Frequently asked questions

Do I need to have a website?
Where to start the web design process?
Domain names and hosting
Marketing
Maintenance
 

Do I need a website?

More than 1 billion people use the Internet (Source:Nielsen/NetRatings). Web users spend twice as much time online as watching TV (Source: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society). Consumers spend more than $143.2 billion online per year and you have products and services to sell.

A website is an essential and cost effective way to have key information about your business and services available to current and potential clients and customers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your products, services, information, specials, warranties, policies and directions should be accessible to everyone.

Additionally, people now start searching for businesses on the web before print. It is about convenience. Your business should be linked to location maps, associated with key search words and other resources to stay in the competition. A FAQ (frequently asked questions) page like this one is a convenient way to entice new clients and support current ones.

Where to start the web design process?

There is a basic formula to follow. Purpose - Content - Design - Review. No one knows your business like you do. So you have an integral role in the web development. No matter how flashy or pretty it looks, if it doesn't do what you want, you are wasting your time and money.

So decide what the key purposes is. The clearer you are, the more accurate we can be developing your website. Take notes as you go. Visit other websites relating to your industry and check the competition. Go through their websites as if you were a potential client or customer. What's your first impression? What is helpful? What is not? Was is easy to navigate and understand? Would you want to do business with this company? This will help you enormously in working out what you want and don't want in your web design.

Gather together any advertising or marketing materials you already have, including brochures, logos, press releases, business cards, relevant policy etc. Compile additional information you want to include. Note the site addresses of web designs you like and what specifically you like and don't like about them. More detailed information is available once we start working together.

Domain names and web hosting.

A domain name is your business name to the web world. For example, www.abcnetstart.com is our domain name. This is purchased and renewable yearly. It is important that the name you chose reflect your business. This makes it easier to remember and also better for search engines to recognize your business. You can also have multiple domain names and have each one direct the searcher to your website.

Web hosting is where your website files are stored and accessed when someone 'clicks' on your domain name or a link to your business. Hosting companies provide a range of services from space on a shared server and emai, to fully dedicated servers for large corporations. Hosting is also leased yearly like domain names and varies according to how much space you need, the volume of traffic and information, additional services provided and more. Most importantly, your hosting provider must provide fast and reliable access for your site. We work with the worlds best hosting companies that include 24/7 phone and online support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Marketing my business.

It is important to have your website available to current and potential customers and clients. Web marketing is important to spread your reach to search engines, other relevant industry and local business directories. If your business relies on people searching for your type of service or product, it is important to optimize your site for the search engines to rank you higher.

Search engine optimization involves making your site more visible naturally to the search engines like Google and Yahoo, and therefore the world. There are no exact formulas but there are important elements of content, site coding, links, specific words and phrases, ratios of text to graphics etc to balance. It has become part formula and part art for web designers to match what the major search engines currently rank in importance. Your web presence can also be accelerated through paid marketing campaigns.

Updating and maintenance.

There are always updates, newsletters, press releases, information, produce and service changes. You can get this information out to everyone immediately via your website. If your content is relevant, informative, current and engaging, you will develop return customers.

There is a mix of skill and art to develop a web presence that meets your needs and budget.

Let us put it all together - so you can get on with business.