Advice for Getting Started

If this is your first time hiring a professional designer there are a few things you can do to make the process as hassle-free and positive (for all involved) as is possible.

Creating your Website

Firstly, before our first meeting spend a little time getting your thoughts together as to what you'd like your website to do for you and for your customers. If you already have a clear idea in mind of exactly what you want in a website, please bring along anything that will help to illustrate the nuts and bolts as well as the intended look and feel of the website.

If you will be providing the text content for the site, you needn't have this written up in advance (you can get that to us later, if necessary), but it would help us to map out the navigation and overall dynamic if you could explain to us how the information must be presented. If you've already done some planning, bring along whatever text, slogans, ads, descriptions, articles, news releases, etc (or type preferably, unless you have very good penmenship skills) you have thought of so far.

If you don't have text for the site, we can collaborate to help you develop the message you want your website to convey. We can research and compose content for both small and large-scale projects as the needs require.

If you have materials for the project such as photographs, videos, music, etc you think you might want to use on your new site, may as well bring that along so we can go ahead get started.

One of the most important things to do if you already have a preconceived idea about what your site should look like, is that you should try to sketch out the appearance, provide examples if possible, and be prepared to show us how you want the various parts to interact with each other and what you want it do. It doesn't matter if you don't have artistic skill. Don't worry about that. Write it all out in longhand, drawing arrows to the pages a visitor to your site would go to when they click on part of a page. Put it all on a set of dinner napkins if you want. That's fine. This is simply a starting point.

(If you can, you should also burn to CD/DVD any materials you can and then box up everything. You can always send/bring more later if you change your minds on what should or shouldn't be included. But it helps get the ball rolling as quickly as possible.)

If you don't have a specific idea of what you want your site to look like, we'll gladly help as much or as little as you need in that department.

Just be aware that if you have something specific in mind, the more clearly you communicate your idea to us, the speedier and more satisfied you'll be with results. We aim to please.

After the Website is Done

More than a few of our clients who are new to having a website essentially have the mistaken impression that, to paraphrase a famous line "if you build it, they will come.". That is to say, if they have their site online Friday, they assume that people will be banging down their website doors, buying up everything loose by Monday morning.

Unfortunately that's not true at all.

If you simply put your website up on the Internet, but don't tell anyone about it, it will be months or possibly years before more than a handful of people will visit it on an average week. Like with any business (or attraction), you have to tell people it's there, and what it's for. In other words,  you have to advertise . To be succinct, there are a few different ways to do this on the Internet. For you, some of the most important ones follow:

• The first is by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- this involves some of the content of your website so that search engine traffic will more naturally bring your target audience to your website. To make that happen, your site needs to shows up closer to the top of the page on a search engine. We know how to make the search engines LOVE your site.
  
  Basic SEO'ing is included with all our websites and by that, we mean when designing the site, we take into account what we've found that search engines like and don't like. We don't offer features that will harm your search engine ranking. Fully Researched SEO'ing and reconstruction of a website is an separate cost from website creation.

• Running paid ads through search engines like with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing or targeted individual websites can bring in temporary high traffic. The high traffic part is good, that's what you want after all. But the temporary aspect of paid ads is a bit of a thorn. In short, if you want sustained high traffic through paid ads, you have to keep paying at minimum several hundred dollars a month (if not several thousand).

• Prove your site is valuable. Search engines assume that your site is valuable if other valuable sites are linking to yours. They also look at what they're saying about your site.

• Metatags and submitting the site to search engines are necessary but, realistically, they just aren't the silver bullet they used to be. They often have little to no effect on the success of your website. Bottom line, a well-constructed website takes into account all aspects of SEO and marketing techniques.

We hope this helps you clarify a few items you may have been concerned about.