Questions
What each kind of site includes, how long it takes, what we need from you, how the platform connection works, and who owns the domain and the content.
ComfortDesign is how ComfortService builds websites and visual identity for restaurants, hotels and places that host people. What separates it from any other website is the connection to the management platform: menu, hours and availability are never updated twice, because the site reads them from where they already live. We also do the logo and the identity, for people starting from nothing.
How much work the site does. The showcase level tells and nothing more: who you are, where you are, how to get there. The connected level adds the content that changes often — menu, allergens, prices, hours, availability — taken from the platform in real time. The transactional level adds actions: bookings landing in the calendar, takeaway with online payment, stay requests. Each level contains the previous one in full.
Look at how many times a year something written on your site changes. If the menu is stable and so are the hours, the showcase level is enough and everything else would be complexity paid for and never used. If you change the menu weekly, the connected level pays for itself in time saved. If you currently give a percentage to a booking portal, the transactional level is the one to look at. Either way we will tell you after looking: we have no interest in selling you a level you will not use.
Yes. Mark, colours, type and applications are a piece of work in their own right and can be commissioned alone. The reverse holds too: if you already have an identity that works, we build only the site and respect it. The two go hand in hand but they are not a compulsory bundle.
No. We build sites for people who do not use ComforTables or ComfortRooms, and they are still good sites. The connection is an advantage, not a requirement: without a connected platform you stay at the showcase level, which for many businesses is exactly what is needed. If you adopt a platform later, the site connects to it without being rebuilt.
The site reads the data from the platform instead of keeping a copy of it. When you change the price of a dish in the kitchen or take a course off, that change is already on the site: there is no second place to repeat the same operation, so there is no case where one of the two falls behind. The same goes for hours, closures and — with ComfortRooms — for available rooms.
Ours: ComforTables for restaurants and ComfortRooms for hotels. With other vendors it depends on what they expose: some have a public API and then it can be done, some do not and then it cannot — we check before making you a proposal, not after. If we are not sure, we say so instead of promising.
No. A booking made on your own site lands in your own platform and passes through no middleman, so there is no percentage owed to anybody. It is the main reason the transactional level makes sense: businesses currently leaving ten or fifteen per cent to a portal often recover the cost of the site within a season.
Not necessarily, and we tell you before taking the job. Sometimes a site has sound structure and only needs reconnecting and refreshing: in that case we say so, even though it means a smaller piece of work. Sometimes the opposite is true, and keeping the existing one alive costs more than rebuilding. The difference shows by looking, not by discussing.
It depends on the level and on how much content has to be made from scratch, and the proposal carries a date. As an order of magnitude: a showcase site with copy and photography already available is a matter of a few weeks; a connected site takes longer because it has to be tested against your real data; a transactional site longer still, because bookings and payments get tested before they are switched on. The variable that moves the timing most is not us: it is whether photographs and copy exist.
Little, but that little genuinely matters: somebody who answers questions and who approves. In practice that is two or three conversations, access to the platform if the site is to be connected, and whatever material you already have — photographs, copy, the logo if it exists. You do not need to prepare anything before writing to us: the first conversation exists precisely to work out what is there and what is missing.
We write the copy together with you, because a site written by somebody who does not know the place reads like one. On photography: if you have good pictures we use them, and if you do not we say so immediately, because it is the single thing that most often stalls a project. Mediocre photographs ruin a well-built site more than a well-built site rescues mediocre photographs.
Only if it is needed, and we will explain the reasoning. If the mark works, the site respects it and builds on it. If the mark has concrete problems — it does not read small, there is no dark version, there is no vector file — we show you those and propose fixing them, which is usually far smaller work than a rebuild. Redoing an identity that works is a way of charging for work that was not needed.
It depends on scope, and we do not publish a price list because there is no honest one: a three-page showcase and a site with bookings and payments are not the same job. What moves the price is how many pages are needed, whether the visual identity already exists, which platform connections are genuinely required, and whether photography and copy have to be created. Write to us describing the business: within 48 hours you get a proposal with a number, not a range.
The content connected to the platform updates itself — that is the whole point of the service. For the rest (a new page, a section to change) you can do it yourselves or ask us: we tell you in the proposal which of the two makes sense in your case. We do not sell a compulsory maintenance fee to keep alive a site that ought to stand on its own.
Yes, two: the domain and the hosting. They are third-party costs, not ours, and we state them in the proposal with the real figure instead of burying them inside a total. If the site is connected to one of our platforms, the connection is not an extra cost: it is part of the platform you already pay for.
You do. The domain is registered in your name, not ours, and the copy and photographs remain your property. We say it explicitly because in this industry the opposite happens, and the people who discover it discover it at the worst possible moment: when they want to change supplier.
You leave with what is yours: the domain, the content and access to everything. We do not use proprietary formats that make a site impossible for somebody else to pick up. The part connected to the platform will of course stop working if you leave the platform too, but the content remains and the site stays standing.
On a phone yes, and it is the first thing we check: most people looking for a restaurant or a hotel do it from a phone, often while already out. On languages: yes, the site can run in several, with separate addresses, which is what it takes for each one to be findable on Google. It has to be said upfront though, because it doubles the work on the copy.