Building a Stunning Website?

Wow, so much wrong with that statement I'm not sure where to begin.

What's "wrong" with delivering a nice looking website that works exactly as it should, delivers exactly what the client wants, is easy to update by both the designer (yes designer) and the client, allows for simple plug ins and easy future development?

This is not an "art-skill or coding" competition. This is a business which is based on delivering results. What "truth" are the customers going to "find out"? That you built them a nice looking website and didn't create every pixel and write every line of code in notepad? Who the **** cares about that? No one cares about your coding skill or your photoshop abilities - least of all a client who wants a clean, simple attractive website that communicates their business essentials.

No one is "stuck" with wordpress. Patronising much? Intelligent website builders/designers know a great platform and tool that will help them and their clients when they see it. Is there a problem with intelligent business solutions?

...Oh holy hell how did I miss this response?

Wordpress is a completely open source platform that while mostly used for Blogging, can be used for Static pages and just about anything you want. Wordpress is (In my opinion) the best platform to use. The powerful SEO capability, the functionality and not to mention I've never seen sites get indexed quicker than with Wordpress.

"Stuck With Wordpress"

It's the only thing I use for sites. Hell, a lot of people look for services to CONVERT their html pages to Wordpress.

Web Designer Vs Web Developer

Those are two different things that you seem to be confused about. A web designer "designs" the overall look of the web page and pretty much hands the developer the pieces of the puzzle. The developer adds the functionality and puts the puzzle together.

People who are "the jack of all trades" and do both commonly aren't people that do high end jobs.

While I will agree that you can't get a stunning website for a cheap price, it also depends on what people consider "stunning". Every time I'm in a thread, i'll open up a website in a new tab if I see someone owns one in their signature and... if that's any indication of stunning to a majority of people, then I guess you can get "stunning" websites for cheap.

Seriously though, in my opinion, that's simply not possible.

Also: With Premium themes or designing your own theme, most customers won't find out you're using Wordpress because I highly doubt they know what to look for in the source code to figure out you're using Wordpress and with a premium theme that annoying "Powered By" link goes away.

I just now examined your site... not only is your Order button going to a broken link but... I'm not sure you're qualified to tell people that they can't design websites :\

How wrong can one quote be!
I service many many customers and 90% of them have wordpress sites.
Most of those have no idea it is a wordpress site however.
If I'm only charging $1500 for web design then spending a week designing a site from scratch just isn't going to be cost effective. I use a ready made theme from theme forest or somwhere similar ($50 max) adapt it - then get on with adding the content.

You'll need to make different choices if you want a very SEO centric website, but there are plenty of VERY good SEO thjemes available. Also invest in Artisteer 4 and you can design whatever the %^&* you like in minutes.

SEO is based on content more than website factors these days.
Conversion though requires careful choice of colours, layour and content

You need to balance these 2 and the clients desire for a flashy website. Never met a client paying £5000 who didn't want a neat modern looking site and at the front end valued that more than SEO and conversion. Which, of course, in the long run is a mistake they will normally regret.

I've got some major brands as clients. Very rarely build a website from scratch - if I did then $5000 would likely be my minimum charge which is still less than most of the other pro services in my area which charge £5000 (UK£) which is about $7,500.

On that subject, it's almost cartel pricing around here. EVERYONE charges £5000 for a full website build, almost regardless of the site size and complexity. Hope the fair trade commission don't get wind of it. It looks like price fixing to me. Some are worth £5000 sure, but some are 5 page wonders that couldn't have take more than a morning to put together. Oh well.

Scritty

This is very true, wordpress is the best platform you can use to build a site professionally! Tons are features and capabilities.

+1. You can do pretty much anything with it & it's easy to use, plus its stable.

Wordpress is a resource hog. The more you can strip out of your WP code the better. Any sites with serious traffic (1M+ visitors/day) would be living a nightmare, or at least seriously be overpaying in server costs, if they ran WP out of the box.

I agree: Wordpress is a FANTASTIC platform for a website. Many, many stunning websites are designed on Wordpress. The platform has nothing to do with good design, unless the platform itself interferes with the fundamentals of good design.

A lot of Warriors are tight on cash and just looking to make some quick extra cash. Unfortunately, this breeds a constant "it's too expensive" mentality, which is a lot more dangerous to their success than they realize. Since they "just want to make some extra cash", they treat it like a hobby and not a business -- i.e. they aren't willing to invest in good web design (and don't understand why it's SO critical).

I was like a lot of Warriors in this respect. I'm a writer and marketer. I'm NOT a designer and had a "good is good enough" mentality. "Whatever!" was my mantra. Trouble is, as a writer, I didn't even recognize the fundamentals of good design and couldn't hire a good designer! I went through SEVERAL before I got a good designer who did the job right. (An expensive lesson.)

My mentor had to give me (and my colleagues) what amounted to a stern talking to about being cheap about design -- and why paying $2K-$3K for a good website design was NOT too expensive and is absolutely necessary.

Among other things, she pointed out that having a good (meaning well-designed) website allows you to compete with the likes of Google, IBM, Coke, etc. You DON'T need employees, office space, etc. You DO need a well-designed website. A good website will give you and your company a LOT of credibility right out the gate.

You really CAN start out on a shoestring (compared to the normal costs of a storefront or office space). Unfortunately, too many people take this to mean that they don't need to spend ANY money at all. (Yes, there are people who can get started for NO money. And you can offer services with little to no upfront cost.) But if you are a serious entrepreneur, you need a well-designed website.

You simply CAN'T compete (seriously or effectively) with a poorly-designed website.

I paid $2600 for my current website (not counting the logo I had done at 99Designs.com) (Global Institute of Wellness Entrepreneurs) and I've never been so proud of ANY website I've ever had! I absolutely LOVE it, for a lot of reasons. The design is equal to the design of any Fortune 500 company's site. But it's even better because I understand direct marketing principles, which many, many Fortune 500 companies STILL don't get. I make an irresistible offer and every page of my site contains an opt-in form to continually build my list.

My mentor's site is also just GORGEOUS (Smart Women Institute | Home for Positive Transformation) and follows all of the principles of the latest, cutting-edge design techniques.

I also have a matching e-mail newsletter template which is just as gorgeous.

As for my own website, I had a lot of criteria for it, other than just "good design."

Color scheme was critically important. I'm B2B and a blue/white color scheme is common for B2B sites. In fact, it's TOO common. I wanted to stay away from it. Since my target audience is health/wellness entrepreneurs, a green/purple color scheme was a good choice. My accent colors are beige, blue and orange. However, I'm NOT a designer and left the exact shades/color palette up to my designer. (My previous shades of green and purple weren't good!)

Since green is part of my color scheme, I really wanted to stay away from the hypey "make money now!" feel.

Although I have an abstract figure in my logo, I primarily wanted to stay away from abstract figures on my site, the type that you see a lot in IM. They come across as cheap and cheesy -- which I really wanted to avoid. I just wanted to avoid the overall "IM look" in general.

I feel I succeeded with getting a gorgeous, professional design which really represents what we're about.

Folks, we're moving out of the Wild West days of the Internet. Design and being "pretty" DOES matter. Even if unofficially, there are certain uniform standards for good website design and your visitors are deciding whether or not to trust you and do business with you based on your website. A lot of this is unconscious and subliminal. They don't even realize they're doing it. But believe me, they make their buying decisions based on that feeling/intuition. You website is your storefront, office and personal face to the world. It MUST be good!

Hope that helps!

Michelle

you cant go wrong with wordpress.... Google actually likes and prefers wordpress. Your site should be simple, and sends your message across well, as time goes by you can revamp it until it gets to the level you want it... The main thing is that it attracts potential clients.

Clients want simple websites that attract their customers to either book or buy products/services from them. So they really dont give two hoots about coding etc. End of the day it's all about business for them.

Birdi

Believe me, you make my head hurt also. You need to stop praising Wordpress as a solid PHP platform and for what it really is: a decent blogging platform with a few well written themes.

Some one who is praising Wordpress to this extent clearly has no idea what solid PHP is.

Agreed - with Word Press you can make a basic site or make stunning a site. The difference is in the time spent learning how to use it and once learnt you will be churning them out by the dozen.