Websites are essential for town municipalities these days. At a time when people are increasingly taking to the internet to find quick answers to their questions, a visually appealing website can be a powerful tool in communicating with your residents and visitors.
Websites are essential for town municipalities these days. At a time when people are increasingly taking to the internet to find quick answers to their questions, a visually appealing website can be a powerful tool in communicating with your residents and visitors. However, a flashy looking website is not enough; navigability and maintenance are also vital considerations to ensure both the town clerk and audience have the most hassle-free experience.But how do you know what website design company to choose when there are so many possibilities? And how much money does a new municipal website cost? Not all web design companies were created equal, and there are a number of things you should bear in mind when choosing one for your municipality.We’ll walk you through the most important issues to consider when deciding on a web design package and demonstrate how Town Web Design’s prices compare with other design companies.
Firstly, you need to find out a web designer’s track record of working with municipalities. Most web designers have little to no experience working with local government and no idea what clerks need. They are usually generalists or specialize in marketing or commercial sites, but focusing on sales and conversions is meaningless to municipal websites.Town Web Design is a specialist design company and can guarantee customer satisfaction. We have worked with over 400 municipalities and have formed long-term working relationships with these towns’ clerks. Basically, municipal clients are in good hands with us – we know what we’re doing and have the experience to back it up.Other web design companies can quickly get in over their heads. Not only do they lack municipal experience, but they often demand a large non-refundable deposit before they even get started. Is it really worth that kind of risk?
Town Web Design charges $499 for full setup services. We will guide your project from old and out-of-date to modern and fully functioning for this transparent price. In comparison, other designers can charge in excess of $3000 and they’re not even specialists.
We charge $588 (plus $15 with a domain name) per year unlike other designers who charge thousands for the first year with the promise of hundreds in the following years. The difference is that agencies want to be creative and are constantly looking for their next big project, but Town Web Design wants to create sustainable solutions. We are more interested in functionality, maintaining customers, and enjoying long-term professional relationships.
We want to make your experience as straightforward and stress-free as possible so we include web hosting in the total price of $588 per year. Other web design companies charge a separate $100 dollars or so for web hosting.
Town Web Design really stands out from the crowd when it comes to backing-up your municipality’s files, images and data. Our price includes full daily backups to an offsite server unlike other designers who use unreliable web-server copies. We take this matter very seriously since it can save you time, money and inconvenience if the worst happens.We take a snapshot of files every day and retain backups for 6 months, which enables us to restore the website from any chosen specific date within that time frame. No one else in the industry does this because it’s expensive. Our way is efficient because we specialize in municipalities and have so many customers.Can you afford to have your site down for days at a time? Other companies take longer to deal with problems relating to websites going down, meaning that your site will suffer longer down-time and you’ll have to pay thousands of dollars extra to restore it.Ask your provider these two questions:
Town Web Design automatically includes this in the price for you, which provides some much-needed insurance.
In this age of tablets, phones and other mobile devices it’s important that residents can access information whilst on the move. At Town Web Design all of our websites are fully optimized for mobile use and included in the price.
Our prices include ongoing updates and we ensure your website will never be technologically out-of-date. In fact, while other design companies charge extra for updates (usually around $50 per hour), we’re busy fixing bugs and automatically integrating updates into the software.
Of course! Town Website Design offers free unlimited support compared to our competitors who charge approximately $50 per hour. We have a receptionist available from 7am-4pm Central Time (8am-5pm ET) on weekdays and tickets for support requests are checked at the weekend.
Staff training is another area where Town Web Design really shines. We offer free one-on-one remote training in addition to the ongoing support already outlined. We invest a lot of money in our staff and resources to support clients. Other web design companies charge around $50 per hour for similar training and support.
It takes approximately two months for your site to go live compared to 3-6 months with our competitors. Technically a website could be launched even quicker, but most of our municipal customers are part-time clerks with a lot on their plate (which is why a website can be so valuable for them!), but also because their board meets just once per month.
The bottom line for Town Website Design municipal clients is $49 a month with a $499 setup fee. That’s it! Satisfaction guaranteed and no nasty surprises. Other websites cost thousands of dollars upfront and can lead you down a rabbit hole of seemingly endless, unpredictable and ongoing costs with no guarantee at the end. In contrast, we offer a predictable and safe service complete with an attractive and fully functional website.Town Web Design is an ideal choice for small town municipalities due to our insider knowledge and years of experience working with town clerks. Our goal is to make it easy for clerks to post on websites and for residents to find information. While web design agencies focus on selling goods and services, we solve problems and we understand that our clients are not interested in traditional website concerns such as conversions and sales. We aim to minimize friction by solving problems specific to municipalities and invest in long-term relationships.
