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General Questions.
Your Site & You...
Pricing.
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General Questions.
Are your web design services only for businesses?
Not at all, we accept work from individuals, businesses, clubs... almost anyone.
What sort of sites do you design?
We design business sites, which may, or may not, include online catalogues, and/or ecommerce. We also design personal, informational, and purely promotional sites. Fun sites, serious sites, support sites, sites that 'conform to the norm', and sites that don't! It depends what you want really... Why not tell us what you have in mind?
Where are you located?
We are an Australian business based in Deloraine, Tasmania. Although our office is a virtual one, we are completely accessible during Australian business hours. We can arrange face to face conferences for those of you based in Tasmania (although travelling fees may apply) you can also contact us via e-mail, regular mail, telephone, through our website, and we can even arrange conferencing via chat. (For international clients requiring chat consultation, we do make allowances for time differences, and are accessible outside of Australian business hours, although by appointment only.)
How long will it take to build my site?
That will depend upon the size, and type, of site you are after, and our workload. At present we are able to complete most standard projects within 2 weeks; sometimes sooner.
Your Site & You...
What can a web site do for my business?
Your web site can do as much, or as little, as you want it to. Generally businesses find a web site to be a great way to expand their markets and their business; to promote their business, its products and services and of course, web sites are great for selling online! You can use a web site to support your past, and present clientele, and to attract future clients as well. If you supply some handy, and useful, and relevant informational resources on your website, and include your site in all of your marketing endeavours, you'll soon be attracting potential clients to your site. If the desire is there, and through good management, your web site can become one of your business' greatest assets...
What kind of payment options can I have on my site?
Only a few years ago, you were considered unable to accept online payments unless you had a merchant account with your bank. This was was a major expense for some, and was another reason that small businesses were unable to afford to take advantage of e-commerce on their web sites. But with the advent of Paypal, Paymate, and the like, that has all changed. Small businesses are now able to accept credit card payments online without a merchant account, and you only pay fees on actual transactions processed. If you have alot of credit card transactions/month, you may need to pay for upgraded services with these companies, or apply for a merchant account through your bank, which ever method will prove the most convenient and cost effective for both you and your clients. But, as a starting point, the free versions of these services may be adequate enough... Direct deposit to your bank account may also be another option for you, as well as personal cheques, money orders, money transfer services like Western Union and the like.
What is the best way to promote my site?
That depends upon your type of business, and your target market. Some of the online options for site promotion are search engines, pay per click advertising, banner exchanges, perhaps utilising online auction sites, such as ebay, ausauctions, aussiebids etc. to generate income, and create further interest in your site, there are also free classifieds sites online, networking, and advertising with other sites etc. Just to name a few.
Offline promotions could include the addition of your web site address on all your printing, advertising, and other promotions, and cross promotions.. As with any other aspect of your business, your web site will also need promotion to get plenty of people to find it...
We have an article available that will help you with this question. Please become a member of our site to gain access to this and other up and coming informational resources.
Do I need a domain name?
Technically, no you don't, although a domain name will give your business a more professional image. Particularly if you intend to offer products and/or services for sale on your site. If necessary, it will enable you to move your site to another server on the internet and keep the same url, or web site address, which avoids the need to make expensive changes on any printing, or other promotional materials. You may also keep the same email addresses etc, which can save you a lot of trouble as well... If you shop around, you can find some great deals on hosting, and domain names. We saved ourselves $70 by shopping around for a .com.au domain name. That's about the cost of having one of our Designer Calling Cards built for your business! If you are intending to utilise your isp's allocated web space for your site, then please be aware that a domain names generally cannot be used to point to their web space provisions.
Do you register domain names?
No, sorry, we don't, not at this stage, but we are looking into the prospect.
What are the options for having my site hosted?
There are numerous options out there. You can use your isp provided web space, but you can't generally use a domain name for this hosting option. There are free hosts out there, but you need to be aware that many of them want you to upgrade to their paid services, and as such do not offer their free clients the same standards of service, and there are generally extra conditions, such as having forced advertising on your site which may include pop up windows, and/or banners etc. The free sites are often not around for long either, and may disappear without letting you know, but if money is really tight, you might like to use a free host for awhile. Most will allow you to use a domain name, so you can always change to another service later on.
Paid hosting is another option, and probably the one to be recommended. There are any number of paid hosting services out there, and the prices range dramatically. But you can achieve paid hosting for as little as $30.00/year, or even less in some instances. Some will tell you that if you are in Australia, then your page will load much faster from an Australian server. We have to say that we have not found that to be true. In our experiences so far, the speed of downloading of web pages has more to do with the web page's design, content and construction, and the web server itself, rather than geography.
Pricing.
What do you charge for your services?
For a general pricing guide, you can look under the 'Pricing Guides' section in the Main Menu (left). This will give you a general idea of our pricing structures, and enable you to roughly work out the likely cost of your web site. Where set prices apply, they will be listed on the relevant pages, and for work charged by the hour, our current rate is $30.00/hour.
When do I need to pay you?
For web design work, we do require that you pay a $50 - $100 deposit before work can commence. The amount of deposit will depend upon the size of your project.
When your site is completed, the residue of the the money you need to pay, will become payable before it 'goes live'.
For set priced products, prepayment, and payment clearance, will be required before delivery/download can be initiated. For work to be charged by the hour, you will be invoiced for small jobs as soon as your job has been completed. Payment will required immediately upon completion of your work. For larger, or ongoing service work, like website maintenance, or mambo site setup, you may prepurchase a LeViSioN 10 hour block of work which offers a 10% discount, or you may opt to be invoiced at our full hourly rate upon completion of a block of work, and payment will be required immediately. Delay in payments will attract late fees, and may delay future works...
How are you able to offer such competitive pricing?
We chose to utilise several methods of cost cutting so that we could then be able to pass the savings onto you. For instance; we run a virtual shop and office, which reduces our business overheads greatly; we utilise open source software where we can, particularly for content management sites and the like; we adopt different methods of achieving ecommerce capabilities, such as open source software, particularly for automation; we utilise paypal and paymate systems, direct deposit options, which can enable you to bypass the traditional merchant accounts (Which are often expensive to set up, and run.), particularly for micro and small businesses. Basically, we look for ways to reduce our costs, and your costs, so we can achieve your online visions in the most affordable manner that we can...
How can I pay you?
We have multiple acceptable payment methods including direct deposit, cheque, Australian money order, paypal, paymate, western union money transfer. Conditions do apply so please check out our 'Payment Options' section available via the Main Menu (left) for further information.
