The Design Process.
We begin the work with a detailed discussion of your market: Who are your customers? What is your current image?
We also like to know about your particular tastes such as art preferences and favorite web sites. After the basic frame of the site is created, we post it online for you to view. As the site takes shape, we post updates every five-design hours. We recommend you review the work as it is created so that changes are minimized and your own vision is incorporated.
The Format & the Guarantee:
Open-source. Non-proprietary. Your business depends on your website which means you need a site with few constraints. This may be as minor as changing a number or altering items in your product-line.
The tools we use to create your site are open-source. Open to the public. Free. This means that your site can be altered to your specifications. The operating costs are next to nil too. So, in case of change, it's easy to find a competitive market for your business. If your site is created in proprietary software, you will need someone who both owns and knows how to use the software. Worse, the server generally has to pay vendor subscription fees. Many servers abandon these packages when they become unprofitable, if they subscribe at all.
In addition to creating materials that are easily transferable – we focus on the ultimate end: the user. The user is a customer. We assume that the user may not want to download and install programs in order to view your business. The sites we create don’t require add-ons, downloads, … installations. They deliver. You will never see a message that specifies the sites requirements or redirects the user to a download site.
Why most developers use "canned" software?
Time & money. It's significantly faster to create the site; and it's much cheaper to hire non-programmers and teach them a fancy word processor. Real programmers are expensive. We're real. We remain competitively priced by reducing our overhead.
Cost:
Design and development firms don’t post price. They can’t. This is a service business that accounts for time. Knowing that time is the key component to price, we can estimate. We can also advise.
If you want to minimize the expense, minimize the time. The more input you have on design, the lower the cost. That means, if you already have a design, possibly with images, prepared text, and so on, the cost will be much lower. We will execute what you want, whether it’s simply editing a preexisting site or starting from scratch. It's your site. In any case, we appreciate your business.
On total cost:
It’s easier to acquire the skills to create a basic web page than it is to learn the tools necessary to execute a site involving a database interface. Consequently, an e-store runs more, in general, than a web page. Any additional features to a basic page add to the cost. A form, for example, is a feature. A form, with auto-response, is a more sophisticated project. A form linking to a database of products more sophisticated still.
On the cost of images:
Creativity is expensive. It takes time. So, images that are art works are more expensive, in general, than images created from photographs. If you want photo images and can provide pictures to be scanned and optimized for Internet use that will cost less than a drawing, for example. Consider, the artwork on this site. Each picture was drawn on paper using pastels and crayons. Next, the works were scanned and prepped for digital use. The time required to draw each image was significantly greater than the time it would take to acquire a snapshot using a digital camera. That’s not even considering the time required to think of the design. That is not to say that photographic images can’t be creative. They can; and, when they are, that takes additional time too.
On the cost of text:
Almost all web pages involve text. Some more than others. If you have the copy already prepared then we simply place it according to the design. If you want us to write the text for you, the cost will depend, as always, on time. We don’t charge by the word. Catchy headlines require significantly more talent, creativity and time than bulk information.
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