Frequently Asked Questions about web site design, development, and how to choose a developer:

The first step in creating a website is choosing the company that is going to help you get it done.
You should ask these questions of anyone you are considering, and know a few things before you decide.

The answers below will give you both knowledge about questions, and the answers that we can give to them.

1: How much will my website cost?

2. How much experience does the developer have?

3. Do you have references? How do I contact them?

4. Will you handle the technical tasks, like setting up hosting, transferring domain names, etc.?
     If so, will there be extra charges?

5. When I want changes to the web site after it is done, what will they cost?

6. How long will the job take? When can we go live with the website?

7. How do I get people to my site, and how much will that cost?

8. What else can a website do for me that I am not thinking about?

How much will my website cost? <TOP>

The answer here is completely dependent on the amount and type of content you need. I have done web sites for as little as $200, and as much as $28,000 dollars. It is necessary for any developer to determine your needs to give an exact price, but the point here is to take the time to let the developer work out a document, laying out everything that you will have on your site and giving you a bid. You may need 3 pages on your site, or 300. You may require the ability to update the content yourself, or for the site to contain forms that add data to a database. You may desire Flash animation, a shopping cart, streaming video or other "special content".

All of these things effect the price, and you should be highly suspect of any developer that just throws out a price without going over the options with you, so you can make an informed choice. There should be no charge to discuss your needs and provide you with a design document that tells you exactly what will be done, for how much and when. On one bid I recently gave, the person had received bids from $800 to over $3000 dollars for the same work. The person bidding over $3000 did not even ask him what he wanted on the website. BE SURE to talk to more than one developer when choosing, unless they were highly recommended by someone that has used them.

We never charge to discuss your project and give an exact price in writing.
Call Rich Dutton at 727-441-2459 to discuss your needs.

How much experience does the developer have?<TOP>

You don't know without asking if they have done 2 sites or 2,000. Have they been doing the work for two months or 20 years? Where have they worked, what sites can they show you? Don't put to much faith in three letter acronyms when it comes to web design and development, ask what they have done. When you hire a person at your firm you would do the same, why wouldn't you do the same with the web design artist and developer. Can they show you examples of their artwork, Flash, Streaming Video, content admin. tools etc., or are they just saying, sure we can.......?

A developer may be quite good with one or more aspects even fresh out of school, but if they have experience communicating with people, and with the business end of the process, your project will move along smoothly.

At Richweb.net over the last 18 years we have done well over 2,000 websites, for some of the largest, and the smallest companies in the country.

As leader of a team Rich Dutton has done work on sites for Lufthansa, Texas Instruments, Konica, Bosch and others, as well as for local charity, churches, and one person who just wanted his vacation pictures to show up on the web. I say "we" when I refer to Richweb because I have two people who are brought in as needed for specialized database and content admin. work. We have worked together on many projects for over 5 years, including the creation of a shopping cart that contained over 250,000 items, each of which came in colors, sizes, and was priced differently for distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. This website contains examples of state of the art streaming media, Flash, and other state of the art technologies.

Every web designer should have sites they have done, and be happy to have you talk to the owners of the sites about the service they received. Go out to the sites and send an e-mail or make a call. Ask them questions, like did they give prompt service, and were they responsive to their needs. How soon did they respond to e-mail? Did they hit you with hidden fees?

At Richweb we are happy to have you visit any of the sites on out links page and call or e-mail any of our clients. In the end, even though we use the Internet, successful web development business boils down to "word of mouth". Please feel free to contact our clients.

The tasks of purchasing domain names, transferring them to be found on the correct server, setting up the right web site hosting package for you, etc. can be confusing. You have to deal with terms like DNS, DSN, named servers, FTP permissions and setting up e-mail accounts for your website's domain name.

It is not logical to expect the client to know how to get through this stuff without wasting time making tech support calls etc. After all, they have their own careers, why should they know about all of this stuff? Your developer should be willing to help with all of this as part of the bid. There should be no hidden charges for this service.

We are in Clearwater Florida, the client may be in Texas, and the website's server may be in Arizona. It doesn't matter at all, it takes us a lot less time to work through the technical issues of creating a website than it does for the client. We do it all every day. We will recommend the proper hosting for you needs, and provide 24/7/365 telephone tech support for any problems with e-mail etc. There is never an extra charge for tech support related to the web site.

This is a very important question to ask. When all of the work on the original website design document is done, the financial agreement is technically over for that contract. So, for instance lets say that you would like to reword a paragraph that you have noticed could be worded better, or in which the facts have changed. Will there be a charge? Some developers will just keep track of the time spent and bill you by the hour. Some will ask a yearly maintenance fee, and some will do it out of good will. In any of these cases you should know how it works, and if they will give you the same quality of service they did at first, or put you on the back burner.?

Our policy at Richweb is that if a change request takes only a few minutes to complete, we do not charge for the work. Changing the text on a page to read differently would usually fall in that category. Adding a new feature like a database or shopping cart, for example, will be a new task and we will give a new bid on the work before beginning.

How long will the job take? When can we go live with the website?<TOP>

This is an important question for both the client and the developer. The developer can only answer the question honestly if he includes the variable of "It will be done in two weeks, providing I have received all of the text and image content from the client within "X" days. Of course a developer cannot finish as it if the text content and any required images have not been provided. It often looks simple to a client to create the text, but it is very common for it to take longer than you think, after all you want it to be the best it can be! The client may also be dependent on a third party to provide product images or documentation, and that person may be slow to respond. SO.........

The time to completion is always relative to a time after all content has been received, but the web developer should do everything they can to complete on time given that condition.

At Richweb we explain this, and if we say "it will take a week from the time we have everything", it will be a week or less. We can usually create the framework for the content and have it ready to plug in in a day when it is ready.

How do I get people to my web site, and how much will that cost?<TOP>

This subject is extremely important to consider before creating a website. You could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars creating a website, and if nobody ever saw it, it would have been a waste of time and money. Or you could have spent very little money on the site, and if 10,000 people a month go to it, you could get rich. There several ways to drive traffic to websites and you will fit into one of the categories below:

1. I will send them there myself by printing the URL (web address) on cards and printed literature.
   My content is a convenience for my existing clients, and I do not care if I reach a lot of new people. This costs nothing from the developer, and does not require him to do anything special with the site.
   
   
2. I will use "Paid Placement" such as pay per click, or adwords campaign to insure that I come up on top in the paid placement area on the search engines.
   
   This costs nothing from the developer, but can be confusing and difficult to set up properly. Depending on the popularity of your search terms you will pay anywhere from 1 cent to more than $20 for every visitor you get from the paid placement. The Keyword phrase "discount mortgages" for example may cost $12.00 per visit, but the keyword "plasmapheresis" may go for 15 cents as there is so little competition for the word. You may well need help from the developer to research this properly and set up a working campaign. CAUTION: You need to set up a maximum budget to use this way. One client of mine set up a keyword campaign and received a bill for $2000 the first month, and did not cover the amount from profit. These campaigns can work well, IF set up properly.
   
   
3. I am trusting that the search engines will find me.
   
   Search engines can definitely be your best bet for traffic, but to just put a site on the web and wait is a total waste of time. There may be more to know about preparing a site to be well listed than there is to create the site. There are tons of adds that propose to submit your web site to hundreds or thousands of search engines for a small fee. These are a complete rip off. If you haven't taken into consideration the following facts, that too will be a complete waste of time and money.
   
   First you need to understand a little about search engines.
   
   1. Their purpose is to provide the person with the LARGEST amount of the MOST relevant content that they have listed in the database.
   
   2. When you do a search for a keyword phrase, like "Leather Shoes" the search engine may have over 2,000,000 pages with that term in them in the database!
   
   So, why should your site show up on the first two pages of search engine results with that much competition?
   
   3. It absolutely can, by doing a better job of preparing the site than all but a few of those sites. That is where professional help comes in. There is a lot to do, and a lot to know to stay up in the search engines rankings.

We have placed the majority of our sites in the top rankings on the all major search engines. You can expect to pay from $400 to $1200 a year to stay there. It should be included in the budget for building the site when proposed. It can be done, but never accept proposals for cheap services. There are only 5 Search engines that matter. Google, AOL, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN. Almost all other engines just get the rankings from one of these.

What if they built a site and nobody came?...................

What else can a website do for me that I am not thinking about?<TOP>

• You may or may not know that a website can gather information on the people that visit it. I am not talking about sensitive personal information, but information like:

  How many visitors came for the first time?
  
  Where do they live?
  
  What pages did they look at, for how long?
  
  Who came back for a second time?
  
  Statistics like this help you market. They help you to get rid of the information no one is looking at, and strengthen the information that they are. It tells you which search engines sent how many people, using which terms.

• Some information on the site can be updated by you, without knowing html. This is very handy with calendars and news releases.
  
  
• You can gather an opt in mailing list of visitors to your site, and send them all an email from an online tool with one click.
  The email shows up addressed only to them, and does not give away the mailing list. Some of our clients have over 3000 names in their lists. All of whom have expressed interest in knowing what is happening in the company.