A Blog in Suburban Glory: Web Design Ideas and Inspiration

At the moment I'm putting together a new business plan and I needed some data regarding how the web has affected business strategies. As a member of UK Business Forums I thought I'd ask fellow users to fill out a survey in order to gauge current attitudes to the web.

Around five or ten years ago businesses wanted to create a website simply because it was the done thing but now many realise that they need to effectively utilise this cyber-real estate.

As an example, just before Christmas I went to visit a prospective client. He was the boss of a company in the manual trades and wasn't computer literate at all. He didn't even have any PC's at work. Nevertheless, with next-to-no knowledge on the subject he knew that what was essential wasn't just to have a website but also to rank well for his industry and regional keywords (he didn't use the phrase keywords).

The outlook of some businesses though are still stuck in a different era.

A regular on Urban75 forums, weltweit, recently made a very acute comment on some attitudes:

“A lot of small businesses know a cousin or a mate who will knock up a site for them almost for free. It does not matter to them that it will actually achieve nothing, they just want to be able to say at the golf club that they have a website, they have hardly any idea what is possible with internet marketing.

“A proportion of people like that make good prospects a year or two down the line when the chairman's sons website has brought them absolutely no business, their site has had no visitors etc ... they divide into two groups, group 1 says the internet is crap, tried it and it did nothing, and group 2 who figure a little more deeply and realise that their existing site was simply pants.”

A cross-section of small businesses

17 individuals responded to the survey with the majority having a turnover of between £50k and £200k. One respondent declared a gross income of over 400k.

The industries were a broad cross-section including the manual trades of plumbing and gas central heating to clothing retail and gardening to computer spare parts and IT

A few were eCommerce cart owners.

Web design expectations

The first question was how they found the web designer who had created their site. Interestingly, over half said they made their site themselves while a smaller group went on recommendations. A couple stated Google or a sales call.

The next question was whether their site lived up to their expectations and then whether they felt their web presence is currently used to its full potential.

Nearly everybody said that they were happy with their initial creation but at the same time almost all respondents confessed that they had varying degrees of ground to gain on the web.

Some comments included:

“We need to invest in marketing, but are unsure how to get the best return on investment, and which marketing tactics work best. Previous attempts, including Adwords, have not proven to a good RO”

“Work is needed at the moment for keywords, adding photo album, adding content, links, also we need to integrate our blog to our site rather than hosted with Wordpress”

“I think it could be better if I had a fuller understanding of SEO, and utilised other marketing”

“Would like to be able to offer online order tracking, re-ordering, ect for my clients, but I don't have the skills to do this and cannot afford thousands for somebody else to do it.”

“The site isn't good enough, the SEO is not good enough and we have spent very little money on marketing it”

How much for web design?

Essex-based web designer Sarah Parmenter has written about the gulf between customers expectations and the financial reality in “Why I can't build a website for £500...”, so to gauge this issue I asked two questions: What would you consider a fair price to have a website made and what would you consider a fair price to have an eCommerce cart made?

It's not possible to work out an average price quoted as they were often given conditionally (“£50 per page”) but responses varied, some quotes being:

“For my needs I wouldn't pay more than £500 but it would be have to be really good as I have made several websites using HTML and it's not really that hard. The only reason I would pay someone is if I just don't have the time or I wanted something really amazing. I would have very high expectations of a professional.”

“No set costs. It ranges for hosting only charges using WP to many thousands using a Flash based dynamically drive site which is cloaked for SEO purposes.”

“Depends on the site. £500 to £2000 – the £2000 would have to be the Rolls Royce of websites!”

“This I suppose would depend entirely on the site, but maybe £100 for the main page, £25-£50 thereafter?”

“For our needs probably around £600-700.”

Ranges for eCommerce carts, when given, were from £1k to £15k.

Asked whether in the coming years they regarded a strong web presence to be more important to their business, less important or about the same three quarters said more and the rest said about the same.

Web terminology

Finally, it's easy for those involved in the online creative industries to forget that what are common industry terms are not necessarily well known elsewhere. I presented a number of web technology terms and asked those filling out the survey whether they fully understood them. The phrases and the percentage of those stating they did are here:

Title	Percentrage
Search Engine Optimisation	88%
Flash	88%
Firefox	88%
Content Management System	88%
SERPS	70%
Cache	70%
RSS	76%
CSS	59%
XHTML	59%

Without doubt, pound-for-pound when compared to other means of marketing and promotion, a web presence – if done correctly – is a good investment. These results testify that many small businesses recognise it's importance and are clearly attuned to much of what it entails. With the help of clear communication from the web designer any gaps in knowledge are not insurmountable.

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Brentwood web design