Ryan Bell

Hi there.  Quick question.

I checked out Template Monster, and for our line of business (skin care), there aren't any templates that look like what we want. I'm not a web designer, and I can't make anything look professional enough in Dreamweaver.  Also, most bids we've gotten for making a site are in the $10-20k range, which is too much.

Having said that, are the any other places you would recommend I look into (something like a Template Monster, etc) to find something that would work well with your product?  Just curious.  Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Tell us more.  For 10K they better have been planning to do more than just design and implement a graphic overlay for your site.

If you want to get an idea of the low end of site development check out rent a coder. I had one mid level design job that I had a firm do, and about 6 months later doing a google I found where they had subbed out alot of my job there.

My experince at hiring outside work has shown that most of the cost in developing is in the product import and setup. The overall design and implementation of the look should be very reasonable. I doubt you can use a 3rd party template service.  Some carts come with a varity of graphic temples designed for the cart, this is not one of them, there are a few preprogramed layout options.

Can you get your products loaded into the cart and display ok. If so developing a graphic template to overlay that should be pretty reasonable. When I went looking for bids they ranged 5k-50K. Ended up geting functional but not pretty for about $500. I offshored the import of about 1500 products and did the interface myself. (it shows ) but it works and sells. 

Another issue is SEO, product cart is friendlier then some but it will be a rare site that inner level products have any PR or do well on 1 or 2 word search phrases.

If I could do it over, I would stage it.  1st add the products to the cart, get the individual product pages with the info layed out well. keyword in the short descrp. headers and bullet points. No real design talent required. But ability to write sales copy about your products is required and hard to hire. Then determine what SEO issues are important to you and have someone address productcarts shortcomings re SEO.  Then have  some one  with asp  and graphic skill  do your header, memus and footers the way you want them, without messing the SEO issues up, or compensate for them, ie if you just have to have graphic javascipt menus make sure there is a good site map program in place.

Well I have to go, to make a long story short, spend  a month or so  educating yourself  at  a  site like webmasterworld, checkout rent a coder for the low end pricing, decide what you can do inhouse, and save 5 to 15K or check references spend the 20k and keep your fingers crossed that they do have a clue beyond what looks pretty.

With that said, I do think that there are a couple of developers here that know what they are doing. And there is no cheap AND easy way to develop a large effective site.

We will do that starting today.  I will contact several re-sellers.  The first two I contacted were in fact re-sellers, and even with a detailed plan of action (on our end), they still came in at well over $10k. 

What I really need to know is this:  Are there any pre-designed, *high-end* templates available for your software (something like what templatemonster.com makes for ZenCart and OSCommerce)?  That's what I really need.  No one appears to be doing this for your software (I can't imagine why not).  Do you know of anyone who does this?