Web design companys using Joomla and templates

worc

flashforward wrote: »

What would you say to me if one of the sites I linked in the o.p cost €1300 to develop? 'daylight robbery'?

I really don't like to give the impression I am some Joomla pro who can critque and put down the work of someone else because I am very very far from that, but please just say it wasn't the painters website that cost €1300. If it was then personally I would have a very guilty conscience if I took that money off them for it. It also makes me consider why I was so concerned with the job I would have done for people had I decided to charge €200, and why I am bothering working voluntary at the moment to gain experience for a career change. They didn't even set up the site urls to be search engine friendly, which takes less than a minute to do.

I feel it would be unfair to be so harsh on the other site as they integrated VirtueMart into that one, which I have only done once for personal experience and not for a paying client. There are different possibilities, the guys who set that up might have been uber professional and basically did it for them in a day which might deserve a higher price for quick return and proper setup with no messing or fuss. Without knowing it's really hard to comment.

I've been to Adobe workshops run by a fellah called Guy Gowan who said he doesn't believe in being good at something leading you to do a job in half the time it might take your competition and then charging half the price of your competition too, he basically said if you can do it in half the time you should double or triple your prices. Maybe that was how they decided to do it but given they didn't implement an actual google map into the location page and instead print screened an image in there from google places, I'm not sure if they're so uber pro. But again without knowing time frames or full spec details I feel it difficult to comment.

If it took them 2 weeks and really they just implemented VirtueMart with given images, Xmap (2 minute setup) and JoomlaComment/CompoJoom I think €1300 is still pushing it. Note though that this isn't something I do as a career, so I could be being blinded by the fact that joomla sites are a hobby for me at the minute - I've been told I can be too generous with my time...so maybe I'm the dunce in all of this. But I really just feel that that sort of money just isn't deserving of a Joomla site setup.

flashforward wrote: »

Is there a case to say that a Joomla site (or Wordpress/Drupal) templated site is better value for money for the customer than a 'pro designed' site? For the same money a Joomla template site could give a good looking site with a lot more time developing custom code etc. than a 'pro designed' site purely due to the time saved not having to create a bespoke design.

For example could the sites linked in my o.p be emulated from the ground up and incorporate a CMS for under €1000?

To me if there are two identical sites, first one set up with a joomla template and the second one made from scratch, there is no way in hell they should cost the same!! The one from scratch should be way more expensive.

When you say "give a good looking site" the thing is you basically have the site set out a certain way as its already a template layout, when I set up a Joomla site I show people the options of templates to choose from so they already have an idea of the general style elements. I think it really depends on what extra you need in your website - I think if there is an additional €800+ worth of coding to be done to the template then you shouldn't really be bothering with the joomla site at all and maybe need a custom build. To get what your average business site needs, it really shouldn't take that sort of added coding to a Joomla template and probably should be a bespoke design.

worc

mhge wrote: »

Joomla template, pixelated stock photography, 1998 logos, haphazardly placed content. It's exactly this type of work that gives "weekend Joomla designers" bad name because unfortunately Joomla is particularly easy to abuse in this way.

I think that sums it up nice and neatly - and is exactly why templateers have such a bad name.

tomED

mhge wrote: »

Yeah but you see I'm much less concerned with what is was developed as, and much more with what I can do with it now in 2010 Anyway, as suggested, EOT.

Which is where we have a major difference in opinion!
But let's not go down that road - maybe that discussion is for another day, but let me finish by saying, that people's definitions of what a CMS have greatly changed over the last few years - it has become a throw away word for a system that allows someone to update their websites themselves without knowledge of HTML - which of course isn't exactly what a CMS is.

In fact, this thread has kind of turned into (myself to blame) using CMS's to define the value and professionalism of a website, when in fact that's only a small part of it.

I think it's fair to say that most of us in the industry would agree that both sites in the OP don't look very professional at all and we have an eye at spotting what sites are template driven or bespoke.

If you are paying for site, as mhge says, it comes down to the quality of the graphical appearance. Of course, we could all argue all day about what is the best CMS, how the site should be coded etc - but to a normal joe soap, the first impression and the brand image created by a website comes from the professionalism of the imagery and not the engine running behind it.

cormee

tomED wrote: »

If you are paying for site, as mhge says, it comes down to the quality of the graphical appearance. Of course, we could all argue all day about what is the best CMS, how the site should be coded etc - but to a normal joe soap, the first impression and the brand image created by a website comes from the professionalism of the imagery and not the engine running behind it.

Well usability is a big factor too, second impression - you may have the most beautiful site on the internet but if it's not usable it's utterly useless.

I was on a fantastic looking piano shop site a week or so ago, done in Flash - didn't bookmark it unfortunately- and to access different pages you had to hit different combinations on the keyboard - ie. to get to the contact page you had to hit do-re-mi, in that order. I could only imagine my father who recently bought a piano trying to understand that.

tomED

cormee wrote: »

Well usability is a big factor too, second impression - you may have the most beautiful site on the internet but if it's not usable it's utterly useless.

I was on a fantastic looking piano shop site a week or so ago, done in Flash - didn't bookmark it unfortunately- and to access different pages you had to hit different combinations on the keyboard - ie. to get to the contact page you had to hit do-re-mi, in that order. I could only imagine my father who recently bought a piano trying to understand that.

Yeah, not really the point I was trying to make. I was talking about the initial impression is enough to grasp if the design was done professionally or not.

From a web design point of view, good design is all about being usuable - so I don't seperate them.

There are some many different levels that you could use to debate this topic.

I think most of us would agree though, that it's easy to spot a site that took no longer than a few hours to get up and running, compared to one that has had a lot of work put into it. From a joe soaps point of view, their initial reaction as to whether the company is professional or not comes down to the image portrayed by the brand.

flashforward

I've just recently started with Joomla, and while in essence I disagree with templates I'm finding it hard to justify not using them for a small brochure site.

Ex. A potential client comes to me saying they want a simple brochure site, I offer them 2 options which both satisfy their needs. 1) a customized Joomla template 2) Bespoke Design.

I tell them option 2 will cost at least twice as much as option 1.
I can explain why option 2 is a better choice but in essence they just want a web presence. Something to put on their business cards and headed paper.

tomED wrote: »

I think most of us would agree though, that it's easy to spot a site that took no longer than a few hours to get up and running, compared to one that has had a lot of work put into it. From a joe soaps point of view, their initial reaction as to whether the company is professional or not comes down to the image portrayed by the brand.

Doubling up on your point: I think most would agree that Joe soap has no idea what is a template site and what isn't nor how much time was put into its creation.

But lets be honest, who is the target audience for the majority of sites - Joe Soaps.

They will see a rotator on the home page and automatically think 'Wow this is a great site'

They will be sold, why should a small business fork out 2k + for something that can be done for less?

In terms of SEO there is no guarantee that a well coded bespoke design will rank well. For a sales site, both options may rely mainly on the likes of adwords to get traffic.

worc

Why not look at it in terms of hourly rate.

Say you charge €50 an hour ... if you're charging someone €1300 then you should have spent 26 hours on the site. Which if it's a template setup is crazy time, if someone spent that much time on it they were probably learning on the job which is not on. Joomla out of the box needs some tweaks just to get it better for search engines, gzipped, optimizing of any template pngs you will keep in the design (even the top template clubs don't seem to bother with this for some reason), etc. but this work takes no time at all, I mean firebug pagespeed will actually create your optimized images for you!! You save them, upload them with filezilla...it couldn't be easier.

You could have a joomla template installed and setup with all of the above in 30 minutes (probably less to be honest) and factoring in say an hour to go over the process with them and show them a selection of templates to choose from you're talking hour and a half before getting stuck in to editing it. The customisation for the client shouldn't take twenty four and a half hours. To be spending 26 hours overall on a brochure website for someone is ridiculous - so if someone was charged €1300 for something like that it would be very bad indeed.

tomED

flashforward wrote: »

I've just recently started with Joomla, and while in essence I disagree with templates I'm finding it hard to justify not using them for a small brochure site.

I would say it all comes back to what your client is expecting to achieve. For example, is your client happy to have a site that looks exactly the same as possible thousands of others on the web? Is your client happy to just have a web presence.

I think you'll find that most serious businesses understand the importance of seperating themselves from their competition to get that competitive edge. But there is another market, which we choose not to target that are just looking for a web presence and are happy to have a templated website.

There is also one key point and that is if your client is happy to go this cheap and nasty route, they clearly don't see the benefits of having a properly designed and developed website. They also don't understand how beneficial the web can be to their business.

flashforward wrote: »

Doubling up on your point: I think most would agree that Joe soap has no idea what is a template site and what isn't nor how much time was put into its creation.

Yes I agree they won't know the difference. However, they are able to decide from a BRAND whether they are interested in buying their service or products. Take a shop front for example - would you go into a coffee shop if the windows were filthy and clearly not managed properly? I wouldn't, but if I see a clean window with nice food on display, yes I'd definitely go in there before the other.

flashforward wrote: »

They will see a rotator on the home page and automatically think 'Wow this is a great site'

Some will for sure - but the majority will not. You also have to think about what is the competition in terms of the brand. Again, using the shop analogy. If a shop offers the exact same thing, but one looks better than the other, you know which they'll choose.

flashforward wrote: »

They will be sold, why should a small business fork out 2k + for something that can be done for less?

Well if you can't see the reasons why, then your clients never will!

flashforward wrote: »

In terms of SEO there is no guarantee that a well coded bespoke design will rank well. For a sales site, both options may rely mainly on the likes of adwords to get traffic.

SEO does not rely on good code at all - you can rank with the most poorly coded website. But I don't think we need to go into that discussion!

strandroad

I've just recently started with Joomla, and while in essence I disagree with templates I'm finding it hard to justify not using them for a small brochure site.

For a small brochure site Joomla is overkill and pure laziness at the expense of the client. For a typical brochure site (several pages with texts and pics + contact form + embedded Google map) it's much better to put together a simple PHP+XHTML+CSS site and include a hosted CMS code in the pages for the owner to update the site. It will be much faster, lighter and more SEO friendly, with much less bloat and unnecessary work. It will also be way more viewable on mobile devices which is getting more and more important now.
But it requires planning and some skill. And in today's world with Facebook, Google Docs etc. everyone can set up a cowboy Joomla site as long as they have hosting account with Joomla installer. They don't even need FTP access these days.

Ex. A potential client comes to me saying they want a simple brochure site, I offer them 2 options which both satisfy their needs. 1) a customized Joomla template 2) Bespoke Design.

I tell them option 2 will cost at least twice as much as option 1.
I can explain why option 2 is a better choice but in essence they just want a web presence. Something to put on their business cards and headed paper.

That's all fine in theory but the problem is that with this mindset the "customised" part never happens. Most "Joomla jockeys" just choose whatever template they think looks fancy today, slap some horrible graphics on and throw in the content with no thought for usability. Most often they do not meet the client, they do not learn what the client wants to achieve through the website and what are their business goals. Their "planning" is just grabbing a template which happens to be blue or have a slideshow.

Doubling up on your point: I think most would agree that Joe soap has no idea what is a template site and what isn't nor how much time was put into its creation.
But lets be honest, who is the target audience for the majority of sites - Joe Soaps.

You seem to be quite patronising towards the audience you should be aiming to aid and educate. Yes, an average Joe won't be able to tell what's wrong exactly, but they will be able to tell that something is wrong. Perhaps it's just that the site is slow, or is difficult to navigate, or hurts their eyes, or it doesn't suit the nature of the business, or it just doesn't make sense. They don't need to be web educated to close the website off and open competitor's site where they make their purchase. And it should be your job to make sure this doesn't happen, or you're hurting your client who might not know better. That's why they hired you.

They will see a rotator on the home page and automatically think 'Wow this is a great site'

Perfect example of what I'm talking about. The point of having a website is not about someone liking the slideshow, or glossy text, or 3D modelling, or whatever the designer is fascinated with this week. The point is to get action - to get a sale, to have people e-mail you for a quote or send a link to their friends who asked for recommendation. Rotator doesn't cut it, quality and planning do.

They will be sold, why should a small business fork out 2k + for something that can be done for less? In terms of SEO there is no guarantee that a well coded bespoke design will rank well. For a sales site, both options may rely mainly on the likes of adwords to get traffic.

This is not about bespoke vs template. This is about producing quality sites vs selling no work as work. You can do a fantastic and profitable site on Joomla, but not with this mindset.

Pixelcraft

This thread is a good read for people looking to start a site imo. There are two tracks, invest properly or invest cheaply and it's clear reading this which one of those is better value.

whufee

mhge wrote: »

What's with the WordPress bashing here? WordPress is a fantastic CMS framework, very flexible and extendable. Much more so than Joomla. I'd have no qualms recommending properly set up WordPress installation for a large corporate/institution site (of which there are many examples) while Joomla is more small business targeted - way easier to set up out of the box on a ready made template, but then way less flexible.

If I was to hazard a guess who is more "pro" based on their CMS choice exclusively, I'd definitely put WordPress (or Drupal) ahead of Joomla.

:eek:
Those 'cms' are not pro, if you are a big ecommerce site, or financial service provider. You will never go to get that for your online customers, compare to wordpress or drupal, Joomla and typo3 are more developer friendly. In my opinion, wordpress is only for kidz....(sry joking :P)

Liam Byrne

cormee wrote: »

I was on a fantastic looking piano shop site a week or so ago, done in Flash - didn't bookmark it unfortunately- and to access different pages you had to hit different combinations on the keyboard - ie. to get to the contact page you had to hit do-re-mi, in that order. I could only imagine my father who recently bought a piano trying to understand that.

....and that's assuming that someone actually found the site in the first place!

Whatever about Joomla, anyone who implements a Flash site has been seriously sold a pup!

whufee

tomED wrote: »

In fairness to Whufee, he never bashed Wordpress, he just mentioned that there seems to be a facination with it - and I agree with him on that front.

Thanks mate

Scotty #

The original questions...

flashforward wrote: »

What should be the difference in cost between a Joomla template site and a non-template site to the same standard?

Answer: None!

If a developer builds a site from scratch there is no reason why he should charge any more or less than someone who used a CMS to build the same site. No reason at all. If I ask you to put a forum on my site and you build it from scratch should you be paid more than someone who installs phpBB? No.

In the examples given there is a clear difference in the quality of the work (though neither have spent much time 'personalising' the template) and one should certainly have charged more for their work than the other. The Irish site is a very poor standard and you only have to look at the designers home page to see that they produce poor quality work. Misspellings everywhere! Poor styling, etc. Incidentally both sites are using unlicensed templates (I'm Scotty from Joomlart btw). Wonder how the clients would feel about that?

€1300 for a Joomla site may be a rip off or it may be great value. All depends on the finished product.

Trojan

Scotty # wrote: »

If a developer builds a site from scratch there is no reason why he should charge any more or less than someone who used a CMS to build the same site. No reason at all. If I ask you to put a forum on my site and you build it from scratch should you be paid more than someone who installs phpBB? No.

[Devil's Advocate] EXCEPT when that developer is being paid to produce custom software and assigning copyright exclusively over to the client. Then they can charge vastly more.

--

I'm surpised at some of the negative comments on here about Wordpress. In terms of CMS's, it's well featured, particularly when configured correctly (the default setup is still very blog-centric). It has a very intuitive interface for end users, it has loads of documentation and a big user community, and most importantly it has truckloads of developers developers developers both adding features to core, and developing addons, exponentially more than competing systems. There's plenty of ways to use Wordpress wrong, but there's an awful lot going for it when it's used correctly.

Scotty #

Trojan wrote: »

[Devil's Advocate] EXCEPT when that developer is being paid to produce custom software and assigning copyright exclusively over to the client. Then they can charge vastly more.

Well yes, of course, if a person is specifically asked to build a system from scratch it is a different matter entirely. Plus if all ownership/copyright of the 'software' is passed to the client this adds further value to the work.

I get the feeling though from reading some threads on boards.ie that some designers feel they have a right to charge more because they have taken the long way round rather than the short one. I also get the feeling that Joomla, Wordpress, and CMS, are considered dirty words by some designers.

I can understand it though... I think part of the reason for it is because it makes their trade less 'specialist' almost to the point where anyone can build a half decent website and thus reduces the price a genuine, highly qualified developer can charge for developing a website. There are thousands of companies out there charging pittens and calling themselves web developers because they installed Joomla successfully once or twice and this is further competition for the pro's. So I can't really blame the pro's for 'open source CMS bashing'. It's costing them business.

But it's unfair to bash to the CMS themselves. Joomla, Wordpress, Etc are fantastic systems both for amateur and pro developer alike. It's the cowboys putting out poor quality work and calling themselves web developers that are really to blame.