Web Design

Web Design Pricing: How Much Does A Web Design Cost?

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Whether you’re looking to launch a new website or improve an existing web design, you’re going to want to know — how much does web design cost? With professional web design prices can range from $1000 to more than $10,000. There are a variety of factors that influence the cost of web design.

More specifically, it’s a matter of how much work is involved. The two determining factors are size and the complexity of your website both relate directly to the price.

That means an attractive, professional 10-page informational website with standard customization is going to cost less than a highly customized 50-page website with all the bells and whistles.

Web Design Pricing: How Much Does A Web Design Cost?

A basic web design for a small business can cost between $1000 to $10,000. That should provide your company with a credible, user-friendly site that can start driving purchases, phone calls, and quote requests specific to your brand and goals.

Searching web designers in our area that listed their prices, we found the going rate in WNC to build a modern, professional small business website was typically $3,000-$6,000. Though again, it depends on the number of pages and the amount of customization needed.

If you’re a small business or startup, a good basic web design offers a cost-effective option. Be prepared to spend between $3,000-$6,000. That means a nice-looking, professional 10-page informational website with standard customization.

WHAT DETERMINES WEB DESIGN PRICING

With such a broad price range for a web design — it’s natural to wonder what determines the cost of web design. The six most influential factors on design costs include: Size, Style, Copywriting, Custom Features, SEO

Web Design Pricing: How Much Does A Web Design Cost

Website Size

The size of your website plays a significant role in web design pricing.
If you’re looking to create a larger site, you can expect to pay more for web design services. It requires more time and work to develop, build, and launch a big website with advanced capabilities like those needed for e-commerce stores.
In most cases, agencies define the size of your website by the number of pages and the cost scales off of that.

Style

Here is an example; if you’re a luxury jewelry company, you’re probably looking to create a high-end website that conveys not only your brand but also your product or service quality. In comparison, a roofing contractor’s web design may feature a more laidback, yet professional design with a focus on trust.

Custom site layout

Every website starts with a theme or template. Nobody codes a website totally from scratch anymore — that’s way too time-consuming and expensive. A template or theme often gets you 50-60% of the way there, but there’s still tons of customization and coding to get your site looking and functioning how you want it to. The more customization and coding required, the greater the cost. Templates and themes are a major reason you can often build a professional small business website in the $3,000-$6,000 range, instead of $15,000-$20,000 or more as in the past.

No matter what style you’re looking for, from simple to high-end, it’s critical that your web designer creates a website that captures your brand, as well as provides an intuitive and seamless experience for your visitors or shoppers.

Custom images & graphics

Fancy images and graphics can give your site a one-of-a-kind look, but it comes at a price. In addition, sophisticated visual effects often require special editing software and/or custom graphic design work. I can tell you from experience graphic design takes time.

Number of design revisions

Most website projects start with an initial concept design (kind of like a rough draft), then it’s common to have 1 or 2 rounds of design revisions to get everything just right. Technically, a website designer can offer as many rounds of design revisions as they want. But keep in mind, every design iteration adds to the overall cost of the project. In my experience, 99% of the time 1-2 rounds of design revisions are more than enough.

Copywriting

Another big factor that affects your web design cost is copywriting.
Depending on your digital marketing strategy, as well as budget, you may use your web agencies copywriting services for your webpages. If you do, it’s wise to partner with a full-service digital marketing agency like Lone Bird Studio that offers more than just web design services.

What is optimized copy? It’s content that targets keywords relevant to your business and target audience. A full-service agency can provide optimized copy that captures your brand, product features, and unique selling points.

While the cost of copywriting varies, you can expect to pay $100 – $300 per webpage. If you’re an ecommerce store, product pages generally cost around $60 per page — ecommerce product pages have a lower price due to their shorter word count.

Custom Features

Sometimes you can find a plugin that will provide the exact functionality you want right out of the box (i.e. image carousel, membership portal, payment calculator, etc.). Other times, getting your site to do what you want requires significant trial/error and testing. In a perfect world, everything would be plug-and-play and work perfectly the first time — but sadly, that’s rarely the case. A fair amount of debugging and testing could be required to get everything working.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you’re partnering with a full-service digital marketing company like Lone Bird Studio for your web design, they probably offer SEO services, which you can bundle with web design. The right keywords can make a tremendous difference in your company’s weekly sales and leads. Plus, it’s a key factor to rank in search results. Proper optimization helps your web design budget do more for your business in both the short and long-term.

What does SEO cost? Bundling web design with SEO can increase your web design costs by $2000. The price for this service generally scales off the number of keywords targeted.

Ongoing Website Updates, Upgrades, Maintenance & Licenses

Once your website launches, your work’s not done. Just like buying a house, you’ll need to invest time, effort and money to maintain it.
For example, you’ll have annual hosting & maintenance fees and possibly annual licensing fees for premium plugins and services.
It’s likely you’ll purchase new images as you upgrade and expand your site.

Your site also requires ongoing technical maintenance to install updates and security patches to WordPress core files and WordPress plugins to protect your site from being hacked. Yes, even small business sites are targets for hackers.
If you’re comfortable performing these updates yourself, great. But sometimes routine updates break your site, so you need to know what to do if/when this happens.

You also need an offsite backup system so your website can quickly be restored in the event of catastrophic hardware or software failure (or user error!) crashing your site. Sorry to alarm you, but these things really do happen.

If you prefer not to deal with the messy, behind-the-scenes technical upkeep of your site, you can purchase a website maintenance plan for $40-$300/month depending on the services you need. We recommend www.webguy.tech and their excellent WordPress service

I hope this was helpful in getting an idea of web design pricing and how much a small business website can cost.

Voice Search Optimization Basics for Web Marketing

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Some Voice Search Optimization Basics. Half of all searches are voice-based, time to upgrade your website. Web Marketing Asheville NCHere are some Voice Search Optimization Basics for Web Marketing. Because nearly half of all Internet searches are voice-based, it’s probably time to upgrade your website, in order to help achieve top SEO placement. Just as the world shifted from pay phones to smart phones, the rules of the Internet are shifting as well. The days of simply using meta tags and “liking” a few social media posts to snag top spots in Google searches are gone. If you want your business to hit the top spots, you need to up your web marketing game. Voice search optimization is going to be a key element in 2020 for successful marketing. Here’s are some key elements to incorporate into your web marketing:

Natural language is the key. We used to sit at a desktop and type in disjointed key words to initiate a search. Now we use smart assistants like Siri and OK Google for voice-based searches, and we simply talk to them. Where is a post office near me? What’s the weather in Asheville? This is a huge change in terms of SEO management, especially when coupled with trends like increased smart speakers, wearable devices (such as Fitbit) and other internet-based things like smart TVs, toys, appliances and even smart homes. What this boils down to is that because search engine parameters have changed to embrace the way we speak to the Internet, it’s time to rethink SEO for your business.

Long-tailed snippets. Just as in the past SEO used the basic key words for searches, now long-tailed snippets help you hit Google’s Featured Snippets. It’s the same principle as the old meta tags, but with more lingo, which makes sense because it runs on smart devices or assistants (like Alexa). When we ask for something in ordinary vernacular, the responses will be long-tailed as well. Your SEO should reflect these changes.

Keep what works. Like old SEO basics, there are some tried and true approaches that help your Voice Engine Optimization (VEO). They include optimizing your content and ensuring your website loads quickly and keeping all listings for your business (such as Angie’s List) up to date. Consider hiring a professional blogger and if you’re an expert at something, showcase it with webinars. Your company should also have an active, professional social media presence. For all these ideas, keep the mood professional but friendly.

Voice searching with smart devices isn’t a fad that will pass in time. Smart technology is here to stay, and will only increase. Trends indicate that 2020 will be the Year of Voice Searches. Therefore, web optimization for voice-based searches is the new SEO basis, and can help you stay at the top of search results. Compare these Voice Search Optimization Basics to your website.

For a Free consultation, contact Lone Bird Studio here. We’d love to help with your web marketing needs.

What the Internet of Things is and How it Impacts Business

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Internet of thingsWhat is the Internet of things, anyway? We’re glad you asked. It’s something you probably take for granted and don’t even realize it. When you get a text that notifies you of a package delivery on your i-Phone, listen with wireless earbuds to Pandora, ask Alexa a question, or check your Fitbit, you’ve dabbled in the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. Any device that has a sensor or a connection to the internet is part of the IoT. Virtually everything has some kind of internet connection these days, and that means businesses should keep up to date on changes in society that IoT creates. To ignore these trends would outdate your business, and that translates to decreased profitability.

How does IoT affect our behavior? Technology has made life easier and the digital age is here to stay. For example, instead of reaching for a dictionary, we ask Siri for a definition or pronunciation. As a business owner, seeing how these changes in technology have affected society (and how money is spent) is the first step. The second one is understanding how to create a digital marketing strategy that will grab consumers’ attention. Because potential clients have so many resources at their fingertips now, being able to find new ways to communicate with them and answering questions they may have, creates a connection with them. This connection is part of branding your business.

IoT itself is changing how client input is processed by those very devices. For example, a Google search a decade ago would’ve included basic key words only. Today, we ask whole questions to Siri. It’s more humanized. Searches now run not just on key words, but take into account our natural language patterns. Most everyone has noticed how they can be speaking of something casually, and suddenly advertisements for that very thing pop up on their social threads. There’s a fine line between gathering information for business analysis, and perceived invasion of privacy.

Taking IoT into account with web design (or upgrade) is key, because conveying a sense of trust between your company and clients is essential, even as business activities interact more directly with internet-connected devices. A secure website that looks good and loads quickly on laptops as well as smart devices is the standard. Adding a protocol to your business that, where applicable, includes geofencing/geomapping as well as external factors such as weather or traffic information could give you a serious edge in sales. For example, imagine a company that sells rain jackets and umbrellas being able to advertise those things on smart phones when rain is forecasted, and apply the concept to your company.

Most everyone has a smart phone. Tweaking your company’s website to embrace mobile IoT technology is essential. We can help with that. Click here for more information.

Ecommerce on WordPress

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Ecommerce on WordPressBuilding an effective website for your business is difficult enough, but setting up an ecommerce site can be overwhelming for many aspiring entrepreneurs. It doesn’t have to be, especially when if you build your website with WordPress.

Originally created for blogging, WordPress has become an open-source platform for all kinds of websites. Through the years, developers created plugins and themes that make it possible to turn a WordPress site into an online store. Ecommerce on WordPress offers many benefits.

What’s E-commerce?

Ecommerce (or e-commerce, as it’s sometimes written) is defined as buying or selling products or services through the internet. You can use a computer or a mobile device to conduct your transaction. Buying online requires entry of credit card information or processing the payment through a third party, such as PayPal.

When most people think about e-commerce, they may think of the megastores that sell physical products to retail customers. But e-commerce can also include B2B transactions, services and digital downloads. And e-commerce gets more complex every year.

Ecommerce vs. Traditional Retail

Starting a traditional retail business requires a lot of set-up and investment before you can make a dime. But if you set up an e-commerce website, your store can start selling your goods almost immediately. The costs associated with ecommerce are lower, too. Other advantages of selling through e-commerce include:

• E-commerce overcomes geographical limitations. You can sell to anyone, anywhere. And as you market your website, you expand your customer reach!

• Since customers shop on their devices, you eliminate their travel time and costs. In fact, since everyone’s online, you’re where your customers are spending their time.

• You gain new customers as your search engine visibility increases, which also builds brand awareness. You can even serve niche markets with less hassle.

• It’s easier for your customers to find what they’re looking for on a website. You can provide as much information as you want on your products and even allow comparison shopping.

• You can enable special deals, periodic bargains, coupon codes and group buying opportunities.

Set Up Shop the Easy Way

You can build a WordPress website yourself and configure WordPress with ecommerce, or you can do the smart thing and bring in an expert to help you. Lone Bird Studio specializes in building successful e-commerce sites. When you go with Lone Bird, the benefits include:

• A lot fewer headaches — in fact, your website’s cheaper and performs better in the long run

• Better-looking, custom website design, built by professionals, that reinforces your brand

• Faster-loading web pages that encourages commerce

• A website that’s compatible with all of the latest mobile technologies — and your site needs to be mobile-friendly

• Having a pro set up your payment and shipping capabilities

• The added advantage of getting increased visibility in search engine results

• Superlative support that minimizes any potential downtime

What are you selling? If you want to start your own web store, get WordPress with ecommerce website set up quickly. You can do it yourself, but if you need help, contact Lone Bird Studio.

Has Google Mobile Indexing Killed Your Business?

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Google Mobile Indexing You may have spent thousands of dollars designing, building and marketing your business website. How do you know if it’s working? You can track traffic to and leads from your site. You can search for your keywords to see how you rank. But it may change day-to-day, not just month-to-month.
Trust Lone Bird Studio to keep your website ranking high, as we know what to look for. Google continually changes its algorithms in ways that directly impact how it ranks your website. So what is Google mobile indexing and why does it matter to you? Let’s begin by tackling the first part of that question, so you get an inkling of whether it’s killing your business or boosting it.

What Is Google Mobile Indexing?

Sometime in 2014, the number of people using mobile devices to search the internet passed the number of people using desktops and laptops. And all of a sudden, mobile users became vital to your business. Actually, mobile users have been trending up almost since smart phones were invented.
Google has acknowledged the trend and made mobile-friendly websites rank higher than those that don’t have a mobile website design. It makes sense, as more and more people access the internet on mobile devices. Google mobile indexing means that Google looks at your mobile site first. If it’s unresponsive or incomplete, you’re ranked lower.

So if you haven’t given your site a mobile web design, your site is going to suffer in Google searches. Since Google accounts for more than 90 percent of all internet searches (in October 2018), you can’t afford to rank lower. You’ve worked hard at SEO and design. If you neglected to include a mobile web design, then Google mobile indexing will kill your business!

How Can You Implement Mobile Website Design?

To be compliant with the Google mobile indexing, your website simply has to work — it has load quickly, work perfectly and look great — on a device as small as a smartphone. Lone Bird Studio knows that mobile sites need to do certain things to save space (which is at a premium) and time (ditto), such as:

• Choose a mobile-friendly design template, not just a mobile-responsive design.
• Confine your web design, graphics and content to the screen size, not to an arbitrary frame or page width.
• Optimize all your images for fast loading.
• Resize the graphics and the copy so both are readable and not overwhelming.
• Make sure your mobile version has all the information your full site offers.
• Remove hovering elements, which don’t render on a mobile device.
• Delete any Flash and pop-up elements. They don’t work on mobile devices either.

If you ignore Google mobile indexing, your search ranking will suffer, which directly translates into business-killing lost sales. To get and implement a mobile website design and restore your website to its place on Page 1 of Google searches, contact Lone Bird Studio.

Top Five Web Security Tips

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Five Security Tips

The Internet is a dangerous place, you see the same news I do, new software vulnerabilities are reported daily. Security experts agree these are the top five security tips you should use to protect yourself and your data.

1: Keep your software updated.
Have you seen software notices that tell you an update is ready? You shouldn’t ignore them—that’s a bad idea. Updates and patches are there to protect us. They secure and reinforce your computer, software, and data.

2: Use strong passwords.
You probably already know how important it is to use strong, random, and unique passwords. And I’m sure your banking password isn’t your cat’s name—right?
A really solid password meets three criteria:

• It has at least twelve characters.
• It includes uppercase and lowercase letters as well as numbers and symbols.
• It does not contain words that can be found in the dictionary, or people’s names.

3: Fortify sensitive accounts.
To be honest, passwords are important, but their effectiveness is inherently limited. Add a second layer called two-step authentication. Also called 2FA or multifactor authentication, two-factor authentication is more effective than passwords alone.
Many sites already allow (even encourage) users to turn on 2FA, including Gmail, Twitter, and PayPal. Chances are your bank has it too. You don’t need to set it up everywhere, only at your most important and sensitive accounts such as PayPal or your online bank account.

4: Back up, back up, back up!
Here is the harsh reality: one day, you will lose your data. Your hard drive will crash. Or maybe you accidentally erase your data. Or maybe you lose your computer or device altogether. Losing your data can be catastrophic, but if you have a backup it’s not such a big deal. Back up regularly and test your backups.

5: Update your antivirus.
You already know that installing a solid antivirus program is one of your best defenses against malware. But installing antivirus software isn’t enough. Just like those patches and updates, you need to make sure you have the most current version and the virus definitions are up-to-date.

Of course, you can avoid the hassle altogether by allowing important software like your operating system and antivirus to update automatically. The takeaway is that a few minutes spent here and there can save you a world of pain.

Don’t be a mistake waiting to happen!

Recent Save

WNC Urban Farms was in the middle of a new site launch when their web person crashed the site, forcing a sudden rebuild. The web person could not get the UPS shipping and payment gateway to work. When pressured, she got frustrated and told WNC to find someone else, essentially leaving them hanging. Gary the owner called in a panic, watching dollar signs flying out the window. We had the problem straightened out so WNC Urban Farms could fulfill orders in less than twenty-four hours.

"I knew Lone Bird Studio from our networking group, but still made the often-repeated mistake of using a family friend. When she left us, I called Lone Bird, and in twenty-four hours they had us up and running. And, in the process, they opened our eyes to other issues with our site and marketing approach. Now we have them working on our new marketing plan. They were calm, experienced, and worked directly with UPS to solve the problem. When it’s mission critical, use a professional."

Gary, WNC Urban Farms, Waynesville NC

Uses for Augmented Realty

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Lone Bird Studio Studio Augmented RealityAugmented reality relies on three basic display types: Handheld devices such as mobile smartphones or portable computers, wearable technology or head mounted displays such as specially designed glasses or goggles (Google Glass application is one example; rumor also has it that a smart watch applying wearable technology is in construction by Apple.) and spatial displays which project computer enhanced graphics onto fixed surfaces.
Although AR was most common to training simulation applications and video games at first, its uses have widened to a great degree in the last few years. At present, we can see uses of enhanced reality in many different fields and industries.

Military

HMD or head mounted displays are used extensively in military aircraft technology. With the help of the HMD, an aircraft pilot has all the data he needs, including airspeed, horizon line, altitude, etc., right before his eyes. So, there is no need for him to look down to the instrumentation board for the perusal of such data. AR applications and HMD facilities are used for many ground troops operations, too.

Tourism

Tourism industry also makes extensive use of enhanced reality in a bid to enrich the experience of the tourists and the sightseers. Museums, for example, have introduced interactive 3D live views of the museum artifacts. These shows help the visitors to the museum gain a deeper and more interactive knowledge about the displays and the attendant historical facts.

Medical

The medical field similarly looks to make good use of the 3D visualizations made possible through advancements in AR technology. Thanks to enhanced reality, medical students can now practice surgical operations in a controlled environment. Neurosurgical methods have especially benefited from the use of enhanced reality. Since brain surgeries are often very complex operations and the margins of errors are, in most cases, very small, the doctors benefit from having access to comprehensive 3D displays of the brain prior to the surgery.

Apart from these, we can also find extensive use of enhanced reality applications in many other fields such as navigation, gaming, entertainment, education, advertising & promotion, etc.

In the field of website design too, augmented or enhanced reality has made its effect felt in a big way. Especially, use of enhanced reality has become a big feature in web design for smartphones, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices. The application Layer Reality Browser, for example, which is available to Android and iPhone users, makes use of enhanced reality to retrieve data on structures, places, movies, and locations and displays these data as real-time digital information, thereby augmenting our view and experience of the real world. Loan Bird Studio, as a leading Asheville North Carolina. Web design solutions firm, incorporates augmented or enhanced reality applications in their website design and other solutions, whenever possible and relevant. The firm caters mainly to medium sized businesses and one can read more about their success stories from client testimonials posted at the company website www.lonebird.com, and at other relevant online platforms.

WordPress 101

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WordPress Content Management System

WordPress powers 1 of every 6 websites on the Internet
WordPress represents

25.6% of all websites representing small, medium and big business use WordPress.
72.4 million websites host a WordPress blog.
22% of active domains created in the USA run on WordPress.

WordPress Explained

Investing money into a company website is like investing money in any other company asset. You want to get the most out of your money right from the start. Picking the right WordPress website with the right options the first time is important. We strive to ensure maximum ROI and satisfaction with minimum maintenance.

There are three main differences to be aware of when comparing WordPress options. The choices are a pre-built template, a Child Theme, or a custom-built WordPress website.

WordPress Templates

Templates are where many of you will start. It is a very cost effective and flexible way to begin.

When choosing a theme, look for the overall feel or style you want. Check what features in the design can be edited. There are thousands available, both free and purchased.

Many of the cool and specialty templates like restaurants or apartment rentals, for example, are generally paid templates. Don’t let that scare you. The costs are generally less than $100. We can do some beautiful customized work to tailor these templates to your needs.

Child Themes

We can create some pretty cool web designs with this method. Actually, this is where we do most of our work. Creating child themes allows very distinctive customization of WordPress templates to make them truly yours. A child theme is a cross between template and full custom WordPress. It is our most popular choice with businesses that “get it” and realize they need the web to grow.

You can save quite a bit of money starting with a child theme. Let Lone Bird tailor it especially for you!

Custom-built WordPress

A custom-built WordPress website means that we design and build a custom theme that will be unique to you and your branding. It is unique for your business, yet retains the WordPress functionality. We build and customize your website exactly as way you want.

Web Design 101

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The 3 Main Steps to Web Design and Search Optimization

A complete web project has three important parts: 1 – research, 2 – design and optimization and 3 – the launch. Unfortunately most just focus on the first, what the site is going to look like. Few have clear goals other than they “want to be found”.

All of our web projects cover THE 3 BUILDING BLOCKS of a complete web design.
This gives you a maximum chance for success and a solid foundation on which to build your Web presence.

1. Research and keywords

This is possibly the most important step. Why? Because the proper choice of keywords crucial. This list is one of the most valuable pieces of information you will get. Your keywords are not just for Google but you will need them everywhere. You will use them to optimize the site, you will use them to list the site, and they will go in your content, advertising, sales materials and your socials. You get the idea. They are very important and they change so need to be updated every six months or so.

Without keywords you cannot tell the search engines where to list you. True you don’t necessarily need a keyword Meta Tag but you do need the words for everything else. By that I mean page titles, file names, header tags, content, link text, listing and indexing and your advertising. See why it is so important?

2. Design & Optimization

This is a two part step and you can’t have one without the other.

Part A is the visible human side containing the design. The graphic design and how the web site handles are very important to the conversion rate. Your web design should be both pleasing and functional. This is where Chris’s marketing and design backgrounds play an important role.

Part B is the code side, what your browser and the search engines see. Google has very strict rules for page load times, content placement, content to code ratios etc. Using the keywords from above this includes page titles, file names, header tags, content, link text, and descriptions. It is very important to have the optimization and design work together here. One of the values of Lone Bird is the ability blend these two parts together. This save time, money and produces a much more effective end result.

3. Initial Launch

By far the most overlooked step of the three and it is every bit as important as the first two. Listing your site is really important. The big mistake frequently made is not properly listing the site, even with Google. Just going “live” with the website is not enough. Google alone can run 8 weeks before indexing the site. You will want to list your website as many places as possible. Putting the site up and not “working it” is the kiss of death and voids all the above.