Website Owners – Look at the big picture

Just some information about the build / transfer of websites and domains, this highlights the fact that if you try to cut costs and not promote your website you will potentially loose huge amounts of customers / inquiries / work.

Old Website Designers We have been passed your account over to us on the management side for release, I am happy to help process this for you.

To transfer the domain away from our system, we need the new IPS TAG for your new provider. Once we have this, the process can be started. We charge a release administration fee of £55 to manage and release domain names moving away from us. This must be paid before a transfer is actioned. Please confirm you wish to go ahead and I will have our accounts team raise an invoice.

Regards to the domain name ownership, this is handled by Nominet, the .uk domain administrators. They charge £15+vat to change details assigned to the owner of a domain. We can process this on your behalf without an additional charge. We would require this to be paid before doing so. If you wish us to process this change, please confirm your details including company name and a full address for your business.

Delicious Webdesign As they registered the website to themselves, presuming you have paid them for it, they should transfer it to yourself – your name / email address for free.

Once ownership of domain is transferred (once you own it) and if you have Nominet access then we can transfer the domain using the IPS tag ENOM If you have ownership then we can do this.

Alternatively, if the above causes problems you will need the other company to register it to yourself via Nominet then transfer it to ourselves using IPS Tag ENOM.

Website Owner Just looking at the path of less resistance, would leaving the hosting with my previous company cause you any issues. As when factoring in the cost of changing the hosting it only saves me about £20.

They have said that they would be happy to send an email confirming ownership and give you an open access panel for your design work. Let me know your thoughts on this.

Delicious Webdesign This isn’t a problem but there are technical issues that may appear regarding the development of the website including conflicts and problems with their versions of MySql and PHP that they use / upgrade to with the website code we use. It would be extra work / maintenance for us to monitor / check your technical details before all updates are made and to have an individual testing cycle for your domain.

From your perspective you would have one company hosting / one company managing and designing the site giving you two points of possible failure and two points of admin / billing.

We have a dedicated, award winning, fast UK based server that is rock-solid with 24/7 support.

We have over 500 website clients and none have hosting with one website design company and website design / promotion /maintenance services with another.

Therefore I strongly suggest you move the domain ownership / hosting. Don’t forget that there is no charge for domain hosting for the first year with us.

Website Owner Ok that’s fine I appreciate your advice and will set the wheels in motion to get the changes made. In the meant time I have contacted the Logo design guys to request the logo to be sent in the suggested formats. They will advise me on this tomorrow morning.

4 years pass………

Client does a WordPress Course

Here are my updated notes from or first meeting, which amazingly was nearly 4 years ago now, and our chat today, the fact you are doing a WordPress course is good and in theory you will be able to update / tweak the text / photos once the website is created.

I propose if you have limited funds currently is to use that as a first installment on the website project so we can get it started and live and then for you to make monthly payments after that.

We have setup the Google Local Map listing and you should get the code within a few days

3 months pass …

Website Owner Thanks for applying to Google I did receive the code. However, I think that I may of come across this a few weeks ago and set it up (I think). It might not be the same as I didn’t need a code.

I’m interested to find out more about your proposal of an initial payment followed by monthly payments and wondered if you could include details on cost including monthly payments and terms ect.

Delicious Webdesign That code was for the Google account we setup that will allow us to advertise / promote yourself and we have already created and configured your business listing for you but if you have managed to use it to setup another account that is ok but we will need to add myself to your account.  Have requested access just now (please accept the request)

I will then sent a separate email (should be by this afternoon) about payment terms for the website project

Glad we are starting to make progress with this website project, am keen to get the website started which will eventually bring in its own stream of enquiries to help you get more work / enquiries / sales.

I propose if you have limited funds currently, as you mentioned this a few times recently as the reason why you didn’t want to progress with the website 4 years ago, we can use those funds as a first instalment on the website project so we can get it started and live and then for you to make monthly payments after that am pretty flexible with monthly payments so feel free to suggest alternative if you feel my plan is not-affordable.

Estimated Costs

Domain Transfer in / Domain – Hosting – Email for 5 years (2016 – 2021)
SSL Certificate / Website Licences / Security / Performance
Website Design / Development
Website promotion (SEO)
Webcopy
Pro Stock Photos

First Payment
Website Deposit
Monthly payments for 5 Months

Hope that sounds fair and reasonable (quote hasn’t changed since 4 years ago) and we are able to start within 2 days of payment of Deposit

Client receives and replies to a ‘spam’ email saying their website isnt performing very well.

Website Owner Thanks for sending me your proposal, however I have decided to make alternative arrangements for the implication of the website.

would you please advise me on how to access my domain / url / website? Once again thanks for the time you have spent with me over the past several years.

Delicious Webdesign Thats a real shame after all the time spent planning your website we would love to build and promote your website especially as you will have myself as a past client of yourselves. What are you thinking? If the cost quoted seems too much then its possible that we can reduce this to make this website project work for you.

Website Owner I would also like for you to design website however the figure I have in mind is about 1/5 of the quote, all I want is a front page and 1 or 2 pages including a contact page, possibly prices, some testimonials. More to be added in the future, the long term aim is to grow, it’s just having the time to focus on this is difficult and a juggling act what with the actual work being of the primary importance as that pays the bills.

Luckily, I presently have more work than I can do myself so it does not need to attract hundreds of customers more a shop window. however, some search engine optimisation, Google search console set up and inclusion, an optimised XML sitemap enhanced for search engine robots would of course be useful and I’m sure this is included as routine with your service.

I understand that there would also be some ongoing cost regarding hosting and for any additional development and wonder if you would be able to indicate the hosting cost and a rough idea of future development cost per additional page.

Delicious Webdesign Really pleased with this message. Although as explained you are missing out on lots of work by delaying this and by restricting your site to 3 pages you are missing out on potentially lots of Search Engine visits to your new website.

We can work with this for you and although its probably a bit like you getting a customer who just wants 1/5 of your services I see the battle you must be having with yourself spending money on ‘marketing’ (a website) when you are always booked up. I would argue that having a website is ‘essential’ and will make your life easier and more ‘efficient’ and be able to provide more leads that you could pass or sell to other friends and contacts in your industry.

Will be able to create you a Search Engine Optimised website that looks good, loads fast, and is integrated with Google Search Console (this is a standard of ours) you have obviously read a few things about websites and XML sitemaps are probably not the most important thing to concentrate on at this early stage.

I suggest we can build you a SEO friendly small (3-4 page) website within your budget

We normally charge approx. £22 per month for domain / hosting / email / SSL certificate / Software licences / Security / Performance / Maintenance and software technical updates, here is my proposal

Website Owner Great that’s sounds good to me. I meant to get back to you earlier buts it’s been stupidly busy so completely done in. I do have some copy done and will arrange to get that over to you. I will contact you with in the next few days to arrange details. But at this stage I just wanted to respond to your email. thanks for getting back to me and we will move ahead with this soon.

I did a little experiment with the phone regards some video for the website. I’m not suggesting actually using this particular video but wondered if something like this would work. I have attached the video and would be interested on your thoughts.

11 Months Pass…

I now want to go in a new direction with a new website designer!

To transfer the domain, your current domain registrar needs to go to his account, click on manage domain and then go to sharing & transfer. There he needs to enter new owner username

Website Designers Assuming you want us to share with you the Google Accounts (Local / Analytics / Search) as well as moving the domain to your new company  will get Google to send you a code to verify this – there will be a small admin charge for this (will keep it to £50 assume thats ok), please tell me when you are ready for the code.

Domain release and Google account transfers are 55 plus 75, full details of these costs on the website if needed to view.

Website Owner Can I confirm are you saying that you want me to pay you £50 for you to release my domain?

I voiced this as a concern when we had a meeting and you dismissed this stating, I was the first to have this concern and shouldn’t worry as that’s not the way you operate. I was not made aware of these charges when we had our meeting to discuss the development of the page. I feel I have paid a fair price for your service and disappointed that you are making this charge. I’m sorry to say I feel it’s petty and underhanded.

Website Designers Cant remember the conversation but our position has never changed we allow you to do what you want with your website once its been paid for after completion. We have always charged an admin fee but if you dont want to pay it then Im happy to release your domain for free, will be done now. Dont appreciate being considered petty and underhand as that’s as far from our standard as can be imagined, never had a client pay so little over such a long period (nearly 6 years). For interest just calculated we made a financial loss from your website / hosting and its ironic that you appear to be so critical about us so I bid you good luck and farewell.

Summary

Wasting time results in a loss of website visitors / sales / inquiries

Trying to save a few pounds / micro-managing the website will invariably cost money in terms of lost work

If you opt for low spec websites you will invariably get lower website visitors

Website attracted only 450 visitors in 4 years, for comparison another website created with a standard budget and launched only 1 year ago attracted 450 visitors within 3 months.