Website upgrades are becoming increasingly popular due to the ever changing environment of the web. As the internet advances websites are required to adapt. Google sneezes and the world catches a cold. As a result websites that do not undergo regular upgrades according to the design and development trends and technologies will fail miserably at trying to convert customers to use their products and services. After all what faith would you have in a company that only uses typewriters and carbon copy books?

The problem is though, to create a website costs a lot of money and to know that you need to still pay more money for your website to stay up to date is not a happy thought for anyone. Optimus01 offers the following 4 solutions when it comes to cost effectively upgrading websites.

1. Implementation of a Content Management System
2. Design Upgrade
3. Development Upgrade
4. Doing a New Website

Content Management System
This is a system which allows the owner of the website to edit and update their own content and images. With a Content Management System they can also add pages to their website without the additional fee to the web developer. More and more companies are purchasing Content Management Systems in order to bring down monthly website maintenance costs. Having a Content Management System also means that should you wish to add additional applications to your website, or change the way your website operates the costs will not be as high as working on a website that doesn’t have one.

A Content Management System is priced at R3420, once off, including vat. This type of Content Management System would suit websites with basic maintenance requirements. This would also significantly reduce the number of hours and costs of using our web developer to update the content. We highly recommend our clients to consider purchasing a Content Management System when building or upgrading their website. In order to update your own website you will be given CMS training as well as access details such as the allocated username and password in order to access your content management system and update your website.

Design Upgrade
Sometimes a company can have the most technologically advanced website but the design execution remains poor. The unfortunate situation is that many web users judge a website by its home page, like many tend to judge a book by its cover. If there is poor navigation, too much clutter, not enough white space, poor layout, problematic colours etc. the user is likely to visit your website and bounce right out, thus increasing your bounce rate which is very bad for search engine rankings.

At Optimus01 we suggest that our multimedia designer goes through your website design and applies the 5 basic rules of website design, goes through the basic website page requirements, and essentially comes up with a plan in order to create a user friendly website that appeals to your target market and conforms to your overall corporate identity. This will significantly increase viewer interest and chances are your visitors will search your site long enough for you to convince them to purchase your product or utilize your service.

Costs for doing a design upgrade start from R2000 incl. vat however a formal quotation will be submitted prior to the project commencing.

Development Upgrade
A development upgrade would be required if the website has one or more of the following issues:

• The site has many broken links
• The site has many page errors
• The site was written in archaic programming languages that search engines can't read
• The site has bad layout and poor navigation
• The site just doesn’t work properly
• The site does not conform to current web standards which inevitably irritates the website user

Doing a development upgrade is a complicated and time consuming process. Costs are often very high as our web developers would have to first go through the code of the current website and understand it thus spending a lot of time simply touching base prior to actually doing the website development upgrade. Costs for a web development upgrade start at R4000 including vat however formal quotations are supplied prior to the actual project commencing. Whilst it is often necessary to do a website development upgrade sometimes the costs for doing a development upgrade far outweigh the costs of simply doing a new website.

Doing a New
As mentioned previously often it is far more expensive to upgrade an entire website instead of simply doing a new website. Whilst the chances are that you have already spent a lot of money developing your current website sometimes seeking to upgrade it will mean much more time and money therefore commissioning Optimus01 to do a completely new website would cost you less.

The reason that is costs more to upgrade an entire website than to simply start from scratch and do a new website is due to the fact that it takes time for our developer to read and go through the code that the previous web developer used and to understand what he has done. Therefore the hours our developer takes to work on the website would basically be double than to simply develop a new website. We like to describe it as developer A reaches the conclusion of 2 by adding 1 + 1 = 2, but developer B reaches the same conclusion of 2 by saying 0.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 2. Developer B has to go through developer A’s work and figure out how developer A got to the answer and then adjust his style to match developer A’s. It is a lengthy process and this is the reason that upgrades cost more than doing a new website.

One might think though to simply get your initial web developer to do your upgrade. Normally this would make sense. By why do you need a completely new upgrade if you are entirely happy with your website? At Optimus01 we recognise that many clients have received unethical service from pervious web companies and therefore we strive to build our client relationships based on honesty, dedication, trust and ethical practices. After all, our clients are our most valuable asset.

Costs for doing a new website start from R4000 including vat. However a formal quotation will be submitted prior to the project commencing.

If you wish to enquire about a website upgrade or commission a new website please do not hesitate to contact us or you can call us on +27 11 463 2040.