Frequently Asked Questions

You have questions? We have answers.

General FAQs

Do you have any recommendations for domain registration?

Like with hosting, you can register your domain with Siteground very easily. We also have no problem with GoDaddy for domain registration. BUT, by far our favorite domain registrar is Moniker. They are super secure and sometimes that makes it more difficult to register a domain, but their prices are cheaper by a few dollars per domain because they put their money in security, not advertising.

Do you have any recommendations for website hosting?

We use enterprise cloud hosting from Siteground. It's expensive for us but if you want to host your site through us it's less than half the cost for the same amount of awesomeness. If you want to go with a shared hosting plan, we recommend the "GrowBig" plan with Siteground. If you'd like to host through us with blazing fast cloud hosting contact us. We don't recommend hosting with any of the bigger contenders who's names rhyme with "SnowCaddy", "PostMator", or "FluPost" as they are usually more trouble than they are worth.

How do your content plans work?

Our content plans are kind of like a monthly retainer for "catch-all" website work. Every client uses them differently. Some clients use them for training, maintenance, page updates, organic SEO and other common web design/development services. The content plans do not include paid search ads or social media marketing as those services are included in completely different plans. Using a content plan means that you prepay for a specified amount of hours (we start at 5 hours and only add more on a case-by-case basis) per month. The hours do not roll over into the next month if they are not used in the previous month. We don't offer rollover because we really want you to use those hours for our services. When you are engaged with us, that means that we are regularly making your website better, which makes your edge-rank better and reflects well on our business. It's kind of like a "lift all boats" philosophy.

Do you offer responsive design and browser testing?

Yes! By definition, everything that we build is responsive. Now, browser testing no longer means attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different size screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device. For some browsers, certain animations or images may not appear. We call this "graceful degradation." We test our designs for standard sizes of mobile devices and desktop computers (IE: Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops). There is no way to test every size of device that exists on the planet and there is no way to make everything look the same on every device, but we come close. We test our designs in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge) and Mozilla (Firefox). We do not test anything for Blackberry, Opera Mini/Mobile, Windows mobile, or any other outdated browsers.

Do you offer social media management?

Yes! But we don't actually do that in-house. We have a third-party vendor who does that and white-labels through us. They are fantastic at what they do.

Do you offer paid search (Google Ads, Etc...)?

Yes! But we don't actually do that in-house. We have a third-party vendor who does that and white-labels through us. They are fantastic at what they do. We usually don't recommend you start off with paid search but every client is different. In general, we like to build your organic SEO first and then move from there. It helps define your strengths and weaknesses so that when it comes to do ads, you have some historical data to work from.

An SEO company sent me an email saying my website needs help. Should I contact them?

Nope. Just like insurance companies, most SEO companies are crooks who will deplete your budget and then leave you with nothing to show for it. Any company that specializes in only SEO is a often a scam and is operating on the fringes of Google's rules. This will leave you in a jam when Google tightens its fists and restricts more "grey hat" practices. SEO has to be paired with good development and design as your website is judged by Google in its totality. Just assume anyone who contacts you out of the blue about these things doesn't have your best interest at heart. If you need a recommendation for a reputable SEO that understands the entire landscape, contact us. If we can't help you we'll recommend someone who does good work and won't rip you off.

Price & Payment FAQs

Will you bid on my project?

We'll give you an estimated price, but by definition we don't "bid" on website development projects. What has happened in the past has been that we'll bid on a project, offer our best price and still not be the cheapest. The potential client will then pay the cheapest bidder to build them a website at below market value, be unsatisfied, then contact us again after learning that looking for bids, rather than reputation, is not the best way to go.

Why was the price in my estimate different than what's on my contract or invoice?

When we estimate the price of a project, we take into account everything that you've told us about your needs UP UNTIL THAT POINT. Sometimes our clients will change the scope of work between the estimate phase and the contract-signing phase (which is totally fine). Usually that will result in less or more work needed from us. In that case, your final contract may have a price that is cheaper or more expensive than what was listed in the original estimate. In the case that you are shocked about the final price of your project, feel free to contact us. We'll always contact you if the price looks like it is going to go up before sending you a final contract. If the price went down, it's because we found a more efficient way of building your site. We'll never charge you for something you don't need.

How much do you charge hourly?

Our current hourly price is $150/hour. The larger a projects gets, the cheaper our hourly gets because we give bulk rates on certain types of projects. Like fixing a car, it might be easier to lump a few maintenance requests together, making the total amount of time we spend working on your project less than if we did each item separately. So, for instance, if you have two maintenance requests that we estimate to be one hour each, it might only take us one and a half hours to complete them in the same session.

Do you offer payment plans?

Yes! All new website builds are required to pay 50% upfront no matter what. The final 50% can be paid in one lump sum or split up into as many as 12 monthly payments. Monthly payments are only offered for new website builds. Projects that involve existing website maintenance or updates are required to be paid in two lump sums: 50% before work begins and 50% after the work is finished.

New Website FAQs

How long does it take to build a new website?

Depending on the size of your project and technologies needed, we'll give you an estimated finish time. Of course, it all depends on the speed at which you can provide the assets and content that we need from you. The faster you complete content requests from us, the faster we can finish your site. Keep in mind that the longer you wait to send us the content that we need, the more it affects your project finish time. Our estimated finish times are based on the number of available work hours divided by multiple other builds that are happening for other clients at the same time. If your project is delayed by a week by no fault of our own, that doesn't always mean you can just tack on another week to the finish time. Those work hours were reserved for you, just like next week we may have work hours reserved for other clients. The lesson here is that you should be honest with yourself and with us about the deadlines you can keep so we can schedule your project in a way that works for both parties.

How much does a new website cost?

That's impossible to say without knowing all of the parameters of your project. We've built websites for as little as $1,200.00 and as much as $30,000.00. Every website is different and there is a lot that goes into deciding what works best for any particular client. Contact Us and together we can figure out what you need and go from there.

Do you have any best practices for preparing for a new website build?

We sure do! Take a look at the following list:

Make sure you have just one (1) point person on your team who is able to relay the needs of the website build to us and is able to make quick executive decisions. Too many chefs in the kitchen means the food comes out too salty every time.
Share files with either Dropbox or Google Drive.
Utilize the awesome power of Google Docs and Google Sheets.
Be realistic and listen to your developer/designer but also, be bold and be fearless. We're going to be honest with you about what is and is not possible.
Be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither will your website. We'll stick to the schedule. Certain parts of a website build don't produce visible results right away as they are based on framework and not design.
Follow and obey the law. Our contract releases us from liability from copyright and privacy violations so if you don't follow local, national, and international laws, the consequences will land squarely on you. We know that nobody likes clicking "Accept Cookies," but if you're serving cookies (which you will most likely be doing), you need to be upfront about it.
Be on time with content requests. There's nothing worse than a project exceeding a deadline by months. When you're on time, we're on time.
There is no fight club.

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