Website design franchise

[Motter]

Having been looking through the potential franchises out there I came across one which is part of the same group that offers ukwebsaver .

they are called activwebdesign .

The products are selling websites to small/med businesses for a fixed fee of either £499 for a site or £999 for an online shop.
These would inc all hosting and fees etc to the customer.

The sites are built using their own custom software - there are some examples of sites available on the website.

Costs:- they are asking around £7k , plus £199 monthly to operate the licence in your area and includes any updates of the software etc.

All the money from the sales are complete profit so they don't take a % .

Instead of asking for advise of friends and family, I'm am putting this out there to you guys to see if you suggest the +/- for this.

I won't be borrowing any money for this and it wouldn't leave me short either.

Be interested in your views.

[fisicx]

To break even you have got to build at least 10 e-commenrce sites or 19 standard websites in the first year. That's an awful lot considering you will be starting from scratch. But is seems to be a fairly simple enterprise, how much work you will have to put in to build the sites is a different matter.

The biggest problem you will encounter is clients wanting you to tweak this or add that and you being unable to deliver because of the limitation of the software package. For example, the navigation on all the example sites is identical - customers who want fancy CSS rollovers or dropdowns will be dissapointed.

I also wonder where all the images come from. Are you expected to produce the headers and backgrounds? If so that will eat up your time (and profits).

In summary, it does what it says on the box. If you want to embark on this franchise then good luck. But I think you will find it difficult to find enough clientel to keep ypur head above water.

[Motter]

thanks for your reply. Esp as the advise coming from a web designer.

As the software is web based, the customer will have access to tweak it too, so taking those things off my hands if needed.
Will have to ask regarding the menu's etc.

I have a friend who has one of the 'thebestof....' franchises and there seems to be plenty of businesses on there without a site, so that would be a start.

[fisicx]

Of course there are plenty of business without websites. But convincing them to part with their money is not easy.

DIY website builders are not new. Some are excellent (and free) some are poor (and expensive). But very few offer the flexibility of a bespoke design.

Supposing a new client comes to you and wants a website that showcases their volunteer organisation. They want to write articles and put up pictures, maybe have a calender of events, even a blog. And they also want do some fundraising by selling mugs and teatowels. I suspect that the franchise package isn't flexible enough to build a site like this.

Maybe the local farmer wants to pormote his organic produce. He doesn't even own a camera. Who is going to take, optimise and edit the pictures? Who is going to create the logo?

What happens when the client comes to you complaining that their site isn't listed on google? What advice can you offer?

What do you do if the client wants to move their site to a new host?

They will be paying £150 a year for site management and will be on your back all the time asking you to tweak this and change that - they won't want to do it themselves, if they did they wouldn't have paid you to build the site for them.

[Motter]

again all good points.

As I've still in the process of making up my mind over this - all the angles need attention.

[Glaucus]

My franchise has a website run by head office which, basically, is laughable. It would be lovely to have my own...

But why can't head office maintain the company site to a standard that makes it useful?

A- we sell over 5,000 lines with new ones coming on stream maybe every week. They simply do not have the time, although there are 4/5 people in the office.

How would you cope?