[gooberdude]

I'm not sure where to post this general question...

My small real estate firm is about to take the plunge & have a fancy .aspx coded website developed.  My issue is i'm getting pricing that's all over the board, anywhere from $2K to $20K.  The good news is that it seems like the days of waiting months & months for a new website is over, as i've been quoted 'about 3 weeks' by most firms.

What intrigues me is that the cheaper rates are from the larger design firms in the area, and they've done a bulk of our competitors sites (good sites, excellent search engine placement)....anything similar to these is more than adequate for us. 

In today's world, what is reasonable to pay for website development? 

My real estate mgmt firm does rentals, HOA mgmt, investment consulting & minor commercial sales.  We are having mobile versions & QR codes constructed.

Any assistance is appreciated.

matt

[JohnR]

Why .aspx?

For real estate, you'll be wanting to update it on a regular basis, won't you?

[gooberdude]

John, I beg you, tell me more   

Srsly, i spend 10+ hrs a week updating the website & take pride that i'm the only game in town that constantly updates availability.  A large # of prospective clients live halfway across the world, looking to relocate.  I save them the hassle of having to call in to see if a specific house got rented, for example. The PITA is that they have to hit the Refresh button on their browser each time they go to our site.

7 days a week, without fail, I update the site due to how fast our portfolio moves. 

i've been told that .aspx is better for search engine placement.  My current website is .htm, and we simply cannot be found on google, bing, yahoo, etc.  2-4 pages back, always.

Our main competitors (only have 2) have .aspx sites & incredible SE placement. Neither pay for SEO.

The designer that we may choose is liking Wordpress.com technology. Its blogging software to help push the site to search engines.

mc

[dboulet]

gooberdude, the technnology used to build your site should make NO difference to search engine placement. Search engines only care about the content within your pages and how it is structured in the HTML markup, it doesn't matter whether that content comes from an .aspx, .htm, or .php file. What gets high placement in search engine ranks is for your site to have good, relevant, easily findable content. Search engines tend to look at metrics such as the number of other reputable sites that link to yours, again people tend to link to sites with relevant content, not sites using a certain technology.

For a site like yours, I would recommend looking into using a good open source content management system such as Drupal or Wordpress.

Hope that helps.

[gooberdude]

Thanks.

It will use Wordpress, from what i've been told.

[JohnR]

You're on the right track then. Wordpress can be a bit cumbersome but it's flexible. It comes down to what custom code they put in for you (if any).

[skunark]

For a new site it's always good to keep adding new content on a daily or weekly basis with the right keywords that folks would search for to hit real estate in your area.     Also make sure you sign up on google webmaster, yahoo and bing to properly register your site, they will ask you to integrate a meta tag or javascript into your website pages or a random generate HTML file that is separate.   Make sure you define robots.txt that allows searchbots to scan.  If you have local businesses online that you can either advertise with or share links that too will help your rankings.   If you use a standard web package, search engines know how to navigate them, so there a slight advantage, but that also can be a disadvantage if the content isn't changing.

If you select wordpress, make sure you keep everything updated, there's been several security patches that like any outdated website, opens itself up for hacks and spam.   

[gooberdude]

Thank you guys so much.  Its definitely going to be mostly Wordpress along with some PHP pages. The firm we've chosen (trileaf designs in St Louis), sais they can go into the backdoor of WP to do custom code, but also use WP templates in some areas to save time.  It'll have a few QR codes (with our logo inside) & a mobile version of most of the site.

I update my current site every day, so keeping current with things isn't a problem. I need a database of the properties built that is easy to upload & remove.  I currently create everything freehand.

Have 1 more general issue to ask help with: Trying to get enough text on the Home screen, but designing a clean looking main screen that's not cluttered with text & boring info. 

matt

[JohnR]

I need a database of the properties built that is easy to upload & remove.  I currently create everything freehand.

That's what I mean by custom code. Off-the-shelf, WP is an authoring system but doesn't have any database-type functionality exposed in the admin interface. It might be worth your while to set up a WP blog and use it for a while, so you can understand what's "in the box" and what extra you will needed developed for you. You can get one at wordpress.com, or I can set up a temporary one for you if you like.

Have 1 more general issue to ask help with: Trying to get enough text on the Home screen, but designing a clean looking main screen that's not cluttered with text & boring info. 

Take a look around at the WP themes on offer, you may find something that is close to what you are thinking of. You want something that has "featured" listings, newest listings, etc. The content will come from the posts that you already created, you just need to specify where they would land on the home page.

[JohnR]

Here's an example using an off-the-shelf plugin and theme that might help focus the discussion. My experience so far is that customization is always needed, but this kind of thing can be a good starting point for further development:

http://allure-sample.placester.net/

As an aside, this company offers hosted sites: https://placester.com/. I probably wouldn't go that way myself but it's a quick and relatively cheap option.

[gooberdude]

Good idea on setting up a trial WP blog.  I get what you mean by 'in the box', and the critical pages/headings will be custom.  A few pages now are just 1 page of text & pictures, doesn't need to be custom.   our current site  cecilmanagement(dot)com

We're definitely adding a Recently listed column, righthand side, the latest 3 houses. The site should end up being quick, easy & hopefully classy looking.  Our area lacks choices when searching for niche talent.  the firm we went with falls middle of the road, artsy but still up to date technology wise.  Everything is in-house, using young talent.

I've researched buying templates and for a firm like mine they just wouldn't work. Both the main database software we use to run the firm & the online credit card processing firm we use have websites, free of charge, that I can customize.  Neither do what we need, a custom site will pay for itself eventually. 

For hosting, our IT firms handles it now for $40/month.  Its totally independent of our office network.

One web design firm I met with was going to charge $150/month, and due to their proprietary publishing code they had to host the site.   And then of course there are inexpensive options too, like Go Daddy.

[JohnR]

I've researched buying templates and for a firm like mine they just wouldn't work.

I just want to clarify: a Wordpress site always has a template (/theme). It can be an off the shelf one, a modified off the shelf one, or a custom one. Off the shelf themes range from free to around $150. I don't think I've seen one costing more than that anyway.

I recommend the middle route as the most cost-effective. But it sounds like you've already chosen a providor?

The theme is where the custom code is implemented; it's layered over the framework that Wordpress provides.

[gooberdude]

I'm with you.  The templates I mentioned are simply basic templates of websites that businesses can use to create a functioning website. Go Daddy & all sorts of firms offer them. 

The WordPress portions of our site will be custom coded, when necessary.

One designer I met with thinks that our new site will be cell phone readable, no need to create mobile versions of any of the pages. Saves a little $ & time.