Over the many years of fielding questions our clients have asked, we realized many of them are the same and so we culled a list of them here for you to take a look at and see if it will answer yours. Of course if you don't see your question here, or need more enlightenment on a certain item, please let us know. Click on the question to see the answer.
A: It totally depends upon what type of site you need. Generally, the basic design of almost any site can take 2-4 weeks and the build can be weeks to months depending upon the scope of the project. There are 2 main points that will usually hold up a site - uncertainty about the design direction and not having the content prepared by the time the design is completed. Click here to see the "what we expect" page for more details on how to make the process take less time.
A: Hosting, in website terms, means making the website available for others to see who are connected to the Internet. A website is essentially any number of files that are connected by links within the code of each page. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It's geek-speak for the type of code language used to be able to link from one document to another. These files, in order to be seen by others on the internet, must reside on a computer that has incoming access from the internet. You could host your website files on your own desktop computer - if you wanted potentially millions of visitors essentially seeing inside your computer. A hacker's dream come true! There are a number of very good hosting companies who have very fast connections and very smart security crews keeping hackers out of your site. So yes, you need hosting.
Prices for hosting varies depending upon how much space you need, how much traffic you get per month and the type of service you require. Most hosts have 24 hour support reps available and some even have a dedicated team assigned to no other site than yours. The difference in price between these 2 scenarios is substantial.
A: Yes. And you can build your own house and car too, but unless you do it for a living your results will probably not be what you had hoped. We think that if you want professional results it's best leaving it to those who do it professionally.
Yes, there are programs that allow you to do the nuts and bolts of building a website, but even then a good sense of where you want to go and the best way to get there is invaluable. This insight comes with experience of years of building, crafting, changing and trying - all to determine what works best for different situations. Something as simple as the knowledge that some of these build-your-own-site programs work great in some web browsers but not others and there are updates happening all the time that you may not be aware of. That's why we're here - to do all of that stuff for you!
A: WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get" and it's the colloquial term used for a graphic-based web building program. An example would be that if you type a line of text in this program and make it a certain font (typestyle) that you can see it happen on your screen, that's how you create the site. The hope is that it will also look that way once the program writes the code to display what you just did on your website. They have mixed results.
In the answer to the question above ("Can I Build My Own Website?") we touched on the fact that some WYSIWYG programs work great in some web browsers and not very well in others. Some are very proprietary and will write code in a way that nearly excludes it from being shown well on other browsers. It's really classic case of "Can't We All Just Get Along?"
We do however recommend Adobe's Dreamweaver or Contribute if a client wans to make simple changes on ther own after the site has been built and launched. We have a number of clients with an employee who is savvy enough to do most of the little things like change the date of a release or show or something minor and post it with few disasters. And the few disasters that have occured we can usually bail a client out of very quickly.
If the site is built correctly, there is little that can be done to completely mess it up. And we always have a back-up just in case they try!
A: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the process of building your site so that it ranks very high in the major search engines. Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. When we build a site we do it to the best of our abilities at the time we're building it but give no guarantee of future Search Engine placement.
High ranking can obviously be done. There is a vast array of information that covers this specialty area and it is changing all of the time. We have a team of coders who live deep in this world and can do wonders if given the time. This is a process, however, that is very labor-intensive and can take some time and resources to see real positive results. This type of function is seperate from a regular build. We ask for a 6-month retainer because it can take that amount of time to fully realize the work that gets done. Of course we always try to see quicker results, but our experience has shown us that this is a decent average time for SEO results.
A: We would have to take a look at the site and it may be slightly different site to site, but we've taken on site projects in this manner a number of times and one-for-one, it is always simpler, cleaner and less expensive to start from scratch. Always. Call us at 818.769.7200 if you have specific questions about a specific site.
A: This is a tricky one. If you go to our "What We Expect From Our Clients" page, you'll see that we expect kind-of a lot. And that's because the more our client knows of what they want, the better we can serve them and the smoother it all goes. You can see that page by clicking here.
Now, with high expectations in mind, some clients think they're getting a Marketing consultant when they hire a firm to build their website. And sometimes they actually do, but most of the time they do not. These are two very seperate functions, and although we can do both (we have been hired to consult and not build sites, not consult and just build them and consult first and then build it) the questions on the "What We Expect..." page should help you figure out if you need the Marketing consultation or not.
There are firms who only build what you tell them you want - even if it's not what's considered "best practice." They won't "think outside the box", because they're not being paid to. We don't do that. If your idea isn't helping you from our experience and viewpoint, we'll let you know. If your site isn't successful, how can we expect you to recommend our firm to your friends?
A: Do your homework. See what your competitors are doing. Go on their sites. Sign up for their newsletters. See what they're doing that you think is aiding their success and that will be a good start into your final list of "must-have" items for your site.
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