Search engine submission is very important if people are to find your website in the Internet!

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6. Should we have special effects?

The surprising answer is.. it depends. Who is your audience? What image are you trying to convey? For most websites, a simple and direct approach is best. Bells and whistles impress few people once or twice and annoy all of us in short order. Special effects do not attract people to websites. Content does. Make your content worth coming back to, make it unique, make it valuable and abundant and people will come. A nice, short, Flash animation can be appreciated but change it often, always give people a way around it, or avoid one altogether. All special effects slow down the time it takes to load a page. Considering that most of us have the attention span of the common house fly, adding special effects may be counterproductive! Keep special effects to a minimum and only when they add value.

7. How can I estimate the cost of a website?

Here again an honest answer is that it depends. This is like walking into a car dealership and asking for an automobile. Immediately the salesperson will start to ask questions aimed at narrowing the field from all cars ever invented to a choice among the cars available in the lot. With website developers it will be the same. We will each guide you to choose something from our repertoire that meets your needs. Next, the choice of special effects, logos, animations, level of interactivity desired by the customer, special services (guest-book, bulletin board, chat rooms, shopping carts, etc.) will have a great impact on the cost of the final product. That is why a good definition of what you want is crucial for a good estimate at the beginning. Lastly, in our experience we find that lack of customer preparedness adds to the time of development and to costs as much as anything else.

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8. How do you charge?

By the hour. Many developers will charge a set price for each page, but we find that if you do it that way, you are forced to "pad" the numbers some because there is no good way to judge how much effort a page will take. So if you are well prepared and give us all the materials for a page that we can build in 15 minutes.. you lose. If, on the other hand, the page is full of special stuff such as banners, "pop up" ads, etc. We'll be the ones to be shorthanded. With frequent communication, there should be no surprises. Our frequent emails will include current cost, updated pages, questions or concerns, requests for information and suggestions.

9. Can I see my site as it is being developed?

Yes, of course. Everyday as we work on the website we'll post what there is to see on the internet (called "uploading" - to a server). The downside is that you are paying for the hosting service  while the site is under development, but that is a small price to pay for what you get. You'll be able to see the pages that were created or updated and will have a chance to intervene if the design or content needs to be changed. Other people will not be able to see the website unless by sheer luck  they should stumble upon it (very unlikely since the site is not yet listed with search engines, etc.) The home page that a person would find will have a short Flash intro that simply announces that your website is coming and keeps track of the traffic that comes to it. You'd be surprised how many hits these "under construction" home pages can get! It shows that people are eager to see your content and you should have a successful launch.

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