Website for an AI consultancy - is it worth it?

[Dayatatime208]

Morning lovely mumsnetters!
I want to get a website up and running to market my different services as a writer, consultant and speaker - and for this to look really professional.
I am meeting with a website designer next week but want to know - what questions should I ask her? How much should I expect to pay and what's the most important part?
I know you can do this for free on Go Daddy etc - but I feel it won't look as good if I do it myself (and I've other work to get on with in the meantime after being made redundant from last job).
Any tips hugely appreciated as this will be my first website.
Thank you :)

have you actually started your business and working and have clients?

or is the hope the website will kick start business?

Careful - you'll likely be overcharged.

If you've just started, spend some time using WordPress; it'll cost you 90% less and achieve very good results.

What to expect to pay - is difficult as it depends on how many pages and if you are taking bookings or meetings online, how complicated you want the site etc. Difficult to say without seeing what you actually want.

The questions, should hopefully, come from the designer. If a basic 3-5 page site, anything over £500 you should avoid as your first website as it's very unlikely to drum up much business if you haven't already started some sort of other marketing through social media etc.

You are not guaranteed to be ranked in Google or other search engines - so please don't accept someone saying you'll have it guaranteed.

Happy to help further if you ever want to message.

Thank you @JuiceBoxJuggler Yes, it's a website for my business (part of which is a new offering now and I think this needs a site) - and prob about five pages, advertising different services. I'll also get testimonials in there and want it to look really professional (which is the bit I don't think I can do myself!) I will write the copy for the site. Any help appreciated! I don't want to overpay but I do feel it'd be good to have a professional do this.

Do feel free to message once you've had your meeting and costs given to you. I can advise further should you need it.

We were having a web site done by a professional, but they turned out to be very slow, useless and very expensive, everything we asked for was 'difficult' apparently. I did it myself in the end so we got exactly what we wanted and just cost me a lot of extra hours on top of my usual role.

I would use a template and do it myself on squarespace or similar. have a look at Squarespace templates. I believe it is very easy to use.

Wordpress is good but for the more experienced user (from personal experience) so may be harder for you to get a good look if you are doing it yourself.

if you're keen to use a professional, I would also get very clear guidance on how the build process goes e.g. will you get to see a draft design of the home page first, agree the look and feel etc, rough timescales. How many changes will they allow, will they set up your email address and hosting for you and so on. Clear outline of required functionality to include e.g. if you want any fillable forms in there etc. If you want changes done after the build and go live, what will they cost (minimum invoice fee), can they teach you to update it yourself etc etc. Will the site be responsive (e.g. suitable to use on a phone as well as a desktop computer - important), what content management system will they use and what are its benefits (such as Wordpress, Squarespace, Drupal etc) - each one has different use cases so you will want something easy to update yourself. How will they optimise for SEO? Will they provide a full backup of the site or set up an automated one so the site can be restored if it goes down? Get clear guidelines on what is and isn't included in the build fee ahead of the build. Do you have a logo and branding already? If not, will these need factoring into the cost somehow? Hope helpful!

@mnhq I have no idea why my reply above was hidden! there was nothing weird in it and as soon as I wrote it it disappeared with the above message about MNHQ looking at it (contained useful info for the OP).

How will changes be made, and to what SLA and at what cost?
Who would own the domain and the admin rights? Who would own the code?

Ask her about ongoing maintenance and also about analytics & SEO. As a PP said anyone who promises to get you to the top of Google is talking bollocks, but you need to know where your traffic’s coming from - whether your social media posts or emails are bringing people in, if other sites are linking to yours, what keywords you’re ranking for.

I'd recommend building your own if you are feeling brave. Wordpress is obvious but my company recently made a Wix site, which I was a bit meh about using, but actually I think it works well for small businesses.

Hi @ChaoticCrumble @Bumblebeeinatree @JuiceBoxJuggler @EmpressaurusOfCats Thank you all!

To give you an idea - this is very much the look and feel of the website I want (and I also have three services to offer).

https://jofaithcopywriting.com/about/

So be fanatastic to know how much this type of thing costs - and the specific questions from above I need to ask?

How long does it take to build this kind of thing?

I'm a former journalist so will do the words...

THANK YOU! I really feel out of depth doing it myself, but also made redundant a month ago so not wanting to spend more than about £500...

Have a look at Wix.com. They have out of the box templates you can configure yourself pretty easily, and look very professional too. Prices far more reasonable than paying for someone to do it for you.

Is this an ad? Because this website is super basic, you could have it up and running in an hour

@MrDavidLloyd oh that's interesting! I thought it was quite comprehensive - shows what I know!!

I'm not sure I could do it in an hour 😂I wish I could!!

That site is built in convertkit (Google it) which is designed for self serve creators making their own sites. It’s a piece of piss to build one like that using their templates. Don’t pay for that!

It’s literally a template that you drag and drop text into, it’s really, really easy.

I have a great Wordpress guy I use who is based in Pakistan that I found on upwork. He is a lot cheaper than UK based designers and I found as long as I gave him a detailed design brief along with all the images to use he was very good at interpreting it. I now use him directly which is even cheaper.

He’s built me a great site that links to aWeber for collecting email addresses, and has pop ups for lead magnets etc plus landing pages. There are SEO plugins for Wordpress which aren’t hard to use.

I don’t rate wix but it is cheap.

@TBOM Good to know - do you think that website is wordpress then? Or which platform? What about Go Daddy?

@TBOM sorry you answered that in your previous message - thank you!

@TBOM but when would you recommend using a designer? I am bad with this stuff so that's why I thought I needed one!

If you are offering an AI consultancy, why are you not using AI to write your website? Would that not be more impressive for your clients?

(There are many reasons from accuracy of code to thinking about SEO to getting content right etc. to the fact that AI is not terribly intelligent!)

be cautious about using WIX - huge issues ever moving from it and it is not good code - Squarespace is better. Wordpress is fine if you don't aim to be too complicated or use too many plugins which potentially clash with each other... Your best site, most future proof etc. will be hand-coded, but a decent web designer is not going to produce it for you for under £500, so it is a balance and compromise...

of the options I would go squarespace for the easiest for a reasonable result / wordpress as the alternative

You want a designer if you need something complex that requires a high level of bespoke design that is aligned with your branding. Otherwise save your money and use templatised platforms.

@akkakk I have tried using Gamma for the job - and it's ok, but not amazing. Thanks for thoughts - useful!

@TBOM Thank you :)