Sustainable web design or "fast fashion" website?
Everything is googled, including your company and why a proper internet presence with foresight brings more in the long term than "fast fashion" websites
March 17, 2017
February 19, 2024
A website will remain the No. 1 flagship in 2024. #1. Most new customers will find out about your company in advance via the website or read reviews about whether your company offers the products or services they are looking for and, if so, in what quality.
Your web presence is also a reflection of your professionalism, because a poorly designed website has the same effect on customers as a cluttered office, an unfriendly reception or poor service.
We ourselves are willing to pay more for "value" when purchasing, what do we mean by value? Quite simply: reliability, repairability, long-term spare parts supply and personal contact that is not just focused on business - these are the values that characterize our customer relationships.
Websites should be (scalable) investments
Albert Einstein (allegedly) said "what costs nothing is worth nothing". Applied to the costs of creating a website, the question arises at the latest when a redesign is carried out as to whether the existing website really no longer has any "value" or whether a far-sighted CMS system was simply not used in order to actually focus on the design and optimization of the content during a redesign.
We like to call such websites disposable websites, "fash fashion" or pizza flyers - inexpensive templates, copy/paste, generic HTML using page builders or a lack of comprehensible metrics as to whether the advertising effort has brought anything at all.
In contrast to traditional marketing agencies, for us "sustainable web design" means that we design our projects for the event of a redesign and remain scalable for future developments as far as possible. We achieve this by consistently separating design from content such as headlines, paragraphs or standardizable content types such as blog articles, publications, employees, products and much more.
Option A
looking ahead
Option B
cost effective
Your advantage: Better maintainability, lower costs when redesigning by adopting existing content, as well as lower costs when changing CMS due to database models.
Sustainable web design does not help with climate protection or "practicable" CO2 savings
According to the Website Carbon Calculator, this article consumes 0.50g CO2 per call for comparison, a single Bitcoin transaction requires 509.13kg (as of 13.02. 2024, source: digiconomist.net), training AI models such as ChatGPT also generates large amounts of CO2.
Your company website for a one-time fee of 649,--
Do you know the advertising? At least we have and can't get anything out of such offers, at the latest when we look at the scope of services and the general terms and conditions. Let's compare what you actually get (as at: 2021):
Agency A
Wordpress with template
- personal advice
- Wordpress installation & setup
-
Free template
("Premium" template for an additional charge) - insert a logo
- color adjustment
- demo content
| Service* | Duration* |
|---|---|
| personal advice | 1 hour |
| Wordpress - installation & setup - without backup & security |
1 hour |
| Template - insert a logo -5 color adjustments |
1 hour |
| Total | 3 hours |
Agency B
Am beliebtesten
Wordpress with template
- setup
-
homepage + 5 subpages
(customer contribution: texts & images) - standard contact page
-
imprint & data protection
(customer contribution: legally compliant texts) -
color adaptation to the corporate design
(customer contribution: colors as HEX)
| Service* | Duration* |
|---|---|
| setup & colors | 2 hours |
| Page creation - with basic formatting - without SEO |
7 hours |
| contact form - name, e-mail address, text field - Google reCAPTCHA |
1 hour |
| Total | 10 hours |
Agency C
€ 5.724,-
159,-/month, with 36 months commitment
- Kick-Off-Meeting
- funding advice
- design draft
-
homepage + 9 subpages
(customer contribution: texts & images)
| Service* | Durartion* |
|---|---|
| Kick-Off-Meeting | 1 hour |
| funding advice | 1 hour |
| setup | 1,5 hours |
| Page creation - with advanced formatting - without SEO |
15 hours |
| Design draft - based on the agency template - with responsive - without subpages |
12 hours |
| Total | 30,5 hours |
*The performance/duration is partly based on the information provided by the respective agency and our experience.
With our 3 agencies, we deliberately do not address the points SSL, responsive design, cookie pop-up or "GDPR-compliant", because, in our view, these are points that must be included independently of the service description in terms of professionalism without pointing them out separately.
This results in an hourly rate of ~120,- to ~200,- per hour. To be fair, however, the development costs of the template must also be taken into account here - if there is actually an in-house development.
It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
What characterizes good web design?
In our opinion, a sustainable website consists not only of the visual appearance of the website, but also of a foundation that can be flexibly expanded or changes can be implemented quickly. With a very good design, visitors must be able to find their way around intuitively and there must be actual "added value". Attention should also be paid to the 8 second rule.
Good websites impress less with an orgy of design, but with functionality, meaningful content, very good mobile display and should be SEO-optimized including structured data which can be classified more easily by a search engine. The loading speed of a page also has an effect on the ranking.
How much does a square root knowledge website cost?
Every company is characterized by its individuality in order to stand out from the competition and this is also how we see your web project with us. If you want a complete package, then in our opinion this consists of at least:
| Service | Durartion |
|---|---|
| Consulting | 1-2 hours |
|
First drafts - colours, font - logo, business card, print products |
from 4 hours |
|
Corporate Design -Style Guide, example: Federal Chancellery |
from 2 hours |
| Revisions | from 1 hour |
| Print processing Envelopes, business cards, stationery |
from 1,5 hours |
| Total | from 9,5 hours |
| Service | Durartion |
|---|---|
| Kick-Off-Meeting | 1-3 hours |
|
Initial designs based on style guide - Desktop, tablet, mobile - including sub-areas (blog overview, login, blog post) |
ab 8 hours |
| Copywriting per page - including SEO |
from 1,5 hours |
| Implementation of basic layout & setup | from 8 hours |
| Realisation per page - including SEO & image editing |
from 1,5 hours |
| Total (5 pages) | from 32 hours |
*The performance/duration refers to our average experience for small projects, without structured data, dynamic database queries or handling of user data with security aspects.
More accurate with a requirements analysis
With our consulting services, we examine your requirements over the entire life cycle (usually 3-5 years) until the next major redesign, including an assessment of the technological challenges that can be expected in the future.
Let's assume you are planning a customer login. According to current data protection requirements, a normal username/password login with password policy is sufficient for this, but it is quite possible that in 2 years the requirement will shift towards two-factor authentication due to legal requirements and/or the stored data. There are now 2 options here:
Option A
vorausschauend
Option B
kostengünstiger
- anonymise all user data that is not required for a 2FA test
- Implementation of 2FA incl. test
- Code for an update of the database structure
- Test on the staging server
- Backup of your live website
- Update the website (usually in the period from 22:00 - 6:00)
1Design changes to the productive live system can only be made available
with Feature Flag to the only be made available to the product owner
2With regard to productive systems with high availability and corresponding
traffic
Conclusion: For features that intervene more deeply in the system, it makes cost-wise, it makes sense to think ahead in the development phase or to implement them in small steps. Convinced? Schreiben Sie uns
What reduces or increases the effort involved in project management?
Requirements often arise during the course of the project that did not exist at the time of conceptualization or a third party is commissioned by the customer to provide them:
| Service | Work |
|---|---|
|
Provision of the layout - with consideration of a CSS framework (e.g. Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS) - Style guide incl. suitable colour definition - including responsive design |
- |
|
Provision of texts - without spelling mistakes - with SEO researche - Promotional effective |
- |
|
Provision of the images - including copyright check - reworked - size optimised |
- |
|
one person is responsible for the site - SEO - no authors |
- |
| Service* | Work |
|---|---|
|
Provision of the layout - without consideration of a CSS framework (e.g. Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS) - Missing style guide - no responsive design |
Consultation Rework |
|
Provision of the texts - including spelling mistakes - without SEO research & keywords - not meaningful |
Error correction Keyword research Rephrasing |
|
Provision of the images - Copyright unknown - poor quality - unsuitable format |
Procurement of original Copyright check |
|
several people were responsible for the site - 2 people for SEO - 5 authors for blog posts |
Revision system User roles Author profiles |
*The activities relate to our project management experience and the documents provided.
In addition to a project schedule, our proposals include a "Scope of Supply" that defines the requirements for layout, images & style guides. This ensures that project costs and deadlines are met. Convinced? Write to us.