Questions Frequently Asked

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Questions...

Frequently Asked Questions with answers:
(click on section headings or underlined links)

General Questions:

We want a new web presence and web site:

We already have a hosted site:

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General Questions:

Why do we need Your services?

Could you do this yourself? Absolutely. You would have to learn all the intricacies of setting up and the hosting particulars, designing and coding a site. Reading some books would go a long way in getting you started.

We would get you underway and on the web in much less time than you could do on your own. We have web and internet knowledge along with the requisite coding skills. You are looking for someone to help you. We know we can provide you an affordable solution to the issues and task you bring to us. We encourage you to get multiple quotes, although we know you will return to us in the end.

Initial Consultation

All our services begin with a free initial consultation. This will help you codify your ideas while allowing us determine your requirements. We will work closely with you to determine your exact needs and desires. The information we will gather helps us understand your company, services, audience, purpose, and goals for your site goals.

The consultation step is important since we are committed to providing you with solutions that will work for you, not for us! We communicate with you in any way that is comfortable for you. We would speak with you directly for fastest service, but emails work very well too.

Our Web Design Process. How does it work?

We strive to create the best and most cost effective website for your business. We do this by presenting options and ideas so that you understand what you are getting all through the process. A website can promote your products and services, enhance your image, generate sales and introduce you to the world. We will research your needs and requirements in order to arrive at a strategy that will lead to the correct, if not perfect, web presence.

Scope of work, Proposal, and Paperwork

After you are certain we have addressed all your ideas, questions, requirements and, importantly, all concerns, we will give you specific recommendations for your project. There are many different ways to meet your specific needs. We address and relate these options along with the proposed pricing to deliver them.

Upon acceptance and agreement, you will receive a formal Scope and statement of work, with timelines, prices, payment schedule along with a contract for our services.

Site Promotion and Advertising

Just establishing a web site will not bring you business. There are a number of things you can do to promote your site.

Here are good promotion strategies we reccommend. You can do these yourself or we can help you.

Regularly update your site’s content. This is your "web-face" and best foot forward. Consider using a "News", "What's New", "Current Events", "What's Happening" or the like tab or a small, regularly updated, paragraph on your home page. You can easily make these changes. We can show you how.
Give some to get some. Give your visitors information, articles and ideas that lead into what you are promoting. You are the expert in your field and people what to know what you have to offer. If you share your knowledge, they will, more often than not, return to you when they are ready for the products and services you have to offer. They will know what to expect from you.
Offer a free newsletter that your visitors can sign up for. Give them fresh information that meets their needs and is helpful. They will get to know you better and begin to trust you.
Provide a Links or Resources page to other good sites, not direct competitors, in your area of expertise and ask them to link to you. Add a short line or two on why you like them. Again you are building trust, like Macy's and Gimbals (Movie: Miracle on 34th St.). This emphasizes collaboration over competition to grow your business!... as Santa Claus at Macy's, refers a customer he knows that the customer would find the exact item they are looking for. Send their webmasters an email saying you linked their site asking them to link to yours. They may or may not, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Submit your site to search engines. They may eventually find you, but if you send them what they need, you will be on their radar much sooner. This is a whole 'science' and more information can be provided.
Add a signature line to your emails, advertising your site, your service or services, your name and contact information. Word of mouth(or eMail) is the best and cheapest advertising out there.
Put your name and site out there any way you can on printed materials, business cards, etc There are a number of places like Vista Print that will give you free business cards.

Hosting issues.

We do not physically host your site. We create web pages for you. We can help you find a hosting provider.

Your first action would be to choose and register your domain name. Most hosting providers, give you the means to check for and register domain names. Domain names have to be unique. We recommend you register your domain and get hosting account for 2 to 3 years. Hosting providers usually give discounts for multi-year domain and hosting registration. Although you can register your hosting for a minimum of 3 months at most providers. The minimum domain name registration is one year.

There are a number of ways we can proceed at this point.

You can register your domain name and pick your hosting and at that time pay for the hosting and registration services

In under 48 hrs, the hosting company will give you ip and instructions to where the storage space is for your site
At this time, you would get instructions and create userid's and logins so that your site pages can be loaded.

We can set up the site for you with the hosting provider

We would expect payment via cash, money order,bank check or paypal payment into our account
Another payment option is to provide your credit card to the hosting site for payment.
Once you have paid for the hosting, we would then give you the information to manage and own your site

Setting up a blog

Blogging is easily set up and hosted at most of the major hosting providers. The one thing to remember is that Blogs are moderated and require someone to read and approve entries made. This can be time consuming, however it is important to understand what you are getting into and how blogging works. We can help you with this.

Moving Hosting

If you are interested in moving from one hosting provider to another we can assist you with that. It is a relatively simple process, but one that requires coordination as you have to

back up your existing site locally
'Release' you domain from one provider to another.
Request the move
Wait until it gets moved.

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New Web Site and New Web presence:

How do we proceed? What is our first step?

You need to decide what you want out of your web site. Is this a business or personal site? Do you want to sell something? Are you setting up a store? Do you want to put your own personal site out there? The purpose of your site is the key to begin the process.

Picking a new domain name:

Next you need to decide what you want for a web site name address. Our guidance would be to make it specific enough for your purposes, however as non-limiting as possible.

For example, if you were to sell auto parts, you could try www.autoparts.com however, if you might at some point in the near, or far, future, also sell tractor parts, the domain name would not lead your customers to you. So rather than www.autoparts.com, it would be better to choose www.vehicleparts.com.

Once you pick a name, you have to see if it is already taken. There are various places to look.

... and many others. You can search on domain names, try out domain names to see if the are in use or available for purchase. You can purchase domain name for a minimum of 1 year for a cost of $7.00 to $10.00 depending upon where you go and other purchases you make at the same time.

Domain name construction:

There is a structure to a Domain Name. A domain name is built out of three fields. for example : www.google.com.

www - represents the data type like mail , ftp or "world wide web".
google - the name of the company ,firm, the organization which owns the domain.
com - represents the use of the domain. there are many types of domains, here are a few with their meaning:
- com - used for commercial business.
- edu - educational institutions and universities.
- org - noncommercial organization, ie charities and public radio stations..
- biz - represents business domains.
- info - basically can be used for every site.
- net - network organizations.
- gov - reserved for government agencies.
- jp - Japanese site
- uk - United Kingdom site.

Site Promotion and Advertising

Just establishing a web site will not bring you business. There are a number of things you can do to promote your site.

Here are good promotion strategies we reccommend. You can do these yourself or we can help you.

Regularly update your site’s content. This is your "web-face" and best foot forward. Consider using a "News", "What's New", "Current Events", "What's Happening" or the like tab or a small, regularly updated, paragraph on your home page. You can easily make these changes. We can show you how.
Give some to get some. Give your visitors information, articles and ideas that lead into what you are promoting. You are the expert in your field and people what to know what you have to offer. If you share your knowledge, they will, more often than not, return to you when they are ready for the products and services you have to offer. They will know what to expect from you.
Offer a free newsletter that your visitors can sign up for. Give them fresh information that meets their needs and is helpful. They will get to know you better and begin to trust you.
Provide a Links or Resources page to other good sites, not direct competitors, in your area of expertise and ask them to link to you. Add a short line or two on why you like them. Again you are building trust, like Macy's and Gimbals (Movie: Miracle on 34th St.). This emphasizes collaboration over competition to grow your business!... as Santa Claus at Macy's, refers a customer he knows that the customer would find the exact item they are looking for. Send their webmasters an email saying you linked their site asking them to link to yours. They may or may not, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Submit your site to search engines. They may eventually find you, but if you send them what they need, you will be on their radar much sooner. This is a whole 'science' and more information can be provided.
Add a signature line to your emails, advertising your site, your service or services, your name and contact information. Word of mouth(or eMail) is the best and cheapest advertising out there.
Put your name and site out there any way you can on printed materials, business cards, etc There are a number of places like Vista Print that will give you free business cards.

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We already Have a Hosted Site:

In general, we can provide the updates you are looking for. For us to publish them, you will need to give us access(userid and passwords) to your hosting site so that we can make the updates, or we can just give you the source and you can do it yourself. It is entirely up to you on how you want this to happen. This will all be discussed prior to the scope of work being issued.

Site Redesign

You want some different "look and feel" to your site. What is that feel? Do you have an idea? Is there something we can look at "Like" what you want or should we propose something? Give us a hint or feel and let us put something together for you.

Do you need updates made to your site?

We will be happy to make your updates for you. We will work on a "one off" basis or on a maintenance basis? The difference is that on a "one off" basis, we will need to learn or re-learn your site each time. This translates to a 1.5 hr minimum to learning the site. After that, we charge in 1/2 hour increments for the update work. Therefore if the change is a minor addition or correction, it will take us usually 1 or so hour to understand how your site works. In an ongoing maintenance situation, we'd charge the "site learning" fee once.

Once you decide upon this option, we'd require a description of what you wanted changed so that we could present a statement of work and billing that you would agree to. Upon agreement and any partial payment required, we would begin the work

If you want us to make the updates to your site, directly, we'd have to obtain the login and password information to get to your hosing provider. For Fee information, please click on this link for Fees and Services.

Do you need site Maintenance?

We will be happy to make your updates for you. We will work on a "one off" basis or on a maintenance basis? The difference is that on a "maintenance" basis, we will need to learn your site once. This translates to a 1.5 hr minimum to learning the site. After that, we charge in 1/2 hour increments for the update work. Therefore the first maintenance situation will also incur, a one time charge of 1.5 hours, to understand how your site works.

We would then request an outline of the changes needed so that we can create a "Statement of Work" for the job. Upon agreement and any partial payment required, we would make the updates to your pages.

Hosting Maintenance

We can evaluate your current hosting provider, if you wish in order to try and determine if you are getting the most for your hosting dollar. We can also recommend any services the current hosting provider or another might add to assist your business. For instance you may want to add Business Registration or certifications to your site to show your potential customers your business soundness. You may need a different or better email plan than the one you have or you may want to buy like named sites and forward those that accidentally enter the "close" name to your site.

You may need to renew or renew ahead of time to save money.

In extreme cases you may want to move from one provider to another. We can help shepherd this transition as well.

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