Getting a Website Built in Kuşadası: An Honest Guide from Start to Finish

Before you start collecting quotes, there's one question to answer: what will this site's job be? "Looking professional" isn't a job. Making the phone ring, collecting bookings, taking appointments, showing your services to people searching for them: those are jobs, and each one calls for a different kind of site.

Here are two examples from my own work. At Değirmen Restoran the goal was singular: getting the phone to ring for reservations. Both the site and the ad management behind it were built around that one measure. At Seyrekler Otomotiv, a car service garage, the problem was different: appointments were taken entirely by phone, and when the workshop was busy the phone kept both the work and the customer waiting; the solution was online booking and dedicated service pages. Two businesses, two different jobs, two different sites.

Before you request a quote, write down the answers to these questions and take that sheet with you to the meeting:

• What will be the site's single most important job: phone calls, enquiry forms, bookings, appointments?
• How do customers find you today: word of mouth, Google or social media?
• Which languages should the site be in? If you work in tourism in Kuşadası, this question is critical.
• Who will update the site: you, the developer or nobody?

Web design quotes are hard to compare, because two quotes rarely describe the same job. Look at the answers rather than the price, and steer clear of any quote that can't answer these questions clearly:

None of these questions require technical knowledge, and all of them are fair. Someone who knows their job won't be bothered by them; on the contrary, they'll see they're working with a client who takes the project seriously. With someone who brushes the questions off or acts as though it's none of your business, the problems continue after handover too.

• Will the design be built from scratch, or will an off-the-shelf theme be adapted?
• Who will write the copy? "Just send us the content" is a sign the project will sit waiting on you.
• In whose name will the domain and hosting be registered?
• How will you measure whether the site loads quickly on a phone, and will that measurement be shown at handover?
• After launch, how and on what terms will small changes be made?
• Which of your sites are live right now? Ask for the addresses and check them on your own phone.

You won't find price figures in this section; quoting a price for a job whose scope I don't know wouldn't be honest. But if you know where the difference between two quotes comes from, you'll read both the cheap-looking and the expensive-looking one correctly. The difference almost always comes down to these four things:

The hidden cost in a cheap quote is often this: the content is expected from you, the project stalls for months "waiting for copy", and eventually a half-finished site goes live. With an expensive quote, the thing to question is scope: what exactly are you getting for the extra money? Either way, the answer lies in the quote's written scope, not in verbal promises.

• Scope: a brochure site of a few pages is not the same job as a site with online booking, reservations or multiple languages. Every module is a separate piece that has to be designed and tested.
• Original design or template: an off-the-shelf theme is fast and cheap; in return, you look like every other site using the same theme. Designing from scratch takes time; in return, the site tells the story of your business.
• Content: who takes on the copy, the image selection and the page structure changes the price considerably. The quote that includes content looks more expensive, but it's usually the one that gets the project finished.
• Maintenance and aftercare: the job doesn't end at launch. The quote should state what's planned for updates, backups and small changes.

Website projects can run remotely too; I won't pretend otherwise. I built the Seyrekler Otomotiv site for a business in Denizli entirely remotely, and the process went smoothly. But the starting point, the conversation where I get to know the business, always works better face to face.

If you're in Kuşadası or the wider Aydın area, I prefer to hold the first meeting at your business. Sitting at the restaurant's table, seeing the garage's waiting area, hearing how you talk to your customers: these things feed directly into the design and the copy. Someone who has seen a tourism business's peak-season rush first-hand doesn't build the same site as someone who never has.

Working locally has one more advantage: knowing the area. From here I know where Kuşadası's summer visitors come from, which areas a restaurant gets calls from, and how the season plays out on the site and in the ads. That knowledge makes a difference, especially when you want to grow with ads once the site is live.

The only reliable way to check references is to look at live work on your own phone. Not a screenshot in a presentation, but the real site you open by typing its address. While you look, pay attention to the following:

I'm subject to the same test. I'll give you the addresses of my live work; you open them on your phone and judge the speed and the copy for yourself. What I can show you is real work and features that actually function, not claims thrown out to sound impressive.

• Open the site on your phone. If it takes noticeably long to load, yours will too.
• Look at more than one project. If they all look the same, yours will be poured into that mould too.
• Read the copy. Is it filler, or language that genuinely describes the business?
• Check whether the sites are still live. Work that has stayed up for years is a sign you won't be left stranded after handover.

The grievance I see most often isn't about design but about ownership: years later the owner wants to redesign or move the site and discovers that not even the domain is registered in their name. To avoid ending up there, you should have the following at handover:

Asking for these isn't distrust; it's simply owning your business. At handover I register the domain in the client's name and hand over the access details in writing. Holding a client hostage who might not want to work with me tomorrow is insurance that someone who does good work doesn't need; what keeps a client should be the work itself, not an access password.

• The domain should be registered in your name, on your personal or company account, and renewal notices should come to you.
• You should have access to the hosting account, or at least it should be written down who holds it.
• If the site has an admin panel, its username and password should be handed to you.
• How the site will be transferred to you if you part ways should be agreed in writing from the start.