My Friend's Web Design Woes
My friend has been frustrated with her web design/hosting company recently, and so she called me to ask some questions about her hosting, and web design, and asked me my thoughts. For me to do her design work is maybe a bit out of her price range, but I wanted to respond to her so that she could know how to go forward.
I am under the impression that others may have similar questions, so I decided to post my responses to her here.
I asked her what she wanted from her web site.
Maybe I am looking for a brighter Look??
AffiliateAdvice (A.K.A. Me): If I were going to take on your site, the background would become white, the top decoration would be pretty simple, and the links would all be blue, because that is what people are used to. But I am not a designer for design person, I am a designer for function person. And really, I'm not a web designer at all, but more of an SEO person.
I mentioned to her that she should be tracking stats of how people are ending up on her site. She responded, saying that she didn't have reports like that, or at least didn't know where to get them.
What is a fair price to pay for hosting?? Beside stats, what else should I be expecting of them?
AffiliateAdvice (A.K.A. Me): These are two different questions, and depend on what terms you came to with your designer/host.
A fair price to pay for hosting is $15 or less per month. For a site like yours, $10 or less/month is reasonable, plus the cost of your domain, which should be $8-$15/year.
But if your designer factored their design costs into your monthly hosting charges, your monthly hosting could cost more.
A good article about what to expect from your web designer can be found here.
https://www.allurecreative.com/popup.asp?contentID=837&zfull=1
A good article about web hosting is here, but the prices are out of date, as good hosting has come down in price dramatically.
https://www.web-source.net/faq_web_hosting.htm