How can you find out if your website was built specially or if you are being charged a great deal by a supplier who simply reused a cheaply-available Wordpress theme?
Simply visit a Wordpress Theme Detector such as whatwpthemeisthat.com.
Just paste in your website address and view the results - if a theme is detected, follow the link to the theme's Author and see how much it would cost to buy.
Then add on any time that was taken up creating and/or applying content for the raw site - if this is applicable to your project. If you are lucky and have been billed on a hourly rate, this will be easy to work out.
From that you should be able to work out if you received appropriate value for money from your web supplier.
For this example, the King of Debug considers any hosting and maintenance of a site to be a separate cost to the build. (see Q4).
Once a site is finished and handed over there's a strong chance that after all the initial hoo-hah it hardly gets looked at until a problem occurs. For example, someone important might need to access the site for a presentation and be shocked at how slow its responding. Believe me, it happens a lot.
Then you go back to the original developers. Unfortunately they have emotionally 'moved on' since the project (and budget) have been completed so end up shrugging their shoulders and fobbing you off by installing a cache plugin or similar jiggery-pokery.
What's most likely to have happened is Bloat. Too many plug-ins, back-end widgets and tracking on the back-end causing big, bloaty page sizes that load slowly. All causing poor viewing experiences which then translates into poor SEO rankings.
Why not head over to an online speed testing site such as Pingdom Tools and add your homepage. Google Pagespeed is another good indicator of any problems.
Check the resulting performance grade first, and if it's not at least average, see if there's any obvious indicators of a problem.
When your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, it's not good. Neither is it good if your page size is over 4Mb and there aren't any videos loading. More than 100 requests per page is pushing it, too. After that lot's sorted it'll be time to look at the webserver response time and all things in between...
The good news is that that there's always a way to improve - subject to making some grown-up decisions about design and priorities - .
A quick visit to an online checker such as SEO Site Checkup will give you a good place to start.
Type your url in the box and run the test. Even the free report displayed is quite exhaustive so although some of the categories will not actually apply to every site the general trend of the results will show you (or a trusted consultant) what is going on.
Getting a very high score without some tinkering with the site is unlikely, but your site should be able to achieve at least the average score of 74%.
If all hosting was equal, it would all cost the same. Most modern website hosting has unlimited bandwidth, so you are effectively paying for processor speed, storage space and markup from your supplier. Comparing the same specification across providers will give you the current industry price standard and enable you to work out an acceptable monthly cost (it's usually a bit cheaper if you pay by the year).
After that, frankly, it'll be down to your web supplier's hourly rate - and only you will be able to tell if that rate is actually worth paying!
Allow, say 3 x 7-hour days to build the base site populated with filler content, then a day to add your breath-taking images and needle-sharp prose (when you finally supply them).
Tack on half a day to link up the forms, the email, the Google Maps widget, the irreplacable Search Console and the sitemap and you're about done. Apart from the alterations and tweaking when you show it to your fellow directors/better half/relatives and finally put the correct company number/phone number/email address on.
information about the King of Debug's hourly rate can be found at here.
Don't panic - it's quite simple. You need to own a relevant domain name to allow your website to be looked up on the internet and your email to work.
It's important that you retain ownership and complete control of this name so it should be registered using your details in your own registrar account. This does mean that you will be responsible for renewing and paying directly to the registrar every year, but it will be your own business asset, not someone else's.
An anything.co.uk name currently costs around £15 per year and an anything.com name currently costs around £18 per year. Don't waste your money on any other expensive extensions like pointless.me or whatonearth.shop as they will never, ever get used by real viewers.
Now, as you've left it this long to get on the web, there's a reasonable chance that the name you wanted - 'mycompany.co.uk' - was taken by someone else years ago. Luckily Google loves domain names that say what the company actually does, so something like 'mycompanythatdoesthis.co.uk' is better anyway and is probably available. Just keep it as short as possible.
As an alternative, 'mycompanyspecialism.co.uk' is usually up for grabs, and if all else fails 'mycompanysomethingelse.co.uk' will do the job.
As a bonus, when all this has been set up you'll be able to use the highly professional-looking anything@yourdomain.co.uk as your email address. Mail can be directed into and out of your Gmail account or you buy a mailbox from your registrar.
Want usable web answers with altogether less nonsense? Just consult the King of Debug !