website design advice/recommendations

freelance_3

I am not sure if this is the right area to post this question, but I'll give it a go!

I work freelance from home and I wanted to increase my customer base by launching an ecommerce website.

About a year ago a neighbour of mine offered to design a website for me for free. Everything started off well and then as the months went on work ground to a halt and I know have a half finished website.My neighbour has since moved away and to be honest our communication has broken down.

I am at the point now where I am desperate to get my business off the ground and although getting something for free seemed like a great option at first, I could never put any pressure on him to get it finished as he worked full-time and travels abroad alot.

I just want to pay someone to get it done now.

I already have a web hosting facility (fasthost) and a number of pages complete and uploaded by the friend who offered to build the site. It is practically complete with many of the pages programmed and uploaded onto my web hosting account, but it doesn't work as a fully functioning ecommerce site yet.

What I desperately need is some personal recommendations from any MSE forum users for website designers they have used. It can either be local to me in Bristol or even offshore. I notice that even Martin used a website designer from Uzbekistan when he first launched the MSE site!

If I type in website design or offshore website design into google, I get literally 100s of companies.

Does anyone know if a website company would take on my half-finished site and rescue it, or would they prefer to start from scratch.

I really need some personal recommendations for website designers who would be happy to help me out of this situation...

kiwifruit_2

im not sure if this is any good to you but give webeden.co.uk a look - I have recently had a free trial with them for the purpose of seeing what they offered etc and as a novice to personal websites etc, I found it very easy and user friendly....although I realise you are looking for a web company to do a site for you, I just thought you might like to check this place out - and no, I dont have friends or family who work there lol - just beleive in passing on a good thing.......good luck

richt71

Try elance.com site. It's basically like ebay but for computer and web design people. You post what you want...how much your willing to pay and people bid either privately or publicly (up to you!). All bidders have feedback from previous work so you can see if they're any good before you agree to hire them. You can ask questions of any bidders. You usually pay 50% upfront of the agreed fees via paypal.

freelance_3

thanks for your advice I will have a look at both sites now!

save-a-lot

Hi

Try https://www.scriptlance.com aswell, I have used it for years and I can put you in touch with a very good freelance developer who I accepted to do some work for me via scriptlance.. I use him all the time now. PM me to see what he has done for me (I do not want to post up URLs on the forum).

3plus1

I'm actual a self-employed web designer myself! I'd have to see your existing site before advising you whether someone could work with it, or if it would have to be scrapped.

When you say you're after an eCommerce site, what exactly do you mean? If you're just after a simple site where customers can pay by Paypal, it shouldn't cost too much to get things sorted. If it's anything more complicated, and you want it to look unique, you would probably be looking at a four figure sum from a UK based web designer.

You can use freelance sites, but I've heard quite a few sob stories from people who have used freelancers from abroad and who have been disappointed with the service. My recommendation is to either find someone local to you in Bristol, or at the very least, in the UK. Makes it much easier if things go wrong.

Hope that helps.

save-a-lot

3plus1 wrote:

You can use freelance sites, but I've heard quite a few sob stories from people who have used freelancers from abroad and who have been disappointed with the service. My recommendation is to either find someone local to you in Bristol, or at the very least, in the UK. Makes it much easier if things go wrong.

As with any service there is the good and the bad, you will find this in the UK, local to you and abroad, fact of life. Freelancer designers, developers etc who use the likes of scriptlance to get work etc get feedback from all of their customers and this is available for all to see. So when making a choice of freelancer, look at the quote given and the feedback they have. I have not ever had a problem and I have done quite a few projects now. If you are looking for a unique page design then I think you can get fixed up pretty cheap. After all to place a project costs nothing and many designers will mock you up a page design as part of the negotiation to use them and they'll show you all of their past work.

I can guarantee placing a project now would have you 20 different people bidding for your business with their own portfolios and all their differing prices and feedback scores. Then the choice is yours.

freelance_3

Just logged and and thanks for all your feedback. I am currently checking out all the sites you've all recommended and I have had some links via PM too.

I don't mind spending money on this site and I don't mind starting from scratch with a professional designer guiding me through the process (what has already been created may not be the best design for my products or company anyway).

There were certain areas of programming that the friend who was creating this site for free, couldn't program. One of the features of the site is an 'upload facility' where customers can upload their Word files for me to work with. The main thing is I paid £300 for an upload facility to be programmed by a freelance designer recommended by the guy working on my site. If I have to start from scratch then that's fine, but it would be great if I could salvage the programming done for the upload facility or that will be £300 down the drain!

At the moment the site exists as lots of separate pages not linked together and not linked to a database so that I can track customer orders.

It's all very fragmented!

anyway, I will contact all those who have asked me to PM them.

save-a-lot

Hi

Could you PM me your website address? I am entrigued to see your current site

Cheers

BusyMum_2

Freelance

Have a look at this website - https://www.rentacoder.com

It works a bit like 'EBAY' but is specifically aimed at those who have work they want done (websites, newsletter, many IT related tasks) and those who are willing to do it. You post your task and the relevant members 'bid' to do the work for you. Obviously you would generally go for the lowest bid but the designers are all rated (just like Ebay rates buyers and sellers) so you have a reasonable idea of what to expect.

I hope you are able to get the website completed soon!