it first time they just did something. And it was just like literally in half an hour, boom, it's bang on.
Just really lucky. Just nailed it. Yeah.
So, you know, going back a few years, maybe they were charging whatever they were charging. Yeah. So if they were charging even two hundred quid an hour and it does that mean it's worth half an hour?
Yeah. It's not because it could have taken them five weeks to get something that good.
Because for, for everyone that you just nail when it comes to design straight away you just some it happens. Uh, there's, there's plenty of others that where there's a lot of almost, it's almost an angst ridden process, isn't it? I mean, you're challenging yourself constantly and you can't turn it on and off sometimes.
Well, it's not me or whoever's doing it. The only person on the job, because you might tell someone, they might ask about your work and you say, I'm doing this. And then they start thinking and they'll be passing on ideas to you. So it's almost like you've got people in the background passing on ideas. So it's not even only yourself thinking about that. Um.
So I think what we're doing here, I think we're doing a pretty good job at communicating the difficulty, if you like, the challenges of of the creative process and if you want a website, because it started by talking about websites that's unique and is has a lot of TLC, a lot of thought, a lot of skill, a lot of expertise has gone into it. Then that is going to cost a lot more than just going to templates arrows and saying, I quite like the look of that one. Downloading and installing it. World a world of difference.
Yeah.
But that goes right. It's not just for websites that goes.
Let's say suits, houses, whatever.
Because with the website, you can then move on to, well, okay, like the techies could get involved and they could go through a similar process and say, well, what do you actually deliver to your customers? Oh, well, do you realise you could do this? You could do that. We could create a self-service portal so they don't have to come to you every time they want a copy of the certificate for that equipment, they could just go and click a button and download it. Oh, can you do that? Yeah we can. And so the scope grows and the and the functionality grows. And, and I guess it's the same for, you know, other other aspects. When it comes to the marketing.
Your baby, you're doing your content.
Yeah. You know, one of the ones that again, this is about website design because getting the, getting the messaging right, getting the story right is really important. You've got, you know, with any sort of marketing, you've got to tell a good story.
Yeah, absolutely.
And if you're wanting to tell a good story, that's a creative process. There's time and effort and thought goes into it. It's kind of your bag. Alex.
Yeah, absolutely. But again, it's one of those things, isn't it, where you can't really commodify that you can't kind of set a price bracket and say, you know, if you've, if you've got this much to spend, we can do this or whatever. It just, it has to be kind of.
Again, sometimes you, you might just nail a strap line, you go, actually, is this, this sums it up in three or four words. And it actually sums it all up. Where you did it the other day, you absolutely nailed it really, really quickly. Whereas other times we round around the houses and, um, that doesn't, that doesn't quite sound right. And that's too long. That says it, but it's too long and it can be really, really complicated.
Mhm. That's right.
Just something doesn't sit right.
Yeah, yeah.
Like our own strap line took a long time.
And we don't even use it anymore. We changed.
It.
And the one we changed it to, we kind of went, bish bash bosh. And it was ten minutes.
It was just.
What do we really do? Well, we help businesses who want to grow faster.
Yeah.
Or something like.
That. And it.
Was just.
It was just a trial as well. We're like, well, we've got the one we actually like. And then we'll try this other one and see which one works better. And the other one worked better.
But again, that that's a really interesting point because that moves in to like, you know, the, the why of a website. So it's like if somebody says, how much does a website cost? You say, well, we could also start thinking about all of the, um, experimentation we could do. So we could try different, different storylines, different headlines, different positions of buttons. You know, we're getting into what's called conversion rate optimisation, Alex's baby. So you could spend a lot of time and effort and money on that and that can, that could pay back dividends. That could be money well spent. It still falls into the realms of web design, and it's more like website fine tuning.
Also, you know, are you going to send us completely written content for every single page of your website, or are you going to send us a kind of bits of it, and then we're going to have to fill in the gaps and write the rest up. And, and by in doing that, we need to understand what you do. We need to know what tone of voice you want to use, what sort of language you use, and get a feel for your business and who you're speaking to, and then write it. So again, it's not just a case of chucking a few words on the page.
I've just realised, I think this podcast should probably probably be called why websites cost the same as cars.
Yeah, probably.
Should, might, might provoke some provoke some thoughts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to bring it back to the beginning though, it seems kind of like what we're saying now though, is that the question is completely wrong, right? How much does a website cost? You're never going to stop paying for it. There is no point at which you can say, right, I've paid my thirty grand or three hundred grand. It's going to go on forever. It is like owning an expensive sports car, in that you constantly have to pay for maintenance upgrades for things to be fixed.
And Phil says when he's working on software development, he said, he said it's like having a child. Yeah. You know, you create the first version, the baby, and then you nurture it and then it becomes a teenager and you have to you have to spend more money on it. And then eventually you maybe have to say, right, the technology's moved on so much, we now need to create it all again. It's not like build it and then walk away. Having said that, you know, we often work with businesses who are using legacy software that was built when God was in short pants, and they're still using it now somehow. Um, but there's a heavy price to be paid when they finally realise they have to move into the twenty first century, I suppose. Um, I'm mindful that Rob's got a long drive and it's kind of the time of day on a Friday when we tend to wind things down. Has anybody got any closing thoughts on this? You've got to be thinking about that branding when you're driving back.
Yeah yeah yeah. Five hours with, you know, extra five hours.
You're gonna be eating sandwiches, drinking pop and just. Yeah, you know.
I'll be looking at the sandwich, trying to work out.
Biting it a certain way to get that make a logo.
Yeah, yeah. So if the logos got triangles in it, we know. That it's coming from your sandwich.
So will you come and podcast with us again?
Uh, I will, yeah.
I think you've done a fantastic job, by the way. Uh, Julie, closing thoughts from an area marketer.
No.
We're all happy. Uh, if you want to come on the podcast, we've got, we have got some guests lined up. Uh, I think the next one's not next week, the week after, I think. Yeah. Um, looking forward to that. If you. Want to come on the podcast and talk about any aspect of digital marketing, web design, search engine optimisation, business growth, whole raft of things really got a red evolution dot com and drop us a line or redevolution.com/digital-marketing-from-the-coalface if you want to. Um, in the meantime, are we all looking forward to the weekend?
We are.
Very much.
Good stuff. Let's go and do weekend then. All right. Well done.
Bye.
