Frequently Asked Questions

Payment Terms

For the website design: 30% payement upfront, 30% due when the overall design has been created, and the balance when you are thrilled with your new website.

The 30% upfront fee includes the first month of hosting. After the first month, the hosting fee will be due in advance, and payable by the 20th of the month.

Hosting fees and other monthly fees are due in advance by the 20th of the month.

How long will it take?

Most websites will take between 3 and 6 weeks to complete. This is an estimate and in no way a guarantee. Why say this? We believe in being upfront with what we do, and as part of our design process we include UNLIMITED REVISIONS. Our planning stage will help us outline the overall style and content, but 2-3 rounds of revisions are usually required.

We will write content for you.

Our process includes defining and refining content with you. We take your words, goals, dreams, aspirations, product descriptions, and services and create engaging content that will convert visitors to customers.

Site Editing

We will provide secure access for you or your staff to create and edit blogs. We make this fun and easy.

Edits to the rest of the website, we prefer to do ourselves as minor edits can have major impacts on both the layout and function.

Change Management

During the design phase, we offer UNLIMITED CHANGES.

After your website goes live, typically there are minor revisions to be done to refine either content or design, these are included in our initial price.

Any major changes will be done either at our standard hourly rate or if you requre we can provide a quotation to assit with your budgeting.

Design Process

We’re very proud of the process that we use to create your new website. We’ve fine tuned this process over the years to streamline things in a very efficiant manner. Check out our process here.

Blogs

We provide a template for blogging as part of our standard pricing. Blog pages do not count towards page limit and are included in our standard pricing.

Confidentiality  Agrements

Absolutely! Generally we reserve the right to display projects in our portfolio, if you would prefer us not to, please let us know, and we’ll include this in our contract.

Our standard contract lays out in simple terms how we treat the information that you provide to us. Rest assured, we will treat your information with the highest regard.

Website Hosting

Why do we provide managed web hosting services?  (2 minute read)

(Warning: This content may be a little bit geeky)

It’s a complex challenge, but with an easy answer. We manage the hosting of our website and those of our clients simply because the website performance is directly attributable to how the underlying hosted service performs.

So many factors affect how a website performs or how it feels from a web user’s perspective. Visitors will tend to stay longer if it feels zippy, and you have a higher probability of converting them into customers. If it lags, then it’s so easy to go “next”. The reality is that your competitors are usually the “next” thing.

What are the main causes of a laggy website?

This is the real question. “Lag” is caused by a combination of three main factors:

1. Poor website performance.
2. Poor internet performance.
3. Poor browser performance.

The things that we can control are; all of (1) – Poor website performance, half of (2) – Poor internet performance, and none of (3) – Poor browser performance. So let’s touch on how we optimise (1) and the half of (2) that we can control.

As this article is about website hosting, I’ll delve more into WordPress in a later article. So let’s get started.

Poor website performance as far as it pertains to hosting can be broken down into four main categories:

1. Lack of compute resource
2. Lack of memory
3. Lack of disk
4. Operating system configuration

Categories 1 through 3 are the most obvious ones that need attention. When sizing a web server, special care must be taken to ensure adequate resources to cope with demand. They are the hardest things to size but the easiest things to monitor.

Operating system configuration is where only experience can make a difference. Without understanding how the operating system’s core components work together to deliver the desired performance of a website, compute resource, memory, and the disk doesn’t mean a lot.

This is one of the key reasons why we provide web hosting services. We tune the core operating system and components to use resources efficiently. This enables us to understand when a website is not performing and how to fix it, but the most important thing is that the effort we put in will save our clients directly regarding hosting fees.

How do we ensure that once your website is up and running, it’s accessible and performs well for your customers and potential customers? We use advanced caching techniques that ensure that a response is as fast as possible. This has the added benefit of providing that Google and other search engines consider that response time when ranking your website.

Making your website perform is at the core of what we do. This ultimately saves you on hosting fees and goes a long way to keeping customers engaged.

Since my late teens, I’ve been working in the technology sector. I’ve seen the rise of the PC, the Laptop (not called laptops then as they were more a rugged PC with a handle), servers, minicomputers, storage arrays, and even supercomputers. I was in San Francisco when Apple announced the iPad; at the time, it was hard to visualise how pervasive mobile computing would be.

On the software front, there was Wordstar, OpenAccess, TopView, CP/M, Windows, OS/2, Xenix, Windows, Sidekick, Lotus 123, and of course, Microsoft Flight Simulator. The software has become a new Renaissance. It dooesn’t matter where the hardware is; there will always be a plug-in or an app that gives us what we need.

Does this mean that I’m old? In computer years, yes, it does.

There also has been a massive revolution in “online” technologies. Once, you had to use a modem to connect to the internet; now, there are many ways to connect; mobile, DSL, fibre, satellite, and even cable. Nowadays, if you’re not “connected” and “online, “ you miss many opportunities. Once again, the game has changed due to the phenomenal rise of social media.

In a recent role, I used to joke that “I’ve had more certifications expire than the entire technical team had certifications”. During this COVID-19 epidemic, things were getting weird, and the rules were changing on how people conducted business, how they associated, and how companies had to cope with interruptions, not of their making. That joke kept recurring and echoing, and it made me think about how I would survive in business or how I would survive in general, and I realised that I had to take the bold step towards what some may call purpose.

Why web design? Web design combines all the elements I have been using, selling, and creating for 30-plus computer years. I love technology, especially how businesses can use clever technology to be more efficient, agile, and competitive. There used to be a mantra of “go large or go home” with all kinds of technology. Biggest, fastest, etc., were all the norm. Now, “large” is excellent if you’re a bank, but if you’re an enterprise of under, say, 20 staff, “large” is a huge problem. Agile, efficient, scalable, reactive, and competitive are the new mantras.

This mantra of agility, scalability, reactivity, and competitiveness are the fundamental tenants of what I’ve decided to undertake.

Of all the things that have happened during this challenging pandemic, the one thing I haven’t mentioned is people. How have people changed, developed, grown, or even failed? People are the heart of every business, and it’s been so evident that things are tough; despite all the pomp, things are tough at both ends of the economic spectrum. In the end, people buy from people. If you don’t like how a supermarket dresses its staff, let’s say you go elsewhere. Everything is about being relatable, competitive, and providing the best products or services.

So here I am, in the middle of a pandemic, starting a business to help other enterprises to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and be more competitive. It’s fair to say that I’m excited.

Contact me to learn more.