You’ve all seen it “no coding required”. What they don’t tell you is that there is “expertise required”. I spend a lot of time explaining to clients wanting website content management systems that it is still a website that needs to be set up.
Clients are deceived by looking at a completed CMS site, or a CMS site template demo, and think it “comes out of the box” that way. What they don’t see is that a template site for a website content management system is a set of pre-coded widgets, plugins, design elements and database ready to be applied. It is not a website that is set up and ready to go. It requires organizational planning, many decisions on settings, layout, graphics and photos, creation of pages, and population of information before it is a website.
Yes, templates can be great starting point, but don’t be deceived into thinking that a $79 template is what a website content management system costs for a finished website. It is merely one of the cost elements, just like hosting is.
We need to make lots of decisions, add all of your custom content, find photos, set up your navigation system, your blog, your categories, and ideally, do some search engine optimization research, which is then applied to your CMS. That means meeting time with the client, application of expertise, design time, content writing, navigational mapping, etc.
Most people who have never seen how the CMS looks upon initial upload would be a little shocked to see all that needs to be done to create a site that resembles the demo that you see. I know I was. In fact, support forums are virtually overrun with questions about “how to make the template look like the demo”.
As your Denver web designer I help with all of the setup, from loading it onto the server and making it work with the domain name you selected to making layout decisions, and customizing the logo, colors and more.
I dont’ expect you to know how to do it, that is why you hire an expert. Of course if you don’t want the expense of making the template a website, you will need to learn to do all the set up yourself. I don’t even expect you to know the questions to ask, I will guide you. But, you need to trust that I am working in your best interests to create the site that will work best for you, and be willing to have a reasonable financial allocation.
A cheap website is an ineffective one
You can always find someone to do something cheaper. What are the historic results of that methodology? I think you know. There is no getting around it, websites are complex and not easy to develop. They take hours and hours of real work – and expertise.
Give me a call at 303-750-6114 to get an estimate on what it will take to get your website content management system looking like a website for your business. Here are the first steps for your colorado web design.
