Business Technology Website developer

Our business had a professional website built about 8 years ago, at the time we spent about 5k on it. It has organically ranked well enough for our business to not need to do any advertising or SEO whatsoever. We are first page for our key words. It is for our bathroom reno business and provides us with all of our work year round.
The issue we now have that the website has become so old, that it looks very dated and ranking is started to slightly suffer due to the age of the website and it not being mobile friendly. Unfortunately the company that built it are no longer around, and the platform version of Joomla that it was built on no longer offers updates. I think its Joomla version 1.5 or something. In the entire 8 years, we have never updated or maintained the website. I have been too scared of losing rankings that i have never had the website redone.
Im now in the market for a new website builder as it has to be done to keep up with the times, however do not know what to look for or even what I need! My main goal is to not negatively effect our ranking by replacing the website.
I have had a quote today for 6.5k, then someone told me to go on "Upwork" and get someone to rebuild it- unbelievably I have been quoted $400 by someone in India to do it. Seems too good to be true- but then again cost of living would be cheap there so Im not sure if they will do the same job as someone locally or not. Either way both quotes I have had have both quoted on keeping my existing content but transferring it to the new site and modernising it all.

Can anybody provide any input? Or make any recommendations for any website builders that are reputable?
I have also had a quote from Magic Dust that I was happy with, but they have some bad reviews online.

 

I wouldn’t use overseas contractors for such a thing as a website. Upwork is an awesome site, but pay peanuts, get monkeys. I had so much stuff done there that had to be redone. There are also security and confidentiality issues to take into consideration. If it’s such an important income earner I wouldn’t go cheap on it.

 

T

Those were exactly our thoughts. My husband said the same thing. I was just starting to wonder if we were just paying more for the same thing here or if there were likely quality and security differences.

Can you recommend any website builders?

 

I can recommend a guy in the Philippines but that aspect up top is always going to stay true.

Have had bad experiences with people locally too, so buyer beware.

Always check the developer's portfolio and ask if you can shoot an e-mail to previous clients.

 

I ended up using someone from Upwork. I emailed some of the website owners whom they claimed to work for and all seemed to check out. I set up progress payments that get released at each stage, with a final one 4 weeks after handover. So far its working well, and the work has been done, I just need to monitor it to make sure our rankings don't get hit too hard.
I was going to go with a local, however all of the big companies seem to have terrible reviews, and 6-10k is a lot to lose if I have a bad experience. I can justify a bad job if its not costing me thousands and it leave budget for fixing it then. I got in touch with the guy who originally did ours (he isn't in the industry anymore), but he said he recommended Upworkers, just told me to make sure I always have the logins and change once finished before releasing payment. I also have noticed in the reviews that a lot of local web companies seem to be subcontracting a lot of their work to up workers anyway.

 

Is the website your main point for generating business? If so - I wouldn't go with the cheap overseas option. It can be hit and miss - and if there's issues after the work is completed/paid for you might not have anyone to help. You also don't want any dodgy SEO being done!

I can recommend someone someone kinda local to you (across the border in SA) that does website creation and ongoing SEO.

Cheers

Jamie

 

The local builders all outsource to developers offshore anyways, mainly India, Bangladesh or Philippines.

We got quotes from a few top SEO companies locally. All of them use programmers offshore. The only people in the local office are the sales people and ‘strategists’.

 

That's what I found after researching local companies. Majority of them have bad reviews and unhappy customers too. I figure Ill take my chances and try offshore first so that I can't be angry about losing so much money. I can live with losing 2k and having to re-do, but not 6.5k

 

I will report back in a few months to let you know how things went.

 

How'd you end up going with the outsourced company? A family member of mine has a small website design business/SEO business. If you want you can ask him for some pointers, his business is called Sitelabs and they're based in Melbourne.

 

hi @fedex It went incredibly well- site is ranking even better than before and bringing in heaps of phone calls daily. I have continued working with the guy who re-did it and he keeps tweaking Seo for me for about $150 a month and month on month I am seeing increases in phone calls. Im really happy with outsourcing, glad I did it as there was really no guarantee that spending 6-10k locally was going to give me a better result, and also no guarantee they wouldn't hurt it. I have been burnt years ago by SEO companies locally so am very hesitant to spend money locally. One good thing about Upwork is that you can set milestones before part payments are released so you can have a conditions to protect you.

 

@Otie I'm glad to hear that it worked out well for you. I've heard horror stories about some freelancers from friends but at the end of the day I think if your DYOR, it's one of those things that can work.