Web developer - Leicester/Birmingham area

[spionfox]

Can anybody recommend a web developer in the Leicester/Birmingham area? I want an eCommerce site building that can cope with product feeds from external sources as well as our own product range. After the site will come various SEO functions etc.

A 'Google' comes up with plenty but personal recommendation is often preferable!

Thanks.

 

[Matt_B]

Can anybody recommend a web developer in the Leicester/Birmingham area? I want an eCommerce site building that can cope with product feeds from external sources as well as our own product range. After the site will come various SEO functions etc.

A 'Google' comes up with plenty but personal recommendation is often preferable!

Thanks.

What's the rough budget? I can recommend a great company but it might not be cheap. It might be thousands rather than hundreds.

 

[spionfox]

What's the rough budget? I can recommend a great company but it might not be cheap. It might be thousands rather than hundreds.

We've had quotes from £5k to £7k+ and then £200 to £500 per month ongoing for hosting and SEO.

 

[Matt_B]

We've had quotes from £5k to £7k+ and then £200 to £500 per month ongoing for hosting and SEO.

The hosting charge seems extortionate to be honest. I'll send a PM.

 

[Macky]

We've had quotes from £5k to £7k+ and then £200 to £500 per month ongoing for hosting and SEO.

**** me sideways! The initial quotes could be justified, depending on your requirements, but those ongoing costs are just a ****ing pisstake

 

[Matt_B]

**** me sideways! The initial quotes could be justified, depending on your requirements, but those ongoing costs are just a ****ing pisstake

For that cost you could get a fully managed rackspace server.

 

[Biffa Bacon]

I had a company based in Enderby build the site for my employers after a recommendation off here. They did a decent job but we don't sell online.

 

[spionfox]

The hosting charge seems extortionate to be honest. I'll send a PM.

Cheers Matt.

 

[spionfox]

**** me sideways! The initial quotes could be justified, depending on your requirements, but those ongoing costs are just a ****ing pisstake

This was the most recent quote:

 

[Jeff]

Search engine submission isn't necessary. It might help once, when the search engine doesn't know about your site, but not on a monthly basis. As long as you've got a Sitemap the search engines will do their job without any manual intervention. Monthly search engine submission is just a way for companies to get easy money from gullible customers.

Submitting it directories etc is pointless, other than a handful of major directories such as dmoz.org and Yahoo. Being listed in directories and free for all sites Google considers to be spammy can have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings.

 

[spionfox]

Search engine submission isn't necessary. It might help once, when the search engine doesn't know about your site, but not on a monthly basis. As long as you've got a Sitemap the search engines will do their job without any manual intervention. Monthly search engine submission is just a way for companies to get easy money from gullible customers.

Submitting it directories etc is pointless, other than a handful of major directories such as dmoz.org and Yahoo. Being listed in directories and free for all sites Google considers to be spammy can have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings.

Appreciate the comments Jeff.

One other thing most of the companies we have seen are saying is that they will sort out blogs and articles mentioning us or our products and that this will help our profile on Google. They also say that for the monthly fee they will 'optimise' individual product pages by use of keywords, metatags etc.

Any thoughts on that?

Cheers.

 

[Jeff]

One other thing most of the companies we have seen are saying is that they will sort out blogs and articles mentioning us or our products and that this will help our profile on Google.

It depends how they do it. Google uses the inbound links to a site to help determine how important it thinks the site is. So links to your site can be a big help, but only if it's done properly. A lot of the time companies use automated systems (or pay cheap workers in India) to post spam comments on blogs (and forums), with a link to the site. That's useless, or worse than useless. Google have wised up to this tactic.
If they're paying for links on other sites, that's another thing Google don't like. Links on other sites have to look natural, and be part of useful content if Google are to give it credit. The days of spamming links all over the place and getting high rankings have gone, fortunately. If you're not careful something like this could happen.
Creating blogs just to link to other sites is also something Google don't like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_blog

They might get away with using some of these tactics in the short term, but it's not a long term solution.

They also say that for the monthly fee they will 'optimise' individual product pages by use of keywords, metatags etc.

Their system should do this automatically, it shouldn't be something that has to happen monthly. The most important bits are the page title, and bits inside H1 tags. The system should automatically put the product name in these, if that's what people are going to be searching for.

 

[spionfox]

The days of spamming links all over the place and getting high rankings have gone, fortunately. If you're not careful something like this could happen.
Creating blogs just to link to other sites is also something Google don't like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_blog

They might get away with using some of these tactics in the short term, but it's not a long term solution.

Great links Jeff. I'll make sure my boss sees it as he seems to believe what he has been told by the web sales team!

 

[spionfox]

Their system should do this automatically, it shouldn't be something that has to happen monthly. The most important bits are the page title, and bits inside H1 tags. The system should automatically put the product name in these, if that's what people are going to be searching for.

Sorry, meant to say the monthly fee included product page optimisation but not monthly per product. They would work through our 4,500 SKU product range and optimise all individual pages eventually. The monthly fee includes doing that.

 

[Matt_B]

Sorry, meant to say the monthly fee included product page optimisation but not monthly per product. They would work through our 4,500 SKU product range and optimise all individual pages eventually. The monthly fee includes doing that.

Complete unnecessary if they know what they are doing and can write the system to do it for them.

 

[Jeff]

Sorry, meant to say the monthly fee included product page optimisation but not monthly per product. They would work through our 4,500 SKU product range and optimise all individual pages eventually. The monthly fee includes doing that.

There shouldn't be any need to optimise individual pages though. If the product titles, descriptions, categories etc in your database are correct, the system should automatically optimise for those products. It's the quality of the data that's the important thing.

 

[Jeff]

Getting links from related websites, particularly those with authority in the industry, are worth much more than spammy links from blogs.

When you launch the new site, send a press release about it to the trade press relevant to the industry. So if you sell widgets, make sure Widget Weekly, Widget World, Widget Buyer etc all get to hear about it. They may post this on their own sites, linking to your site when they do it. I assume your company has Twitter and Facebook accounts, make sure you keep them updated and post links to new content on your site.

 

[Shents]

I worked on a project with a firm called Rckt they are Sheffield based though. I would really recommend them. Got a really nice site out of it

https://juice.group.shef.ac.uk/

We host the site, and have control over updating content etc.

 

[spionfox]

There shouldn't be any need to optimise individual pages though. If the product titles, descriptions, categories etc in your database are correct, the system should automatically optimise for those products. It's the quality of the data that's the important thing.

Getting links from related websites, particularly those with authority in the industry, are worth much more than spammy links from blogs.

Thanks for the further advice Jeff.

I worked on a project with a firm called Rckt they are Sheffield based though.

It shouldn't really matter to me where they are based but I would just prefer somebody on my doorstep so that I can bang heads together in reality rather than online :icon_bigg

 

[Shents]

It shouldn't really matter to me where they are based but I would just prefer somebody on my doorstep so that I can bang heads together in reality rather than online :icon_bigg

In that case I would definitely recommend them. I have also heard good things about Rocca Creative

they designed this site
These companies agreed to build in a Content Managment System so we could maintain the site as far as I recall.