Website design in Phuket for my wife's business

[timothybrown]

Hi guys,

Anybody who knows a good place for website development?

My Phuket wife and I are looking to start up a small business and would like to have designed a website, but not too expensive you know. We looked a bit around and the cheapest service we could find was http://www.designphuket.com/ at 5500 baht for the smallest website solution. I'm pretty new to this so is it a good deal or..?

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks

Timothy

[hansgruber]

That's a cheap price. Some places start from 15000.

[timothybrown]

Ok, that was my impression too thanks.

[keestha]

OP, anybody with your command of English can do it himself using for instance Dreamweaver.

[Somtamnication]

It depends on what you want. Shopping cart? Lots of pages? Order pages? How many pages? How often do you want the site updated?

Once completed, do you continue with it or the designer? If the designer, is the price included or is it at a per call / request/ per hour, etc.

[LoveThaiGirls]

Yes you need to really think about how you want the site to progress going forward. It's cheap to make 4 static pages if you don't need them updated, but as soon as you cross into dynamic/e-commerce solutions it is going to seriously increase the cost as there are so many variables to consider. Then it's a case of how much of the effort you want to put in (content) vs the designer (management) etc.

Also remember there may be conditions attached to cheap site builds. If the designer is doing the hosting/domain as well, they may not allow you access to make changes yourself, forcing you to go back to them for any changes (which may be more expensive in the long run). So also think about it as two/three parts, 1) the design, and 2) the hosting 3) domain name. Ideally you want some level of control over each so that you can easily move each aspect to a different provider for whatever reason, without incurring hefty hidden costs.

[PattayaPhom]

Wix, Webs, Weebly all over free websites and upgrading including email and domain is cheaper than you quoted. No doubt by now you have probably received 50 messages from people offering their services. My advice to you from my own costly experience is they are totally useless and unprofessional without any real training or qualifications. If you do decide to go with someone, make sure they at least have an office, a registered company and if foreign a valid work permit...Do not under any circumstances meet in a coffee shop or similar. Ask for at least 10 examples of current websites and contact their customers for feedback otherwise you are in for a massive headache by some total pleb.

Definatly leave them alone. For a company that purports to offer SEO and get you in the top rankings, they cant even do it with their own website....try search engines see how low down they are if you can be bothered to look that far...so as they say the proof is in the pudding, just yet another tin pot cowboy wannabe web designer trying to make a crust in Asia.

Just looked at their examples...jeez...if they are charging 5,500 for that its daylight robbery...domain and, email will only cost 700-800 and the sites they have done about 2-3 hours work......try and do it yourself as these just prove yet again what thieves these designers really are.

Edited April 18, 2015 by PattayaPhom

[PiAirr]

If you have no previous experience in:

1. Web Design
2. Search Engines Optimization (SEO)
3. Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns and Search Engines Marketing | Social Media Management (SEM | SMM)
4. Email Marketing

It's going to take you a while to be familiar with everything and to have your online business up and running. Sorry to say that but, my guess is that for 5500 Baths you get absolutely shit. I see so many crap website aiming the Thailand Market and they start at 50k. Not to mention that you are not even talking about a hosting. A VPS in Singapore from a decent Data Center would not be less than 40$ per month.

In fact I would recommend you to be prepared to pay a Webmaster / Web designer for at least a year to assist you while you get the primary concepts of the online industry. For instance E-Commerce Websites requires a lot of work for the content, the structure of the site not to mention that it has to be responsive to mobile devices and well prepared to welcome search engines bots. Net linking is also an extremely long process, almost endless actually depending on the competitiveness of your business niche.

Edited May 13, 2015 by LivinginKata
recommended link removed - rule 12

[stevenl]

Do you have any connection with the recommended company? I am asking because your post gives that impression.

[rwdrwdrwd]

Agreed, and cheaper still (after the first year) is digitalocean which has a Singapore region at $5 a month - hosting is far cheaper than it used to be.

$40 a month for what the OP describes is 1999 prices.

5000 baht is uber cheap though, it's only a fair price for a couple of pages with very little functionality - a couple of hours work. If you're being offered more than that for this amount, I would strongly question the quality.

Edited May 13, 2015 by rwdrwdrwd

[cdmtdm]

odesk.com you will find many good freelancers to do your work , cheap and fast ..... failing that talk to Richard at [email protected] he will give you the right answers , longtime Phuket resident

[cornishcarlos]

The company in Op states that they have experts in SEO, yet they appear at the bottom of page 2 on a google search for web design in Phuket

[timothybrown]

Agreed, and cheaper still (after the first year) is digitalocean which has a Singapore region at $5 a month - hosting is far cheaper than it used to be.

$40 a month for what the OP describes is 1999 prices.

5000 baht is uber cheap though, it's only a fair price for a couple of pages with very little functionality - a couple of hours work. If you're being offered more than that for this amount, I would strongly question the quality.

[timothybrown]

Ok thanks for your advise. It's good to be critical..

Anyways I can see some of you guys know a lot of technical details about websites - well for me it doesn't need to be have a lot of functions, it just needs to be .. a website LOL