Re brand

[Audicab]

Hi all, we are a small business and need a new website. In others experience are we better;

Paying a designer to completely redesign our brand and design web pages that we get a developer to build.
Paying a web company to design our brand, website and build it.
Paying a designer for a re-brand then a web company to design and build from the brand spec

We need a brand that we can get behind in terms of marketing and we need a new website. We don't have a huge budget, ideally around £4k and the site is for lead generation and to help with the sales process so client testimonials, case studies etc.

Have others done similar and what were the costs.

Thanks

[Hoofy]

£2k got us a new logo, rebrand, website and a foundation upon which we were proud to base all our marketing material on. It's 2 years old now but I'm still proud to see the branding. (Of that over £500 was for a rebrand including colour, logo and brand guidelines.)

TBH I am highly skeptical of this in general as there's a lot of BS out there so you need to find someone who actually knows what they're talking about. When I finally saw the logo, colours and website, I was relieved that it actually made sense for who we are.

It is unlikely that the person who can set up WordPress will be able to create your brand/colours/logo; it's more than just firing up Photoshop and getting creative.

[Lexual]

Audicab... is it lead generation you do?

[Audicab]

Lexual said:

Audicab... is it lead generation you do?

Hi Lexual, it is yes.

[Audicab]

Hoofy said:

£2k got us a new logo, rebrand, website and a foundation upon which we were proud to base all our marketing material on. It's 2 years old now but I'm still proud to see the branding. (Of that over £500 was for a rebrand including colour, logo and brand guidelines.)

TBH I am highly skeptical of this in general as there's a lot of BS out there so you need to find someone who actually knows what they're talking about. When I finally saw the logo, colours and website, I was relieved that it actually made sense for who we are.

It is unlikely that the person who can set up WordPress will be able to create your brand/colours/logo; it's more than just firing up Photoshop and getting creative.

Thanks Hoofy, how did you find the company.

[Hoofy]

Audicab said:

Hoofy said:

£2k got us a new logo, rebrand, website and a foundation upon which we were proud to base all our marketing material on. It's 2 years old now but I'm still proud to see the branding. (Of that over £500 was for a rebrand including colour, logo and brand guidelines.)

TBH I am highly skeptical of this in general as there's a lot of BS out there so you need to find someone who actually knows what they're talking about. When I finally saw the logo, colours and website, I was relieved that it actually made sense for who we are.

It is unlikely that the person who can set up WordPress will be able to create your brand/colours/logo; it's more than just firing up Photoshop and getting creative.

Thanks Hoofy, how did you find the company.

Via networking. And quite a few meetings to really understand what we are about.

[jonamv8]

We could help with this under that budget. Design, Development and deployment. Feel free to PM me and we can talk by phone.

[jammy_basturd]

I've just been through this with an architectural company, new brand (logo, style guide, business cards, compliment slips and letterheads) and website. My biased opinion would be to go for either of the first two options - get recommendations for both digital agencies and freelance designers and see if you find one you gel with.

Personally I would say it's important for the designer creating the brand to also design the website so that there is one person completely in charge of the "brand vision" across all facets of the brand. Any decent development company can then translate a design into code.

One thing I will say is that there are many designers who are good at graphic design, but few that are good at translating customer requirements and principles into a strong, recognisable, individual brand!

Happy to talk through your requirements with you. I'm a web developer myself and I often share projects with one of two carefully chosen freelance designers.

[akirk]

jammy_basturd said:

Personally I would say it's important for the designer creating the brand to also design the website so that there is one person completely in charge of the "brand vision" across all facets of the brand. Any decent development company can then translate a design into code.

Just be careful with this if there is any form of complexity to the website - with a simple website, should be okay - start to bring in more complexity and the skills you need are:
- Brand / design - understands how the brand sits across all platforms / mediums
- UI (user interface) - understands how people actually use websites and the difference that makes in perception / choices they make
- Coding - understand how to assemble it, the compromises and limitations...
people involved may have any combination of those - but don't assume that the design bods will have the slightest clue about how code actually works - simple and obvious example is the modern responsive website which effectively changes shape - if you don't allow for that in how you design it, you can end up with some interesting websites... worst case I have seen on a small to medium size website cost the customer over £20K extra as basically the designer and coders argued about it interesting to observe...

for your budget I would look for an individual / small company which combines those skills so that you don't lose out

[fossilfuelled]

all good advice so far - don't forget to add social media branding to the list of "to dos" if you haven't already. May as well have things like twitter/facebook etc logos/images/templates all ready for you to start using too.

[uber]

There are tens of thousands of designers who can put together a web site and have it coded into an off the shelf cms for a couple of grand and for lot's of people thats enough to have a basic web presence which will drive some traffic.

Someone who wants to have a highly converting site especially in a competitive niche needs to be ready to pay more to obtain good design, great functunality and great marketing. If done correcly the return will by far outweigh the original investment and they will have people around them will the skills to play with the big boys.

[BGARK]

uber said:

Someone who wants to have a highly converting site especially in a competitive niche needs to be ready to pay more to obtain good design, great functunality and great marketing. If done correcly the return will by far outweigh the original investment and they will have people around them will the skills to play with the big boys.

I agree with this, so where do you find the good ones?

[jammy_basturd]

akirk said:

jammy_basturd said:

Personally I would say it's important for the designer creating the brand to also design the website so that there is one person completely in charge of the "brand vision" across all facets of the brand. Any decent development company can then translate a design into code.

Just be careful with this if there is any form of complexity to the website - with a simple website, should be okay - start to bring in more complexity and the skills you need are:
- Brand / design - understands how the brand sits across all platforms / mediums
- UI (user interface) - understands how people actually use websites and the difference that makes in perception / choices they make
- Coding - understand how to assemble it, the compromises and limitations...
people involved may have any combination of those - but don't assume that the design bods will have the slightest clue about how code actually works - simple and obvious example is the modern responsive website which effectively changes shape - if you don't allow for that in how you design it, you can end up with some interesting websites... worst case I have seen on a small to medium size website cost the customer over £20K extra as basically the designer and coders argued about it interesting to observe...

for your budget I would look for an individual / small company which combines those skills so that you don't lose out

Oh I completely agree. It's taken me a long time to find just two designers that I enjoy working with and with whom I have complimentary skills. Both the people I use have skills with UI/UX (which is my background anyway) and can put a website together themselves. So I have quite an overlap in skills with both of my designers which I think helps us to work so well together.

[jammy_basturd]

BGARK said:

uber said:

Someone who wants to have a highly converting site especially in a competitive niche needs to be ready to pay more to obtain good design, great functunality and great marketing. If done correcly the return will by far outweigh the original investment and they will have people around them will the skills to play with the big boys.

I agree with this, so where do you find the good ones?

I would say that it is all to do with checking portfolios. Granted you can't see how many leads or how much money a website in a portfolio has brought in, but you can see if they're well written, well designed, work on all devices, etc.

[uber]

jammy_basturd said:

I would say that it is all to do with checking portfolios. Granted you can't see how many leads or how much money a website in a portfolio has brought in, but you can see if they're well written, well designed, work on all devices, etc.

Also try and ask to see real data from live campaigns as that will show how much the company knows about the conversion/marketing biz. We have a few clients who are happy for us to take screen shots of recent sales data to show prospective customers.

[DSLiverpool]

Hoofy said:

£2k got us a new logo, rebrand, website and a foundation upon which we were proud to base all our marketing material on.

Please share we could white label them at £4k if any good ! thats amazing money

[Akiraprise]

I'd be willing to take a look at this for you, we've got a small team with experience in all of the key parts (Design & Branding, Development and Optimisation, and Social media and Digital Marketing).

We tend to run everything in-house without outsourcing to ensure everything is consistent and has the same level of care and attention. We also run our own websites such as http://myibiza.tv so know how to convert traffic to leads and sales.

Our (old) portfolio can be found here: http://pulseight.com

Feel free to drop me a message if you'd like to discuss it more

[Hoofy]

DSLiverpool said:

Hoofy said:

£2k got us a new logo, rebrand, website and a foundation upon which we were proud to base all our marketing material on.

Please share we could white label them at £4k if any good ! thats amazing money

Sadly, I didn't deal with them so don't have the contact details.

[akirk]

jammy_basturd said:

Oh I completely agree. It's taken me a long time to find just two designers that I enjoy working with and with whom I have complimentary skills. Both the people I use have skills with UI/UX (which is my background anyway) and can put a website together themselves. So I have quite an overlap in skills with both of my designers which I think helps us to work so well together.

That is a great balance- shame that more don't do it...

[jammy_basturd]

I agree, it works very well when I get to work with them. I'd love to form a company with either of them but unfortunately we're all busy in our own rights and I think happy to be in control of our own companies.