FAQs
Do I need a website?
Maybe. Some of the reasons for having a website include the
following:
To sell products or services over the internet
To answer the questions that are asked repeatedly on the phone
To reach customers outside of the current region
To act as a business card or brochure that can be updated
without a costly complete reprint
Reasons to not have a website:
Customers/clients do not use the internet
You’re Amish and you don’t believe in electronics
I know I need/want a website
but where do I begin?
If a musician wants to play jazz, they need to listen to
a ton of jazz. If Dustin Hoffman wants to play the role of
an autistic person, he must study the actions and mannerisms
of autistic people. If you want a website, you need to look
at other websites in and out of your industry and learn the
basic features. Go to www.google.com and type in a search
word or phrase. For example, if you have a business selling
quilts, type in “quilts”, “hand-made quilts”,
“quilt appliqué”, etc. Find out the common
features of these sites.
Typically, as a minimum, a site will contain the following
pages:
- Home page
- Contact us page
- About us page.
Beyond that you may want to include:
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page
- A page describing your products or services with prices
- A calendar if you need to list events
- Newsletter subscription if you plan to send out email
newsletters
- A pictures page
- A shopping cart to sell your products or services
When looking at the sites you find, take note of certain
features that catch your eye and also those you don’t
like. Make a list. For example:
www.aaa.com - cool colors
www.bbb.com - neat navigation
www.ccc.com - easy to find what I was looking for
www.ddd.com - too cluttered
Also make a list of topics and information you’d like
to include on the site.
Then, give us a call. We’ll set up an appointment and
find out your needs, and respond with an estimate and proposal
usually within a week.
Will putting my email address
on my website increase the amount of spam I get?
(What’s spam? – unsolicited, junk emails)
Depends on how it is set up. If the email address is just
placed on the site without any security measures, then yes.
Spammers use a program that scans through websites and picks
out email addresses. You’re email address will be harvested
by seemingly every spammer out there and you can receive ungodly
amounts of spam. Once the program finds an email address,
they’ll often spam that email address along with generating
the typical email addresses that most domains use such as
webmaster@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, etc. Depending
on how your email server is configured, you may get these
as well.
Fortunately there are a couple ways to prevent this.
The email address can be encrypted on the webpage. The average
visitor to your site will never notice the encryption but
it will make it difficult for spammers to harvest the email
address. This is not 100% effective but it does cut down on
the amount of spam.
The only sure-fire way to keep spammers from getting your
email address is to not put it on the site at all. Instead,
a contact form can be set up for people to fill in. This form
is emailed to you from the server and the email address remains
completely hidden. Another benefit of a form is that people
can contact you even if they don’t have access to an
email account.
Oh boy…I have a website!
I’m going to start raking in the dough now!
Ummmm….hold on there cowboy. Just because you have
a website does not mean that anyone knows it exists. First
you need to let people know about it by including the web
address on all your promotional products – business
cards, pens, brochures, advertisements, etc. It will also
take a little while to build your ranking on the search engines.
To speed the process the site can be submitted to search engines
but it will take a little while until the search engines spider
through your site and index it. How the page is set up - the
use of key words in page headings and titles - can help boost
this ranking. But a part of the formula for a high-ranking
website, such as the number of other sites that are linked
to your site, will only come with time. Be patient.
How involved is this going
to be? I don’t really have the time to add another project
to my plate.
You can be involved in the process as much or little as
you want….with one exception. We like to learn the style
and atmosphere of your business so we can convey that in the
design of the site. But no one knows your business or your
products like you do. Only you will be able to provide certain
content. We do offer editorial services but you will still
need to sit down and get some ideas on paper. This may include
an “About Us” article or product descriptions,
etc.
However, how involved you are in the rest of the project is
up to you. We have clients who take care of their own updates
and minor design changes, create and configure their email
accounts and only involve us in their back end coding projects.
And we have clients who have never touched a thing on their
site. We make all their design changes and updates and set
up absolutely everything for them. You tell us what you need.
How will this work? -
The Process
The process of creating a website usually goes like this:
Initial consultation
The client contacts us and we set up an appointment to
meet (at no charge) and discuss the general wants and needs
for the site. We like to meet on the clients turf so we
can get a feel for the style and atmosphere of the business.
This helps us in matching a design for the site to the client.
However, meetings can also take place here at the Blue Frog
“headquarters”. The person who will be in charge
of maintaining or updating the site and the person with
the authority to make decisions pertaining to the site (if
these are two separate people) should attend the meeting.
The goals for this initial consultation include:
1. To ascertain the scope of the project. For instance,
is the client looking for a small 3 page site to serve
as a brochure for potential customers or is the client
looking to sell their entire 10,000+ product inventory
on the website?
2. To understand special requirements for the site. For
instance a website for a very active club may require
a calendar application that would need to allow the client
to update the calendar himself.
3. To determine how technically savvy and how familiar
with using a computer the person is who will be updating
the site (if applicable).
4. To get a feel for the style and atmosphere of the business.
For instance, should we be thinking of a fun and zany
look with bright colors for the site or a professional,
subdued look?
Proposal and Estimate
Within a week we will submit a proposal and estimate to
the client.
The estimate will be divided into two sections –
cost for a basic site and a cost for each add-on option.
This will let the client pick and choose exactly what aspects
he would like to include. We do this because the average
person does not know what is involved in building a website.
A client may be thinking that adding a newsletter subscription
manager to the site is a 10 minute job and will only cost
a few dollars. When they find out that it is much more involved,
it suddenly drops on the list of requirements for the site.
Or vice versa.
Any third party applications that may be used in the site
(for example, a shopping cart) will be listed along with
its website so that the client can try out the demo.
The proposal will explain the items on the estimate, and
include an estimated time for project completion, references,
suggestions that may not have been considered before, and
any other necessary information.
Contract
Our estimates are good for 30 days. Contact us anytime
within those 30 days to accept all or part of the proposal.
We will draw up a contract that further specifies the scope
of the project and defines payment arrangements and other
agreements.
Design Process
We then begin work on designing the site in a graphics
editor (Photoshop) – choosing the color scheme, fonts,
organizing the navigation system, arranging the layout,
etc. We create the home page and submit them for your feedback
and approval. This is done up to three times. This part
of the process is very important because once the design
is set, making changes may incur additional costs. We then
design a content page that is submitted for feedback and
approval up to three times.
Once the design is set we then create a web page template
out of the design from the graphics programs. This template
is used to further create the individual pages for the site.
Development Process
If any programming is needed, it takes place at this time.
This includes setting up a shopping cart, a guest book,
forms submissions, password protected pages, photo galleries,
content managements systems, or any customization, etc.
Depending on the size of the website, this can be the most
time consuming portion of the project.
The site is then thoroughly tested and a final approval
is requested.
Launch
Once final approval and payment are received, the site
is transferred from the testing server to the hosting server.
Email accounts are set up, DNS numbers are changed and the
site goes live. Congratulations!
Continued Updating and Maintenance
In order to keep people interested and coming back to your
site, content should be added or changed on a regular basis.
See services for more info on this.
How long will the process take?
Most of this depends on the size and complexity of the site
and on the client. We can give an estimated time of completion
but the actual time depends on how quickly the client responds
with feedback. We can tell you that it’s pretty rare
that a client has to wait on us. Most of the time we are waiting
on the client for feedback or content.
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