1. How long will it take to design my site?
The length of time will really depend upon many
factors:
a) The scale and size of the website
b) Availability and preparedness of the materials such as written content
you are supplying to us.
c) Amount of custom graphics design, programming and multi-media work involved
(this varies by project)
2. What is required to build it?
You would typically supply us with the written
content which can be from your current promotional material but
it should be rewritten for a website audience since promotional
flyers, etc. don't translate well to the internet. We can give
you guidelines for writing the content to make it easier. Alternately,
we can arrange to have your content written for you at an additional
cost.
Other less tangible aspects such as design or
layout ideas are handled in the preliminary meetings where you
specify any preferred color schemes and sample web sites that appeal
to you. If you have a logo already we will use that as a starting
point.
If you are selling products online (in excess
of 30 items) we will require a database of your product line, though
one can be set up for you. If you have pictures for each product
they will need to be delivered to us either by hard copy or electronically.
3. Do you have a pricelist for web site design?
Since no two web sites are exactly the same, a
generalized pricelist doesn't really apply. Unlike some other companies
we don't just use a series of templates. Everything we build is
a custom entity molded to the needs of what the site has to accomplish
for you.
Typically we will quote a package price once the
structure of the site is developed which allows for minor additions
and changes without incurring extra fees. Programming or database
driven projects are billed on an hourly basis with projected cost
outlines that are pre-approved by the client.
To help us get a good sense of what your site
may cost, feel free to fill out our online quote request form which
provides us with some of the key information required to provide
an estimate.
4. How do people find my website?
In addition to search engines (see below), there
are a variety of ways to help visitors find your site which include:
placing your email and web site address on all of your pamphlets
and promotional material, business cards and "tag lines" at
the bottom of all your email messages communications.
You can also aid people finding your site by looking
for other related sites that are willing to trade links with you.
Each site ultimately benefits from the partnership. Simply putting
links on your page to other sites does little to your ranking if
they do not do the same.
Advertising in industry-related e-zines, traditional
media (magazines, newspapers, etc.) will also help your marketing
strategy. The internet is a very far reaching and cost-effective
means of site awareness but it can't be done to the exclusion of
everything else. A good marketing campaign includes traditional
media.
5. Can you guarantee my site will appear on the first page in
a search engine?
Nobody can honestly claim to do so because of
the ever-changing algorithms and formulas search engines utilize.
There are hundreds of different search engines and indexes all
of which have their own method of determining what ranking they
will give you based on a keyword search.
Certain optimization techniques work in one search
engine but are given less weight or even penalized by another.
The overall strategy we employ is to try and find a happy medium
and make sure your keywords are present where they need to be.
Other factors such site popularity (determined by how many other
popular sites are linking to you), keyword placement in your page
titles, page text, alternate text for images and meta tags (special
tags read by some search engines which contain keywords specific
to your industry and the site content) will determine your site's
relevance vs. the keywords the potential visitor has typed in.
With every custom web site we create, we include
submissions to some of the most popular free search engines and
indexes such as Google, Alta Vista, Lycos, Dmoz Open Directory
Project, etc. More comprehensive strategies and submissions are
available to achieve improved results.
We also will ask you to supply us with a preliminary
list of "keywords" that apply to your industry that potential
visitors would be searching for.
