Website designer

MyWorld said:
Thanks all, this has been a tremendous help!

Could someone explain SEM to me? I take it stands for Search Engine Marketing?

How does it work or where do I go to find some info on this?
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SEO: Search Engine Optimisation - the science? of tuning a page to result in high search results. Read "Free".

SEM: Search Engine Marketing - this is more the adwords approach, as opposed to SEO's organic results. Read "Paid".
 
Since there were a couple of very helpful people who PM'd me, I thought it would be good to give a report back.

We went for hosting with texo.co.za (thanks froot) and in their package they have a site builder app included. I whipped up a template based site from that and the customer (aka mom) is very happy with the result.

It is far from award winning and very basic, but they are happy that the B&B is "online" since this was also a requirement for the B&B to be listed/registered by the Natal Tourism board.

I'm actually too ashamed to give the link in the presence of the masters since we have some real Jedi master web designers here, but in the interest of making this report complete:
http://www.kokstadbnb.co.za

Be gentle with the critique, but if you spot something that could be done better, site layout that could be different, etc. you are welcome to give your views.

Very basic, I know, quite dull and lifeless. I'm nagging them constantly to get a good photographer to the house to take some quality pics, but so far there is no one in the Kokstad area who seems to be able to take decent wide angle shots to "sell" the place.

What also bothers me is that they have very little in the sense of marketing skills, they have no idea how to sell the place and I have never seen the place myself so I have to use whatever descriptions they give me... horrible!
 
MyWorld said:
Since there were a couple of very helpful people who PM'd me, I thought it would be good to give a report back.

We went for hosting with texo.co.za (thanks froot) and in their package they have a site builder app included. I whipped up a template based site from that and the customer (aka mom) is very happy with the result.

It is far from award winning and very basic, but they are happy that the B&B is "online" since this was also a requirement for the B&B to be listed/registered by the Natal Tourism board.

I'm actually too ashamed to give the link in the presence of the masters since we have some real Jedi master web designers here, but in the interest of making this report complete:
http://www.kokstadbnb.co.za

Be gentle with the critique, but if you spot something that could be done better, site layout that could be different, etc. you are welcome to give your views.

Very basic, I know, quite dull and lifeless. I'm nagging them constantly to get a good photographer to the house to take some quality pics, but so far there is no one in the Kokstad area who seems to be able to take decent wide angle shots to "sell" the place.

What also bothers me is that they have very little in the sense of marketing skills, they have no idea how to sell the place and I have never seen the place myself so I have to use whatever descriptions they give me... horrible!
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I hope you mentioned my name ;) :p
The website looks nice. Nothing fancy, but then again not everything needs to be flashy and super fancy and all (take this from a web designer).
 
Not too shabby. Nice and easy to navigate. I would def. look at giving the images in the gallery proper names rather than "house01.jpg". It wouldn't suck to have them open in a new layer rather than navigate away from the page but that's a very meh thing anyways :D
 
Nice site :)
Thou remove the ip's from the guestbook!

Also regarding the photo album, I can organize you something a bit better which you can integrate.
There's also many free systems available:)
 
Thanks for the pointers, will look into it later tonight.

SYNERGY, always open for better options!
:D
 
One thing I did for my sister-in-laws guest house was to register both .co.za and .com domain names. This helps a lot as Pofadder gets a lot of foreign tourists. (Was lucky to get the town name as a domain).

It only costs an extra R89 a year to do this.
 
@MyWorld, looks good very good. Two minor niggles:

I agree with whoever said to remove the IPs from the Guest book (if you can). It does looks suspicious that you have a whole lot of comments made within minutes of each other with the same IP, from different names! (I realise you're just moving comments from a physical guest to the site, but still....)

Also, I 'd put the physical address under the phone phones and next to the map on the location page.

But a nice looking site - very well done.
 
oh also try to implement google earth photo's including gps co-ordinates :) Might need someone else to do that for you thou
Will let you know about the photo galleries l8r
 
AntiThesis said:
Not too shabby. Nice and easy to navigate. I would def. look at giving the images in the gallery proper names rather than "house01.jpg". It wouldn't suck to have them open in a new layer rather than navigate away from the page but that's a very meh thing anyways :D
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It seems the photo managing software that is used cannot change the name to a more suitable one, I'll have a chat with SYNERGY to see what he can arrange for me.
 
Don't think theres much wrong with that website. If i'm looking for places to stay, I value the information on the website much more than a pretty looking interface. Just be sure to keep it clean and simple, and provide lots of helpful content. I'd also recommend finding your premesis on google earth and posting the gps co-ordinates.
 
Old thread sorry. Just don't want to start a new one. How much is the going rate for a 5 page B&B or something of that sort, and monthly charges you usually charge people?
 
Slab said:
Old thread sorry. Just don't want to start a new one. How much is the going rate for a 5 page B&B or something of that sort, and monthly charges you usually charge people?
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Hey Slab

I can organize something for you for around R1 200 for a 5 page website, that includes a .co.za domain name and one month free hosting.

Recurring costs for your website:

Maintainance = R50 per request (or R200 once off every month for unlimited requests)
Hosting = from R40 a month, depending on how much bandwidth your website will require.

Can't post my previous work here, I'll be banned lol. If you're interested, PM and I will also give you links to my previous work.

In this day and age, web design shouldn't cost you a fortune.
 
R200 for unlimited maintenece requests. Haha that made me laugh.

Would you buy a R5000 car to commute to work with everyday? Why on earth would you think spending R1200 on your business's internet face would be a good idea.
Think about how many man hours it would take to get to R1200 of a professionals time? 3 maybe 4......
How much time does having an initial meeting and then go and come up with a draft design. Then follow up, agree, implement, feedback, UAT, etc etc
 
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Aah crap, forgot to mention the part where I'm actually looking to offer the service. :D Otherwise thanks anyways, saw the going rates.
 
_kabal_ said:
R200 for unlimited maintenece requests. Haha that made me laugh.

Would you buy a R5000 car to commute to work with everyday? Why on earth would you think spending R1200 on your business's internet face would be a good idea.
Think about how many man hours it would take to get to R1200 of a professionals time? 3 maybe 4......
How much time does having an initial meeting and then go and come up with a draft design. Then follow up, agree, implement, feedback, UAT, etc etc
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Agree with this.
A decent graphic designer would blow that budget getting you a first draft..


koeksGHT said:
Everyone says SEO is expensive, its not ;)
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Good SEO is expensive because it's an ongoing process and not a "fire and forget".
Sure, using the correct tags (header tags, alt's on images, etc) is a once offish thing, tweaking the content every week and adjusting keywords is an ongoing process, or?
 
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