Streamlining web design for local business

Hello.

I'm (re)starting my IM business and I'd like to ask for some tips about streamlining the web design process, as I want to focus in SEO/Content/VAS and not investing a long time pulling a professional looking simple website for my clients, mostly local business without much competition but without a site or with poorly, and i mean very poorly ​designed sites. I'm partnering with a designer and photograph who made some very good looking sites for me in the past, both from scratch and also adapting existing templates, but the process took 2-3 weeks and I'm aiming at 2-3 days at most.

- What tools are good for this purpose? I know Artisteer, for example, and I think it's a very good starting point for pulling customized sites very fast.
- What cool CMS plugins are good for standard site eye-candy and functionality?
- What good CMS templates/stock photos/graphic sources can you recommend?
- Any quality services in 5err for web design? like logos, templates, etc?

Of course I'm doing my own research, but any state-of-the-art information will be MUCH appreciated

Thanks!

For stock photos, Depositphotos is pretty good if you can find a deal for the stock images, got one off MightyDeals a while back and have been impressed with their marketplace selection.

I will have an eye on that deal if it ever comes up again.

Do you have more sites like mighty deals? Thanks!

-For CMS themes you may go for themeforest as it is the best according to me.
-For best services on fiverr there are few persons who make 5 page or 1 page websites for $5 (HTML/CSS), you may also hire them for editing your templates.

Anteros,

To streamline the process you could have a handful of themes that you use for most jobs and just re-skin them. In my experience, clients who don't have a website or have a very poor one don't need the latest and greatest to be impressed. Naturally you could always do something more customized for them if they wanted but initially you could go in with one of your themes maybe with their logo on it and some images and see if they like it.

You could also have a predetermined amount of plugins that you use for every site and list those as options for the client.

I know that all sounds really cookie cutter but that's what you have to do in order to stream line the process and bang things out quickly. It also doesn't mean that you can't offer better and more comprehensive services to more savvy clients.

Hope that helps,

Shawn

Thanks Shawn, that's what I'm looking forward to do. Most local business around here don't need "the best" site but a rather good looking, well written and most of all, well marketed.

Any themes/plugins you can recommend?