Weblio is a studio in Basel building websites for SMEs, practices and trades in Lausanne and the surrounding agglomeration. In French, with a German version if you want one.
Fixed price from CHF 499, no hourly billing
Between the lakeshore at Ouchy and the upper edge of town lie several hundred metres of height, which is exactly why the only metro in Switzerland runs here. For a business that means something very practical: whoever decides to come by decides it beforehand on a screen, and wants to know how to get there and where to get off. To the west sit the universities with their tens of thousands of students and the companies that settled around them. To the east the terraces of Lavaux begin. In between works a town that has little to do with either.
People searching in the centre have often already decided and are only checking the circumstances. So the phone has to carry what is otherwise pinned to the door: what you offer and what it costs, the opening hours including the closing day, whether you can book, and how to get there without a car, which is no small matter here.
Some patients arrive on referral, others look for you themselves. The first need a page for referring doctors with a form and a direct number; the others want consultation hours, areas of work and to know whether anyone new is being taken on. And both want to know whether the journey by public transport is reasonable.
A job in an old building in the Cité and one in a new development at Ecublens are two different pieces of work, and anyone doing both should show both. So finished work in photographs rather than a list of services, a service area stated plainly, and a number someone answers on a Friday afternoon too.
Here someone reads who checks before making contact: what you specialise in, how long the firm has existed, who the contact person is, and whether the information is available in German too. A company brochure as a PDF does not answer that. It belongs on pages that can be forwarded one at a time.
Around the universities to the west works an industry that thinks in versions: a minimum product first, then iterations, then scale. For a company website that is the wrong way to think, and it makes projects expensive that need not be. Three things follow, and they sit in the offer rather than in a promise.
An end that is fixed beforehand
There is a scope, a price and a date on which the site goes live and is finished. No second phase follows for which room was already left at the start. If you want to add something later, that is possible, and it costs what it costs. What you pay for today is a finished site, not the groundwork for something larger.
The technology stays readable, including for whoever comes next
We build with tools other people know as well, not in a proprietary system only we can operate. Whoever follows us finds files rather than a black box. That is inconvenient for us, and it is the reason it stands here: a loyalty resting on technology rather than on satisfaction is not one we want.
The second language follows your customers
Whether German or English becomes the second version is decided by your customers. If you work with companies or guests from German-speaking Switzerland, German is the obvious choice. If they come from the international world of the universities and the sports federations, it is English, the language named most often after French in the canton of Vaud. Each version gets its own address with its own text, and the German one we write rather than translate. What it costs, you know in advance.
Direct trains run hourly, the journey takes a little over two hours, and the first call does not need them. It runs on video and costs nothing, a meeting on site is possible by arrangement. Day to day the distance hardly matters anyway: progress sits in the dashboard, questions go through the ticket system, WhatsApp or a short video. More important than the distance is what happens on your site the moment somebody fills in a form.
CHF 499 for the onepager, CHF 699 for Starter, CHF 1'099 for Business. After a short video call the figure is there in writing, along with the list of what it produces. If you set your budget in autumn for the coming year, you can plan with it without adding a buffer for hours.
QR invoice, payment within thirty days, place of jurisdiction in Switzerland. For a company or an association that means a document entering the annual accounts without a conversion rate. If your auditors need a breakdown by item, say so beforehand and it will already be on the quote.
Hosting and backups sit on servers in Europe, and for a Swiss business the revised Federal Act on Data Protection applies first. A register of processing activities is usually not compulsory for smaller businesses, unless sensitive data is processed on a large scale. Knowing what your site collects is worth it all the same, and that before the first form is ever filled in. So we ask in the first call which fields you want and who will read the answers.
Information about health counts as sensitive personal data, and a contact form in which somebody writes down their symptoms collects exactly that. For a practice this does not mean forms are forbidden, but that fields, transmission, retention and access deserve thought beforehand. Tell us in the first call what you want to receive: some questions resolve themselves by simply not opening a field.
Around Lausanne people think in versions and release stages. Your company site is not a product in permanent development, at some point it is simply finished.
How we work
If your question is missing, write to us. The legal notes on this page come from practice and do not replace professional advice.
What does a Lausanne business pay, and what stays afterwards?
Three tiers whose figures are settled beforehand. The onepager starts at CHF 499, the Starter package with up to three pages at CHF 699, Business with up to five pages at CHF 1'099. Booking, a shop, a second language, a members area or a newsletter are add-ons, each with its own price. After the first call the sum is fixed in writing and is not recalculated by effort at the end. What stays afterwards: the hosting, billed monthly and cancellable to the end of the month, and maintenance, optional, with a six month minimum term.
We are an ordinary business, not a company out of the university scene. Does that fit?
Yes, and frankly it is the normal case for us. A site about a business of five people needs no roadmap, no expansion phases and no twenty-page concept. It needs a clear structure, honest information and a route to getting in touch. What you get is a scope, a price and a date on which the site goes live. What you do not get is a project that only really begins after launch.
German or English as the second language?
That is decided by your customers. If you work with companies or guests from German-speaking Switzerland, enquiries come in German too, and anyone working for companies beyond the Sarine knows that. German is then the obvious version. If your customers come from the international world of the universities and the sports federations, English is worth it, the language named most often after French in the canton of Vaud. Both at once is possible but rarely necessary. Each version gets its own address with its own text, and the German one we write rather than translate. Every additional language carries its own price.
We are a practice. Are we even allowed a contact form?
Yes, but it pays to think first about which fields it has. Health information counts as sensitive, and an open text field inevitably collects it as soon as someone describes their symptoms. In many cases a form asking for a name, a way to reach you and the matter in one sentence is enough, with the rest settled on the phone. We build it so that only what you actually need comes into being, and we tell you what to consider for retention and access. Judging your specific case belongs to someone who does that professionally.
We are based in the agglomeration, not in Lausanne itself. Is that a problem?
No. The area covered takes in the whole agglomeration and the communes on the slope. Renens, Prilly, Pully, Ecublens, Crissier, Chavannes-près-Renens, Bussigny, Saint-Sulpice, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Épalinges, Lutry, Belmont-sur-Lausanne, Paudex, Romanel, Cheseaux, Jouxtens-Mézery, Villars-Sainte-Croix, Savigny and Cugy are part of it, as are the villages of Lavaux out to Chexbres. Where you sit changes nothing about the price. The first call runs on video and costs nothing, a meeting on site is possible by arrangement.
Why not an agency from Lausanne?
If you are developing a digital product, running a campaign across several channels or need someone at your table regularly, take an agency from here. Lausanne has enough of them, and some very good ones around the universities. That is not our work. Ours is a fixed price, one contact person and a site that is finished on an agreed date. The first call runs on video and costs nothing, a meeting on site is possible by arrangement.
A short video call, in French or German. Afterwards a fixed-price quote lands with you. No obligation, and we set the launch date in the same call.
