I'm thinking of offering a basic package of services for small biz using Joomla! Many companies offer three to ten page sites for between £499-£799 which I'd obviously like to compare favourably to (after a first few low-costed jobs to get contacts and a portfolio, I think that £499 is reasonable for a mid-size five-pager). These sites tend to claim that this offers 'Custom Website Design': I was wondering what guarantee this provides the buyer. Does this mean:

a) just words, not worth the paper it's not written on

not a straight copy of a third-party template

c) isn't a modification of a third-party template

d) a bespoke design based on nothing other than the collective ingenuity of the web designers at the company

 

It seems like d) is unrealistic as most commercial template sites for joomla! feature templates for $50USD for a license or $1500USD upwards for a genuinely bespoke design. Are companies really just offering a modified third-party template or perhaps a modified template of their own which they re-use (that didn't occur to me above)?

 

What can I do to be able to fairly claim that I offer 'Custom Website Design' without tying myself to something that's too time-consuming for the price?

if custom design i would say a design/style thats just for them not a template you can sell on to others at £50 a pop, making it unique to them and they pay the extra price for it, if not then your able to keep selling that design ?.

 

i guess everyone will have different views and replies

Ok fine, but everyone in the web business reuses previous work and there are open source templates available (in the 1000s) so I'm guessing in most cases 'custom' doesn't mean absolutely from scratch and in many cases it means modifying someone else's template (perhaps that you've bought or is available freely): there's a lot of wriggle room in the word 'custom' so I'd be interested to hear not just what people think it should mean, but what it guarantees the customer in practice. Thanks.

Ok fine, but everyone in the web business reuses previous work and there are open source templates available (in the 1000s) so I'm guessing in most cases 'custom' doesn't mean absolutely from scratch and in many cases it means modifying someone else's template (perhaps that you've bought or is available freely): there's a lot of wriggle room in the word 'custom' so I'd be interested to hear not just what people think it should mean, but what it guarantees the customer in practice. Thanks.

 

Clearly not 'everyone' does.

I certainly don't use any templates, that's why I charge more than a 'free website template' would cost someone.

 

To me, a custom design is a design built from nothing. A customised design is a tailored template design.

I think you'll be surprised how few serious designers use templates - I never do (for paying clients). There's no reason to - making a template for a CMS isn't that hard after all. For the kind of price you are charging, as a customer I would expect a unique design, not a modified template.

 

Just because someone out there is charging over £1k for a unique joomla template doesn't mean one can't be made for less. For all I know they could be grossly overcharging because not everyone knows how to turn a design into a joomla template.

I must be underestimating the rapidity with which you can custom-build a Joomla! template: I suppose it's just creating the CSS and laying things out in the index.php file. When I said "everyone in the web business reuses previous work", there were no overtones of accusation: Even if you're building a custom template, you probably re-use boilerplate CSS classes from previous work. Or maybe you don't.

 

Those are useful responses; I'm sure you all have more industry experience than I do.

Where code is reusable, I will definitely re-use it. When it comes to templating this will only usually be the CSS reset and perhaps the DTD... Each layout is different enough to leave the bulk of code unusable for another project. Contact forms and other scripts definitely get re-used though, and there's no shame in it. I think the important thing is that each client gets a truly unique design.

A web site template that you have created may have a particular specification. For example Headaer center 100px high, lefrt modules and right module column etc...

 

Reusing the basic template to get the web design layout you want is fine. Lats face 99% of web site on the web follow the same basic structure header/body/columns and footers it's only really the dimensions, functions and graphics contained within that alter between sites. My point is why reinvent the wheel. I would just create 5 variations of common layouts, draw the clients a bespoke design in photoshop and modify the graphics and dimensions to suit. that way you can afford to be £500 and not £1500.

Reusing the basic template to get the web design layout you want is fine. Lats face 99% of web site on the web follow the same basic structure header/body/columns and footers it's only really the dimensions, functions and graphics contained within that alter between sites. My point is why reinvent the wheel. I would just create 5 variations of common layouts, draw the clients a bespoke design in photoshop and modify the graphics and dimensions to suit. that way you can afford to be £500 and not £1500.

I see your point, but I disagree. Just because the format is the same, doesn't mean it takes one third of the time to code the template, even if you are re-using a portion of code you've already written. The other drawback is that if you're designing with re-use of existing code in mind, your designs are going to be restricted, and your creativity limited.