Website price?

[Dino]

I know it's difficult to say precisely but how much roughly should i pay for a website for my car retail business?I want a front page and then a stock list page to include details and photo's of stock which i would maintain.Do i have to pay for a domain name even if no-one has it? and do i have to pay for hosting and if so how much approx do you think? Can't you tell i'm a novice at this web lark! I know about traffic and will think of marketing ways to direct people to it and i'm not expecting to feature on search engines,it's just a way of being able to show what i've got for sale at any one time.
Any opinions welcome and if anyone fancys quoting to make it please feel free to pm me or post.
Many thanks for taking the time to read this,i'm off for a lie down

[Jimbo]

Originally Posted by Dino

I know it's difficult to say precisely but how much roughly should i pay for a website for my car retail business?

Between £250 - £50,000!

Originally Posted by Dino

I want a front page and then a stock list page to include details and photo's of stock which i would maintain.

To give you a rough guide - I asked a company we do some work with who has done similar things, and he was looking to quote £12k for it. Without knowing more specifics, my company (www.edgeoftheenvelope.net) would be quoting somewhere around the £2.5k mark including all image work, and an easy to use system for you to add, delete and modify vehicles. We would then charge a monthly maintenance fee to include hosting, domain names, search engine optimisation and site support.

Originally Posted by Dino

Do i have to pay for a domain name even if no-one has it?

Yes. You don't actually "buy" a domain name - you pay to lease it. This fee (in the end) goes to Nominet, who control how requests to that domain are routed. A domain will cost you about £10 for every 2 years (for a .co.uk) provided it's available - more if someone holds the lease and is trying to name a silly price for it!

Originally Posted by Dino

and do i have to pay for hosting and if so how much approx do you think?

Short answer is - yes. If you were technically minded, you could host it yourself on a pc connected to broadband, but I would suggest not even considering that in your position! Again, the cost of hosting varies dramatically, and what it comes down to is what you use your site for. I am a reseller for hosting, and sell space in a big fully managed data center, and my packages start at £50 a year for a basic setup, rising infinitely as customers demands and needs increase. Any good web designer will be able to sort out hosting that suits you, and the website they have made you, at a reasonable price.

Originally Posted by Dino

i'm not expecting to feature on search engines,it's just a way of being able to show what i've got for sale at any one time.

If you're paying for a website, again, a good designer should be able to make it rate reasonably in search engines!

Originally Posted by Dino

Any opinions welcome and if anyone fancys quoting to make it please feel free to pm me or post.
Many thanks for taking the time to read this,i'm off for a lie down

Hope my comments have made things clear as mud for you, if I can be of any more help please let me know. I'd be happy to chat to you about a more detailed quote for what I can offer if you'd like (I did Rogue Wave's website, Andy Cracking Days, and Lurchers on here, so you can talk with them about what they think!), if you just want technical q's answered I'll help as far as I can with that too.

Cheers,

Jimbo

[Polwart]

Dino,

Our business site cost about 2000 to get set up 2 years ago, including most of the stuff Jimbo was alluding to. We got quotes from £1500 to over £8000 for the same brief! We don't have to maintain stock details the way you would but there are other bits which are of similar "complexity".

It is NOT out of the question to build your own site (there are lots of free tools around now). We chose to sub it out as our people had better things to do with their time - but beware you may find it takes up a bit of your time providing steering/guidance etc to the developer on what you want.

I don't suggest you host it yourself even if you knew what you were doing with the technical end of things - as broadband upload speeds will become a bit limiting.

I'm not trying to knock Jimbo's service(s) but beware of the "ongoing" costs / retainers some developers are looking for for maintainence / support etc. This can sometimes be the "killer". Make sure you understand what your are getting for your money. To give you an idea you should be able to host most relatively simple sites for £100 a year or less.

Finally I suggest you spend most of your time / discussions with the developer ensuring that it is very easy and quick to update the content of your stocklist etc - as there is nothing worse than an out of date website. As a minimum I suggest you need to get in the habit of doing this every week - and maybe even every day. Do you maintain a database of stock at present - if so it MIGHT be possible to link this in (or migrate it all to the website - and manage it there) - but this is likely to be considerably more expensive.

HTH

[Alan]

If you are looking for what I believe is a higher end approach to this then take a alook at http://www.vcars.co.uk/ .

[Jimbo]

Originally Posted by Polwart

I'm not trying to knock Jimbo's service(s) but beware of the "ongoing" costs / retainers some developers are looking for for maintainence / support etc. This can sometimes be the "killer". Make sure you understand what your are getting for your money. To give you an idea you should be able to host most relatively simple sites for £100 a year or less.

Polwart - I would agree with you here. I think the only way round this is to agree up front exactly what you are getting for any ongoing cost, as I know some companies that do simply charge a retainer, for doing absolutely nothing! The bottom line is whether or not you feel you are getting value for money.

Most of the companies I work with rely on their website to generate new business, so for them, having me on call to update their website regularly, and always ensure it's rising in the search engines is very important, and can in some cases pay dividends far far greater than the initial website cost (Lurcher is the man to talk to about this, as my website has generated additional business for him). The sort of website it looks like Dino is after is less of a revenue generator, and more of a showcase to simply improve an existing service. In this case, a pay once and forget site could well be the best way to go - although it's harder (and more costly) to tweak once it's had a few months proving itself.

There are, I think, services out there that offer an off the shelf site specifically for the motor industry, at reasonable costs. Give me a second...

Here we go:

http://www.foremanford.co.uk/

A friend of mine runs this Ford Dealership, and their site is powered by something called Autorespond: http://www.autorespond.co.uk/motors/frameset.html

I'd suggest getting in touch with them - I've seen lots of sites that use Autorespond.

[LURCHER]

JIMBO did my site and the results are excellent !

[TQBoater]

Not wishing to upset people here who do this for a living but if you want to do it yourself and your budget is very small then I think a Wordpress install is what you need.

Get a small host to start with 34SP or Dreamhost have good reports, install wordpress (should be one click install now) and do your own site if it takes off then you can commission a proper site design and big budget stuff. you will then also have an idea of what your customers want to see.

[Dino]

Thanks very much for all your input and idea's,i'm starting to get a grasp of what i need now.
I'll proudly post the address when it's done

[MikeCC]

Dino,

The route you might want to take partly depends on how many vehicles you have for sale at any one time. Assuming you aren't selling straight off the website, at least the extra complexity of a payment system can be avoided.

If it's a modest amount - say 20-30 then DIY is not too difficult and you won't need heavy duty software. The main problem with DIY is making sure the design looks OK and fits the image you want.

One package I can suggest is NetObjects Fusion (www.websitepros.com)
It's got a straightforward interface and it has a catalog feature for listing products.

If you want an intro to website promotion, Business Link are running some free seminars at the moment all over Hampshire. The presenters are from commercial outfits, not Business Link advisors.

When you've got the site going, it can take some months to get good Google listings and you'll probably have to use Adwords to get exposure.

One last thought - do you use eBay for sales? I've heard that a car is sold there every 2 minutes!

Mike

[donutsina911]

work with someone like http://www.ukwebsites.net - check out a dealer I know well at www.machonecars.com - this links into autotrader which is where most people look for their next car online and the format is simple, clean and easy to update.

I would suggest this is an easier and possibly cheaper route than having a site built from scratch, although the SaaS model means you are always paying a monthly fee.