Recommendations

[DMacomber]

We are trying to rebuild a website from scratch and want to know some good site designers/hosters. We need to have an online store and the ability to expand depending on how the website does.

I also know zilch, so any help would be appreciated.

[IncrediBILL]

If you don't know a lot about the process a good place to start can be using something like Yahoo, Amazon or eBay online stores so you can get experience selling online and not worry about issues like hosting and all that.

Not that those solutions are the best long term solution, but they offer good marketplaces for the novice and many advanced etailers use them to expand their online sales presence.

[Blue]

I would suggest that if you do go with a firm, choose one that has a well rounded knowledge of the complete business picture. Not design or technology only, but rather a good knowledge of website design and technology, hosting technology knowledge, and marketing knowledge especially including the importance of ROI in conjunction with conversions/sales.

Also, go with a firm that understands that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and can tailor a solution that precisely fits your business needs including expansion.

[DMacomber]

Thanks for the suggestions. I guess waht I am looking for is some examples of good partnering.

We have a design firm in town who seems like they would be great, except they don't have much expierience in the way of marketing or setting up online stores. One of my concerns is notso much how the site looks(which is important) but steering the traffic to the site. That aspect is the one that terrifies me. Spending the amount of money that has been quoted (anywhere from $7k-$125k), I want to make sure that the moeny is spent wisely. I don't expect results the same day, but want to make sure that we do it right. If that makes sense.

[Blue]

You're expectations are fine, and, you are on the right track in asking questions. Educating yourself, not the full-blown expert in the field type but rather the know enough to avoid pitfalls and scammers type is definitely stepping in the right direction.

I love clients who have taken the time to ensure they know the right questions to ask me, and, have firmly rooted themselves in the realities of running a business whether online only or a combination of on/offline.

I don't know the particulars of your project needs, but it seems to me that the range you've been quoted certainly runs the gamut. Did somebody really quote $125k whilst another quoted $7k?

One other item of note, and I don't know if it applies to you, but whilst there are certainly reasons for hiring a local firm, it is not an absolute necessity. Really, it depends on the needs of the client. But if you are looking local-only, you should examine your reasons why to see if they really are needed.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome! :hi:

As was stated above; it's important you hire a firm who knows everything, including how to get visitors to the site. It's one thing to build a nice looking site, but quite another thing if no one ever finds the pretty site. :)
That aspect is the one that terrifies me. Spending the amount of money that has been quoted (anywhere from $7k-$125k),
Wow; that's quite a difference. If your local firm does not know how to market sites, why would you spend that kind of money? If a design firm does not know how to build a site for your visitors and also for search engines, you will end up spending the exact same kind of money for a firm to market the site later on.

[SEFL]

I'm with others on the gamut, particularly on the high side of things. I could understand $7k as a high-side figure or maybe a middle-of-the-pack, but if that's your low side and $125k is your high side...wow. Unless your site is the next Amazon or eBay (not likely or you wouldn't be here asking the question you're asking), then $125K is not worth it for anything that's out there.

The key to finding a good shopping cart designer is to find someone who has actually done it before and doesn't use some third-party code-bloated crap (e.g. D'oh-S-Commerce, zenCart, cubeCart, etc.) and will talk to you about how to structure your site to make your customer's experience as easy as possible (e.g. making sure it doesn't take 10 clicks for a user to get to your product, payment processors that aren't PrayPal and don't suck, that sort of thing). That's a lot easier said than done, however; most so-called designers would rather put some insecure third-party piece of garbage up, tweak it minimally, and call it a "scalable, robust e-commerce storefront with a solid infrastructure" or some other corporate BS...and those of us that do know how to build a cart properly are usually too busy to do it (like me.)

If you can solve the issues of making your cart as user-friendly as possible and designing it properly upfront, much of the SEO stuff and "traffic steering" is already taken care of and you don't need to do anywhere near as much work in that regard.

Having said all of that, I'm not sure who I'd recommend since I don't know anyone else out there who builds custom carts (except maybe Doug and his team).

[DMacomber]

Thanks again for the help. The local firm is actually looking at around $30k to do background on our company, site design setup the cart (ZEN).

The $7k is bizatomic.com. They seem to get the sites that they sent us ranked failry high. I'm not promoting them, they so far have impressed me the most of the people I have talked to.
Our business is hopefully unique to the web, the trick is marketing it and that is where the firm (in my mind at least) needs to help the most.

[SEFL]

You're obviously new to this, DMacomber, and that's cool. You at least had the guts and presence of mind to ask questions first.

I have no idea who BizAtomic is. Up until today, I've never heard of them before. But there are some very subtle, but very clear signs that would scare me off...and I'm calling them out on all of them. Please understand that most of my comments are directed at BizAtomic and not at you, DMacomber...although I provide them to you as a means of getting some understanding of what to look for (and what not to).

Item #1:

http://www.bizatomic.com/articles/tip-of-the-month/use-alt-tags.html

First of all, it's an alt attribute...it's not a tag. If you don't know the difference between the two, you shouldn't be in the web design industry to begin with. Second, the idea of a blank alt attribute for images that don't require alt attributes (decorative lines, for example) is and always has been silly. If it's a decorative image, use the background property in CSS and store it as an appropriate element. This is one of those issues that has always been misinterpreted by the majority and is deeply flawed.

Item #2:

http://www.bizatomic.com/about-bizatomic.html

The cheap trick doesn't reveal itself right away; however, it will (in IE and Firefox at least) if you hover your mouse over the content portions of the page. You don't need to click...just hover over and wait.

You see that funky black text on the yellow background that shows up? That's not supposed to be there. That's called a title attribute, and it is primarily mean to summarize elements; it's also an optional attribute and not widely used. It's generally intended for elements that require a fairly long description for something that isn't self-explanatory.

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200412/the_alt_and_title_attributes/

This is a great explanation of how alt and title attributes are supposed to be used.

Item #3 (This is the big one):

http://www.bizatomic.com/link-building.html

The key to this section is this part here:

At the end of every week, a report is sent to you with the number of prospective link partners approached, links created and the urls of web pages reciprocating links.

The benefit of reciprocal links is non-existent, and one of the great prevailing myths of the SEO industry. Here's Google's take (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356) on the subject, and since they're the ones who ultimately control where you end up in their engine, you might as well play by their rules.

Here's another question, DMacomber: did you contact them or did they contact you? The good SEOs won't ever contact you because enough people are contacting them. The idiots...well, they're the ones who contact you.

[Connie]

At the end of every week, a report is sent to you with the number of prospective link partners approached, links created and the urls of web pages reciprocating links.
In addition to what Adam already mentioned, They are approaching prospective link partners. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that involves sending out spam email requesting link exchanges.

Zen cart is free. It needs some hacks to be made SE friendly, but I think both of the companies are probably overpriced for what they will end up doing for you at least in regard to SEO. On the other hand if your going to have a site that sells thousands of products, and the designer/developer is going to include every product in the data base and write the product description from scratch, the prices might be OK.

SEO needs to be built into a site from the ground up. If it's not you may find after paying several K that you still need to hire a SEO who will then recommend a complete rebuild of the site.

Rather than trying to hack an existing system I would recommend you contact someone like Doug (ihelpyou) who owns the forum for a price. I have seen his cart, and the cart he has developed is probably the best you will find anywhere.

[Connie]

As an after thought I would also suggest you contact Blue a supermod in the forum. Blue is a designer, and SEO. He has experience working with
OScommerce another free cart similar to zen cart.

[ihelpyou]

and contact Connie for moral support.. he's good at it.
contact incredibill for spam bot control and server security
contact websavvy for bad neighborhood help.
contact Adam for help in ranting in your blog and copywrite assistance.
contact Chris for programming help.
contact g1smd for all things spiders and robots.txt and 301 redirection help.

Heck; just contact each and every member in here who gives help daily and you will do just fine. :)

[IncrediBILL]

contact incredibill for spam bot control and server security

Not only that, I built a very popular ecommerce product back in '96 and kept it going for about 8 years so I know just a little about that stuff, wrote lots of payment gateways, anti-fraud code and other stuff, but thanks to partners and such just bailed on the whole thing and now I run from ecommerce because most of what I see off the shelf is crap and I don't want to keep re-inventing the wheel over and over.

So now it's just bot blocking and if someone is REAL NICE, I might tell 'em why their AdSense ads are off target ;)

[SEFL]

HEY!

I object to the ranting remark. Some of my rants aren't rants, but they're rants about legitimate stuff, so they don't count as rants...they're complaints. ;)

Seriously, don't count me in on anything right now. I can't take on anymore.

[WebSavvy]

Let's see, I have web accessibility, custom programming, XHTML/CSS table-less design, graphic design, and writing experience all under my belt ... and I'm suggested for: bad neighborhood help.

Geez, thank you Doug for such a ringing endorsement of my capabilities.

[SEFL]

I think he just wanted to give all of us a role, Deb. I wouldn't take that personally.

[WebSavvy]

LOL. I'm not taking it personally. heh heh ... I don't often get the chance to rattle Dougie's cage so I'm just exploiting my chance. :p

Sometimes it's fun to just be a brat. :D

[ihelpyou]

In the heat of the moment I was trying to think of something for each and that was what popped into my head Deb. LOL I'm not even sure why that particular item came to me. LOL

I missed quite a few others in the process as well. :D

[DMacomber]

Here's another question, DMacomber: did you contact them or did they contact you? The good SEOs won't ever contact you because enough people are contacting them. The idiots...well, they're the ones who contact you.


About the last point, there are two of us doing the research and I beleive my parnter in crime contacted them.

BTW, that local firm wants to charge $6k to implement zen cart. :2:
They shot themselves in the foot with that one. No mention that it is free ware. I am a somewhat paranoid person anyway, trying to figure out who to go with is not a fun proposition. Thanks so much for your help so far. I have contacted the folks at ihelpyou.

[SEFL]

There isn't anything wrong with that. When it comes to this stuff, it's actually a healthy attitude to take. Suspect everyone at first, until they start making some semblance of sense and show they're out for your best interests and not their own.

I can honestly say that I'm not surprised at the $6K for Zen Cart thing. Most people don't realize that a good custom cart is often less expensive than the implementation and fixing up of a free cart; free carts are often implemented by lazy screwjob artists who put in minimal effort to fix the gaping holes in it and charge far too much for it (see $6K figure above).

Paranoia RULES!

[DMacomber]

In addition to what Adam already mentioned, They are approaching prospective link partners. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that involves sending out spam email requesting link exchanges.

Zen cart is free. It needs some hacks to be made SE friendly, but I think both of the companies are probably overpriced for what they will end up doing for you at least in regard to SEO. On the other hand if your going to have a site that sells thousands of products, and the designer/developer is going to include every product in the data base and write the product description from scratch, the prices might be OK.

SEO needs to be built into a site from the ground up. If it's not you may find after paying several K that you still need to hire a SEO who will then recommend a complete rebuild of the site.

Rather than trying to hack an existing system I would recommend you contact someone like Doug (ihelpyou) who owns the forum for a price. I have seen his cart, and the cart he has developed is probably the best you will find anywhere.


I did send for a quote from Doug.

[WebSavvy]

Geez. They wanted to charge you $6k for setting up ZenCart? That whole thing takes less than 20 mins to set up. sheesh. That's highway robbery!

Were they going to install any code patches or do anything to fix any security issues with the script? If so, then I can understand charging for the extra custom programming work -- but honestly, not $6K.

I'm a programmer myself, so I know about what'd go into it and trust me, if you're paying that much you're getting ripped off.

If you decide you want to go with ZenCart, download the software yourself and then hire someone to install it for you. There's a forum on the ZenCart site itself I believe, and there should be some PHP programmers in there that could set it up for you.

Normally, just to set up a script most programmers on average charge anywhere between $25.00 - $250.00 depending on how much is involved.

[DMacomber]

Geez. They wanted to charge you $6k for setting up ZenCart? That whole thing takes less than 20 mins to set up. sheesh. That's highway robbery!

Were they going to install any code patches or do anything to fix any security issues with the script? If so, then I can understand charging for the extra custom programming work -- but honestly, not $6K.

I'm a programmer myself, so I know about what'd go into it and trust me, if you're paying that much you're getting ripped off.

If you decide you want to go with ZenCart, download the software yourself and then hire someone to install it for you. There's a forum on the ZenCart site itself I believe, and there should be some PHP programmers in there that could set it up for you.

Normally, just to set up a script most programmers on average charge anywhere between $25.00 - $250.00 depending on how much is involved.

Yeah I get the feeling companies smell some business and go "fishing" to see how much they can charge.

[SEFL]

Even then, Deb, that $20-$250 will generally just cover the install and maybe an install of a two-minute additional plugin without necessarily configuring it properly.

I've seen a lot more of the $6K to configure a free cart quotes/figures from people before than I have the $20-$250.

Like you said, it's a screwjob. Like I said, DMacomber, cinch up the tinfoil hat nice and tight...you're gonna need it, friend.

[DMacomber]

Even then, Deb, that $20-$250 will generally just cover the install and maybe an install of a two-minute additional plugin without necessarily configuring it properly.

I've seen a lot more of the $6K to configure a free cart quotes/figures from people before than I have the $20-$250.

Like you said, it's a screwjob. Like I said, DMacomber, cinch up the tinfoil hat nice and tight...you're gonna need it, friend.

Do you have a webcam on me?:hitting:

I hope not to be too much of a pest. Thanks again.

[WebSavvy]

Geez, you're kidding -- that much, Adam?

Cripe, when I did Patty's custom contact forms for her, I only charged her $45.00 and then did some extra stuff for her (because she's such a nice lady). I cleaned up her code so the whole site validated, plus did the CSS dressing for her forms to match the site, and went through and corrected some broken links she had.

OK, maybe I go overboard -- dunno. But I thought what I charged was a fair price. IMO, someone charging $6K to put in free cart software and add some patches and plugins, is STILL ripping people off.

[WebSavvy]

I hope not to be too much of a pest. Thanks again.
Not a pest. Ask away, because that's what we're here for. None of us like to see someone get ripped off. We all try our best to be as helpful as we can.

[SEFL]

What Deb said.

And oh yeah, Deb...I've seen things from a pricing standpoint that you can't imagine.

["..spielerfrau.."]

choose one that is reliable and can give you unique design which is appropriate to your desire...

[SEFL]

Meaning what exactly, oh DVD Addicted One?