Site design for small to medium size company. Advice please

Praetorian

I have to get a proper website done for a small transport company.

I like work I've seen for companies in the same industry done by

http://www.pegasys.ie/

http://www.ilikecake.net/

http://www.continuum.ie/

Has anyone here had any experience with these companies? What are they like to deal with? I don't want to hand over money and be bitterly disappointed by something I could knock together myself with frontpage or something (yes I am out of touch with web design). I've literally only got a company logo to go with (an ugly one at that) and a page or so of text content for the site.

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

daisy25

I haven't worked with any of those, but I've worked with Generate, who are great: http://www.generate.ie/

Very helpful, easy to work with and the design I got was gorgeous.

peejay1986

I'm not too keen on any of their portfolio work if I'm honest.

If you have the budget I'd recommend using Huguenot

http://www.huguenot-xmi.com/

You may pay a bit more but you get top quality results.

p

Thos 3 companies are vastly different in their services and range. You've gone from one person just barely at professional level to a large company that offers enterprise level solutions. There's probably a price ange from 1000-20000 in what those guys would charge. Trying to decide what you need and asking afew more questions here will help. What type of company you should be approaching depends a lot on your needs.

p

peejay1986 wrote: »

If you have the budget I'd recommend using Huguenot
http://www.huguenot-xmi.com/

They're excellent at what they do, but they're not really a web company, I doubt they'd offer good value for money for the original poster.

Sully

Not familiar with any of the above (well one of the employees at ilikecake did graphic design with us for a bit) tbh. If your not happy with any design service provided to you, always state so to the designer and ask for improvements to be made. Tell them why your not happy, what you don't like about it and what you want. This way they can give you the design that matches your requirements. I always think people should check out each companies portfolio and testimonials to see if the company does offer good quality designs.

Webstar

Praetorian wrote: »

I have to get a proper website done for a small transport company.

I like work I've seen for companies in the same industry done by

http://www.pegasys.ie/

http://www.ilikecake.net/

http://www.continuum.ie/

Has anyone here had any experience with these companies? What are they like to deal with? I don't want to hand over money and be bitterly disappointed by something I could knock together myself with frontpage or something (yes I am out of touch with web design). I've literally only got a company logo to go with (an ugly one at that) and a page or so of text content for the site.

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I'm not aware of any of them, but one I would recommend for a transport company is Shop Group Media, http://www.shopgroupmedia.com since they recently re-designed my freight transport company website with excellent results. The staff were very professional and I was deligted with the results and the pricing. You should contact them for a quote.

p

Webstar wrote: »

I'm not aware of any of them, but one I would recommend for a transport company is Shop Group Media, http://www.shopgroupmedia.com since they recently re-designed my freight transport company website with excellent results. The staff were very professional and I was deligted with the results and the pricing. You should contact them for a quote.

Tell me, what is the name of your Freight company?

Webstar

The name of the Freight Company is http://www.emergencyfreight.com, we deliver freight worldwide.

Mike...

Webstar wrote: »

The name of the Freight Company is http://www.emergencyfreight.com, we deliver freight worldwide.

nothing wrong with that site

heggie

I'm not sure if your being sarcastic or not, but there is, plenty wrong with it. OP should be looking for a higher quality service. The site posted is lacking in any design, is built using tables, and has errors in code.

Sully

heggie wrote: »

I'm not sure if your being sarcastic or not, but there is, plenty wrong with it. OP should be looking for a higher quality service. The site posted is lacking in any design, is built using tables, and has errors in code.

Ya they could have done a lot better for themselves - a lot of design company offer that bog standard type of design as "quality".

heggie

Sully wrote: »

Ya they could have done a lot better for themselves - a lot of design company offer that bog standard type of design as "quality".

Here's the thing though, it's not bog standard, it is sub standard & poor quality. It shouldn't be sold at all

Sully

heggie wrote: »

Here's the thing though, it's not bog standard, it is sub standard & poor quality. It shouldn't be sold at all

I have seen that type of design on many sites. Its a type of design where the guy knows a bit of HTML and CSS but has no actual design talent. Hence the lack of quality and sub standard. It probably was done on the cheap and the customer didnt know any better.

I dont like that type of design at all but its common enough. In fact, I received many job applications from designers with that type of design on their portfolios.

professore

Looks pretty good to me .... only other web nerds care about CSS Strict and XHTML ... anyway Internet Explorer doesn't support half of the standards. As long as your website does what you and your customers want the rest is irrelevant.

p

heggie wrote: »

Here's the thing though, it's not bog standard, it is sub standard & poor quality. It shouldn't be sold at all

I understand where you're coming from, but that's really a little bit over the top. It's far from sub-standard. If you look at the real 'standard' of sites then it's pretty much on the mark. It's far from visually stunning or ground breaking, but it's a functional website, it looks well enough given it's a freight company.

When you say sub standard it sounds like you're comparing the site to some ideal, perfect site in your head with perfect HTML & CSS and stunning visual design. That's great, but that also costs money as there's relatively few people doing that kind of work in Ireland. In practice I find it's more of a scale.

I'm curious what the business goals of this site are, and whether it meets them. I'd say it meets many of the goals of the client, and ultimately that's the true test of a web project. In any aspect of business you'd like the best of everything, but you've got to decide whether you'll get the return on your investment. Spending €2000 on your website might yield the same amount in new business whereas spending €20,000 might just be a waste of money. No point having a fantastic website if you don't get a tangible return for the cost of it.

heggie

sure not every site will be an ideal, but whatever about validating, I don't think sites built using tables should ever be provided as a professional service. I also don't think that building that site using CSS would have increased the cost significantly. I take your point, and largely agree with it, just wanted to point out what I did as this is in a thread about who to turn to for having a site designed.

Sully

There are plenty of businesses who offer quality designs which not only validate and meet standards but are not in a very large price range. I am with heggie on this, I think they could have done a lot better without paying a fortune.

p

Heggie & sully. You're both very right. A site can be built poorly and still a moderate success, but I probably wouldn't point someone in that direction either!

The Mighty Ken

professore wrote: »

only other web nerds care about CSS Strict and XHTML

Just Web nerds, eh? How about people with disabilities who use assistive technologies? How about developers having to maintain and update the site at any point? What if the site owner decides to go for a complete redesign and doesn't want to have to pay to have all the mark-up done again? You think Google likes code soup? What about cross-device and platform compatability? I could go on all day...

I just pray that you're not working in the Web industry, professore.

CiarM

www.mpowerireland.com i found were the best, I work in marketing and have pointed several companies to web design groups in the past, i found these best.

ciara

The Mighty Ken

CiarM wrote: »

www.mpowerireland.com i found were the best, I work in marketing and have pointed several companies to web design groups in the past, i found these best.

They don't seem to even have a portfolio or a list of services/core competencies on their site.