Marlborough Website Design and Development

Create IT builds fast, mobile friendly websites and web apps. We're based in Blenheim, New Zealand. We work with both PHP and ASP.Net based open source CMSs depending on client requirements. We're 100% local, and don't outsource any of our work offshore, as we're proud to support the local Marlborough economy.

How much will a website cost?

That's a bit like asking, "How long is a piece of string?", but speaking from experience, it's possible to build a really simple website for around $600 + GST if you supply the copy and images, and don't demand anything too fancy for design. That will give you a respectable looking website with maybe 3-4 pages, and a CMS so you can edit content yourself, but no SEO or marketing. In most cases, a minimal site is more likely to cost $1000 + GST upwards. If you need copy writing, SEO or photography, the price will go up accordingly. It's not hard to spend over $5,000 + GST if you need a lot of work done, but it's possible to get a respectable website for well under this if you do your homework, and are able to provide a good description of what you need, and supply content ready to add to the site.

Create IT charges an hourly rate of $120 + GST ($138 incl GST), but the table below gives you some estimate of what you'll get for your money. Note that these numbers are only estimates, and the number of pages actually doesn't have much impact on overall cost if you add them yourself, for example if you add 100 pages to a site yourself, it doesn't take us any more time than building a two page site.

What's the difference between website development and website design?

Do you want a Monet or a Ferrari? Both are beautiful masterpieces, but one has function as well as form. Website development is a bit like building a Ferrari; not only does a good site need to look great, it needs to offer great functionality. Website design is more like creating a work of art. A painting can be beautiful, but doesn't really offer much interactivity. Your website can be so much more than that. It can be the way you interact with your customers, for example via a shopping cart, or booking forms. A great website should both look good and be functional.

What Website Design services does Create IT offer?

At Create IT, we like to think we're pretty smart, but we're not graphic designers. We can build you a nice looking site that won't look like something the cat dragged in, but if you want to go really fancy or need a logo designed or something like that, you need a specialist graphic designer. If you already have a graphic designer you work with, we're happy to work with them, otherwise we can suggest one, or outsource to one, if you don't want to have to deal with multiple businesses to get your web site done.

We use widely supported CSS frameworks such as Bootstrap to ensure that your web site looks great on any device.

Why does Website Performance matter?

You'll find many people who can build you a nice looking website, but when it comes to all important Google rankings, Google doesn't care how pretty your website looks, but rather how quickly it enables people to find the information they want. It's important to have a website that's not just 'mobile friendly' (ie it looks good on a mobile device), but also 'mobile optimised' (ie it loads fast on a mobile device without using unnecessary mobile bandwidth). Your potential customers won't love you if your website loads slowly on their mobile device, or ends up gobbling up their precious mobile data, and neither will Google. Google provides free testing tools built right into Chrome to help web designers and developers build fast sites so that everyone has a better experience,  and here at Create IT we take them seriously. It can be hard to score a perfect 100% on all Google's tests, but if your website scores poorly on several tests, then it needs improment.

What's a Web App?

Websites can be so much more than an online brochure, and ought to be a cloud based way to interact with your business or organisation anywhere, any time on any device. Modern websites can be made to behave pretty much like an app, with the ability to install themselves to users' home screens on their devices, and to offer a certain amount of offline functionality. They're also highly interactive. If you've used Facebook, Trademe, Twitter, Xero, or Gmail, you've used a web app. 

What's Copywriting and why might I need it?

It's important that the textual content on your website is written so that it appeals to visitors, and makes sense to search engines. We love words, and have a university background in linguistics, which if you like, is the science of language. When it comes to the all-powerful Google, how you design your words is often more important than how your site looks. Google doesn't care too much if you web site looks bland but Google cares a lot about whether it's quick and easy to access information on your site, and it's clear what the information is about. We'll help you write great copy that shows up in search results and also engages with potential customers.

What's a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) puts you in control of your web site, by providing you with the ability to edit your site content yourself without needing to be a nerd. Create IT uses open source content management systems for all web sites we build, to ensure that you own your site.

There are many content management systems such as Weebly, Wix, Squarespace and others that are provided as Software as a Service (SaaS). With these kind of systems, although you own your content, you don't have rights to the underlying system, so if you outgrow the built in functionality, you can't make a copy of your site and take it to an independent developer to add functionality. Also, with many of these systems, it's hard to optimise your site for performance.

At Create IT, we believe you should be in control. We hope you'll always use our services, but if for any reason you change your mind, we want to make it easy for you to take control of your site. It is yours after all. With open source systems, we can give you a copy of all the software needed to run your site if you want it.

We also believe in using the right tool for the job. Wordpress is one of the most popular CMSs, but we usually don't use it. Wordpress is a great blog platform, and a great way to get simple websites up and going cost effectively, but if you start needing advanced customisation, or dozens of plugins to make it do what you need, it can soon get very messy, complicated and potentially insecure, and the last thing you need is a hacked site.

Mostly we use Processwire for sites hosted on Linux servers or Umbraco if you need a Windows based solution. Both of these systems offer total flexibility, and in most cases will provide much easier customisation than a Wordpress based site.

We'll sit down with you and work out what your site needs to do, and choose a system that works best for your requirements.

E-commerce

If you need an online shopping cart, we are able to get you up and running very rapidly with open-source ecommerce software. Generally speaking, setting up a shopping cart system and integrating payment processing will take more time than setting up a web site that only provides information, so you need to allow for some significant costs, however compared to renting retail premises, e-commerce can be a very cost effective way to reach a wide market.

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