Business catalyst or Webpress? How much will I pay?

[Warren Cottis]

I work with a lot of small businesses and if anything, I think there is a greater responsibility to help them with their marketing rather than just delivering the website

As such... I was surprised that John thought he made a gumby comment... no more

[kbrookes]

I don't disagree, just felt that the comment was a little ambiguous.

[JohnSheppard]

Originally Posted by warrenc

This has been an interesting thread.

Quite frankly, I don't think you said a gumby thing, John.

In fact I am befuddled... if web people are going to deliver a website to a client and not involve themselves in the client's internet marketing plans then what are they really delivering?

haha, well in truth I guess I was just trying to avoid discussing that particular issue at the time and went a bit overboard with self recrimination . I think there are times to get involved and times not to get involved.

If I was building a 20k+ site, you betcha I'd be involved. If I was building a $2000 site, sure...they need marketing advice, definitely, but are they paying for it? No. So they don't get it.

My advice to people looking at websites who are not 'from the internet' themselves is that you should go to the web developer who does get involved. You don't find those in the price range the original poster is looking at.

I am kinda torn between weather there is responsibility on a web developer who knows full well that someone is throwing away their money to tell them and turn their business away. I don't have the answer to that.

Originally Posted by warrenc

Is the answer... a glorified business card?

Well I don't know if it's an answer, it's a stop gap. That's what some people need/want and that's ok. As those in the know know there's a whole lot more to it than that if you really intend to use the Internet to more than 1% of it's capacity.

[Adam Wozniak - wecancreate]

This has been a very interesting thread to follow. Just thought I'd post here to automatically get notifications for any future responses.

Or am I bit late to the party now? :P

[jonnie]

Hi Katie,

Been in the business for a while. Every designer will promote their shopping cart. It's only natural, I used to do the same thing.

I would recommend you find the right eCommerce platform for your business and then select a designer to build on that.

If you want to sell products, go for BC. If you want to sell content and build a following, go for wordpress.

Whatever you do, go for hosted. If you dont have a $7k budget, then don't gor for open source, or licensed. Go hosted. You will not regret it.

My 2 cents.

Regards Jonnie

[ShanghaiSi]

Katie, congratulations on making a decision. Lots of good and comprehensive advice.

This is a good perspective for those techs amongst us, and I don't work in the web design industry anymore...but 3500 k to set up a hosted solution...seriously thats a lot of cash for little work.

Im not sure what ongoing service agreement you have in place or what your tech skills are like but given your goal was to get it up and running and not have to worry about the operational side of it wouldn't more of your cash be better spent in on going support?

When we were in web-design we were generally 35-40% more expensive than our competition for design and still won the works, based on the maintenance contracts and the scope of these.

No good getting online, realising its not working and then having to pay that amount again to get it fixed.

If you're happy to pay and this represents value to you Katie, then fantastic, but please don't ignore the on-going maintenance considerations and costs, you wont regret it.

Wish you all the best of success with your new business.

Cheers
Simon

[The Internet Bloke]

I've just found this thread, and looked through all of the advice that has been given to Katie.

And I'm pretty stunned that nobody even bothered to ask for more information before wading in with all the suggestions.

Before ANY recommendations are made, why didn't anyone ask questions like:

1. How many different types of items are being sold, and are there large numbers of the same item?
2. Will they change often?
3. What sort of items are they? What delivery arrangements apply?
4. Does she have a merchant account or just want to use Paypal?
5. Are the products physical items, or electronic (ie e-books)?
6. Does inventory need to be tracked?
7. What is the anticipated yearly turnover, number of transactions, and expected growth?

And that's just for starters!

I recently spoke to someone who was totally ripped off. He was sold an E-Commerce system costing over $10,000 (plus expensive ongoing costs) when the current and future scale of his operations could be adequately handled by a HTML sales page with Paypal buttons.

You have to make the solution suit the circumstances.
Not just sell your favourite package, or the most expensive one you can.

Katie - Perhaps you'd like to come back and let us know how it all worked out for you, and whether you are happy with the site you purchased.

Regards,
Eric G.