Congrats on taking the first step to success online

When working with us our websites are fully custom-designed first (we design in Photoshop), we include workshops with a designer & content writer (even if it is just to help you plan and write the content yourself) and we give you a dedicated project manager. Typically to scope out a project can take 3 – 4 hours, workshops can take about the same amount of time, design work on a project will usually take at least 15 hours and then we still need to do development. Basically to get a really great looking website we usually need to put a minimum of 100 hours into a project. This means before even quoting you for the project I can tell you that our price will start from €10,000+VAT.

A great question and though we can do a project within a month (once we have a plan in place) this isn’t usually practical. The biggest factors that cause delays in developing a project from start to finish are actually on the client-side. At our agency we work with a content-first approach, this means the client must work with the writer to develop the copy for the website before entering the design phase. The content writing is usually reviewed by the client who will often have a 1 – 2 rounds of revisions, the same thing then happens in the design phase, we design and then we wait on feedback or approval. This means that though the copy or design work is only with us for a week or two we need to wait longer for clients to review, approve or request revisions. This means we typically see projects taking at least 8 weeks.

The answer to this is simple, the biggest cost in creating a website is time, your website is your face to the world, people make decisions in a split second to do business with you or go somewhere else. €300, €500, €800 gets you a website with very little time spent on it from an inexperienced designer or developer. The website won’t have any strategy behind it, they are trying to squeeze the content you give them (that they won’t even read) into a template and do it as quickly as possible. The website will lack any creativity, the copy won’t make sense, the lead generation forms or checkout process won’t work, it will probably load slowly and it will not look polished or professional. So if you don’t mind your website looking cheap then go cheap but if you want to impress your visitors and expect to generate leads or sales from the website then a cheap website just won’t cut it. I always recommend to people if you have a budget of less than €1,000 for your web project you are better off to do a DIY job by yourself and use this money for marketing.

No, kinda, maybe… basically we won’t reduce our hourly rate but it is usually possible to reduce the scope of work and as a result, reduce the price. Our minimum project price is €3,000. If your budget is more than this we can definitely talk to you about your project and discuss what to reduce/take out to reduce the cost if we need to. We don’t compete with other agency’s pricing, they have different processes, different quality of work, different staff and experience so you can never compare apples with apples. Instead, you should focus on return on investment, which agency is most likely to help you achieve your goals or increase your revenue.

Unfortunately, we don’t do this, it takes too much time to put quotes together without actually understanding the clients true needs. We have had projects in the past where we did quote for the work without spending enough time with the client only to realise later we missed important parts of the scope – this, unfortunately, meant the client had to pay more to complete the work. It is in both our interests to make sure we are all clear on the work that is required and that the price is accurate before getting started. All that said I don’t believe in wasting time so if you provide enough detail about your project then price/budget is one of the firs things we will discuss – I will always be happy to give a rough ballpark before engaging in more detail to give you a fixed price.

In response to this, I would ask what sort of return do you want from your online marketing? Are you trying to get a website to generate €10,000, €100,000, €1,000,000, €100,000,000 in online sales from the marketing you are trying to do? The more return then the more investment is required. Another factor that comes into play here is competition, are you in a niche business with no competitors or are your competitors actively engaged in online marketing? It might help to say our clients are spending at least €1,000 per month for online marketing. Though online marketing does not have a ceiling.

The web industry is a tricky one, our agency has a full-time sales guru (me), a marketing professional, an art director, two graphic designers, 2 developers, and a content writer so as I write this we have 7 full-time staff. That said as things get busy we can hire additional staff and we sometimes hire contractors when needed. That said all client meetings and communication you will have with our agency will always be with one of our core staff members.

Yes we have freaking loads of these. Check out our reviews on Facebook, Google, and our website to see what our clients have said. Whelan Web Design has been in existence for 20 years and we have never received a bad review.

Yes we publish our work on our website. When we talk with you we can also share some recent items that may not be on our portfolio or work that is similar to your project.

Yes we have a real office in the Six Cross Roads Business Park in Waterford City with multiple meeting rooms. We can also do Zoom calls or jump on Skype. Whatever works for you.

Usually, it takes a few meetings over a week or two to scope out your project, we then work on pricing options for you, as we get closer to concluding the process we have a good idea if you are going ahead or not so our team are already getting ready to onboard you so usually we can get started within a week or so of you paying your deposit to get started.

This is a gripe many designers have about clients. Clients want logos bigger because they have spent so much time perfecting a logo that they can think it should be the only thing on the website. Though the website doesn’t exist so people can admire your logo instead it exists for you to sell something or generate leads. So, in short, yes, of course, we can make your logo bigger, even if it looks terrible, our websites are 100% custom designed so we can do anything – if you really want it bigger then let’s do it but we will let you know first if this is a good idea or not. Our agency prides itself on not being pencil pushers, our art director has worked with brands such as Intel, LG, Audi, IKEA, BMW, Discovery Channel and National Geographic (and that is to name a few). Our designers have over 20 years experience each, our company owner built his first website more than 20 years ago and our content writer was educated in Cambridge with an arts degree in English and has written web copy for companies worldwide. You pay a premium to work with us. You pay us to know how big your logo should be. We would never make your logo so small it can’t be read, we would never make your logo so big that it would take away from the goal of your website. We are experts, you trust us, we don’t mind you having an opinion or asking for a revision (infact we encourage this) but you can trust that we know what we are doing and our aim is simple – to grow your business and help you increase sales or leads and to make you look good online to your target audience.

We won’t quote based on a client only providing a 20 page RFP and nothing else but a quick ballparked estimate is possible. Why? Often this is a pricing around exercise and nothing more, a web agency might already be selected and our quote is used to beat them down on price. If the project is for real then our quote ends up in a stack of other quotes where the client selects the cheapest one and our goal is not to be the cheapest (instead we want to be the agency to offer the best solution). Even if the client does somehow decide to work with us the price won’t be correct because the client will not have included everything or they might have managed to include everything but we misunderstood some part of the brief. If we are going to spend 5 – 10 hours putting an RFP response together we would rather spend time with the client, consulting, digging into the true needs and understanding the goals and brainstorming with the client on how we can maximise the return on the project. When the client has made an effort with us then we won’t have a problem putting the 5 – 10 hours into a proposal and our proposal will in fact be much better but more importantly, the price would be fixed, we may have a better solution as a result to achieve your goals and we will have been able to work with you to do a cost-benefit analysis making sure that only the requirements that are important to you and in budget are included. Otherwise thanks for thinking of us but if you haven’t the time for us then we don’t have the time to put a detailed quotation together.

Please remember a CMS or platform is only a tool. The tool isn’t important and instead, it is what we do with the tool. Not all tools are a good fit for all jobs. A hammer is a good tool but not ideal to use when cutting down a tree. We take the time to understand your unique needs from a tool. We then recommend a tool based on that and when no CMS or platform fits the job we custom build one for you. Though we can (and have) built projects in WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Shopify, Prestashop, OSCommerce, BigCommerce and Volusion. But we are considered industry experts in WordPress, Joomla & Shopify.

Unfortunately, the answer for this isn’t very simple. Maintenance costs depend on your unique solution, for instance, a HTML only website or a Shopify website might not need any maintenance but a WordPress website with 50 plugins or a custom software solution might need a lot of maintenance, no one size fits all here unfortunately and you can just purchase a project and leave without using us for maintenance or hosting or other ongoing costs into the future. However, we prefer (and seek) to work with clients who integrate us into their businesses. We like to be your long term partner for web and marketing and to grow your business online supporting you into being the online success you deserve which translates to us usually working with a client with some sort of monthly commitment.