REGISTERING YOUR DOMAIN NAME:
The most common domain names available for registrations are: .com, .ca, .net,. info, .org.

Domain names are allocated on a worldwide, first come, first serve basis. You will need to decide and register this quite early as most of the more common names are already gone. Remember to keep your domain name reasonably short as it is easier to remember. Long names require more remembering and user typing, giving more chance of mistakes and lost visitors to your site.

Many companies concerned about 'cyber squatting' (where someone registers a domain name that your company might want to use in the future in the hope of selling it to you for a profit) are registering all the possible suffixes of their name. (.ca, .com, .org., net) together with similar sounding names and 'popular' misspellings. These are then simply parked and unused, or they have a low-cost web and e-mail forwarding package attached to them, so that all visitors and e-mail directed to them are forwarded to the main website and e-mail address.

If the domain name you want has not yet been taken, we can register it on your behalf, either as part of a web design project for you, or as a separate domain registration service.

BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE:
Now we can begin the work to build your website. Since we have worked together with the Web Design Checklist and you have accepted the Project Agreement or Quote, we are already off to a great start.

When we have something prepared, as per our discussion, you will be able to view the draft on screen. At this stage, we can incorporate some design changes to suit your preference. We will work together with you until you are completely happy with the design. Once the design is complete, we can begin adding your company information.

At this point, you should also begin to plan changes to existing stationery, invoices, brochures, business cards, etc. to include your new e-mail and www addresses.

WEB HOSTING SERVICES:
A reliable web-host is essential where you want commercial facilities like online response forms, e-commerce, auto-responders, database facilities, e-mailing lists and so on.

Commercial hosting options offer e-mail forwarding (that is, anything addressed to your domain name is forwarded to your existing e-mail address) i.e.; yourname@companyname.com would be forwarded to yourname@telusplanet.net. Even if you change Internet service providers (Telus, Shaw, etc.) your forwarded address remains the same. You will not have to incur the expense and inconvenience of reprinting letterhead, business cards and changing your address with clients/ customers.

There are limitations to the amount of 'traffic' to your website. If the traffic exceeds the limit, extra charges may be applicable. There are also extra charges for e-commerce requiring secure sites, database connectivity and so on.

Hundreds of web hosts are available, each offering a slightly different service and price. Remember, the cheapest is not always the best! The more important issues are: reliability and workability.

THE FINAL STAGES:
In the final stages, your website construction becomes complete and is tested off-line. You approve the final site, and provide the final payment. Then, we upload the pages to your web host and test all the links to full working order.

We ask that you provide a short paragraph (about 20 to 25 words) as a summary of your site. This will be used as your site description and will appear under your 'website name' when search engines display your site name, the link to your page and url.

We also ask you to provide some keywords that we will embed in the code for the page (unseen by viewers) but will be used by robots and spiders that search the web, indexing and cataloguing web pages for the search engines.

We can register your site with all the main search engines such as Google, Web Crawler, Yahoo and Lycos, and so on, to publicize it. If you have any industry-specific search engines in mind, we can usually register with them for you also. It can take between one day and several weeks before your site is indexed for the world, depending on the individual search engine.

If you are affiliated with another organization or have a trade association, we can e-mail them the code for a link from their site to yours. We can also include a link from your site to theirs.

POST-SALES SUPPORT:
We offer a monthly maintenance agreement. This rate will be stated in your quotation. This gives you hosting service and a half hour of labor to your website per month.

If you choose another host, other than the one we work with, we also offer a maintenance package and can discuss and work out a plan for your specific needs.

We troubleshoot any problems via the telephone or e-mail for the next couple of months. If you have any minor changes to make or e-mail address, phone number changes, etc. to your site, they will be made without additional charge. New pages or significant alterations will be charged at the rate shown on your quotation.

Our aim is to exceed your expectations, and encourage you to suggest us to your colleagues and friends when they are considering having a website made.

A TYPICAL PAGE FROM CREATIVE 4 SITE:
Different website design companies offer varying degrees of service, so comparisons are not always easy.

We offer a quality, made-to-measure, rather than a budget "out of the package" service. Our quoted price will include everything we discussed in the review of your Website Checklist, with no added surprises!

Furthermore, the time needed for the work (and therefore the cost) depends a great deal on what you are having on your site. Original graphic artwork, or original video footage or music score, will be more costly than a primarily text site.

For these reasons, we prefer to price specifically for your needs, but you need at least a very general idea of what is included in a "typical" page, and what that would cost.

By "typical", we mean any combination of, or if appropriate, all of the following:
1.All the advice and help you need to design and set up your website initially, including help to choose an ISP or Web-host that meets your needs, together with an aftercare service second to none. We make it a worry-free experience for you.
2. We provide an original header graphic based on your scanned logo or trademark and modified to suit, or we will design a logo from scratch if you don't yet have one.
3. Custom scanned or stock images as appropriate per page, typical page has two.
4. Headers, rules, bullet points and decorative features, as appropriate according to design, and made specifically for your site.
4. Buttons and image bars, as appropriate, made specifically for your site.
5. Text that you provide on floppy disc or e-mail. We can handle most formats.
6. Providing a background color or colors or creating an original background graphic made specifically for your site, if necessary.
7. Sizing and enhancement of all graphics and photographs to suit the design.
8. Tables to position features or tabulated data, size appropriate.
9. Links to other sites or pages, as appropriate.
10. Content links and page navigation graphics on long pages.
11. A text based navigation map at the foot of multi-page sites.
12. A site map or system of site maps as appropriate on very large sites.
13. E-mail address and contact data supplied by you incorporated on each page, if appropriate.
14. Testing of all links, both off and online.
15. Uploading to your Web space and live testing.
16. Registering with the main search engines.
17. Links from our website to your own.
18. Minor alterations to the pages for two months after completion of the work.
19. Ultimately, you being delighted with the result!

Apart from the cost of the time spent, the main Website elements that may have a cost are:

Website Design and Construction:
You will need to have your website designed, constructed, tested off-line, then uploaded and tested online, and finally registered with the Internet Search Engines and Robots who announce it to Web users when they search for you or your products.

Special Graphic Images:
You may also need to have special graphic images made, or photographs, sound or video incorporated into the site. Like original artwork, these costs will also vary with the scale and complexity of the site you require, so we prefer to give a price for your specific needs.

COSTS OF E-COMMERCE:
Fees are also payable to payment processors if you want to deal via credit cards in real time. For example, there are charges for merchant status and for the ability to operate secure credit card transactions (as with any MasterCard or Visa operation).

Merchant status for Internet (i.e. "Customer not present") transactions is difficult to obtain, and almost impossible without a merchant track record in "traditional" credit card sales. Because of this, organizations like "PayPal" and "Worldpay" are growing rapidly. Here, transaction processing is undertaken on your behalf, and you pay a one-time setup cost and then a percentage of each transaction.

Depending on how you set up your online commerce, there may also be higher costs from your ISP for the use of a secure server, and software costs if you want to create a proprietary storefront with shopping basket/cart. These charges vary considerably and can be anywhere from $500 to several thousands depending on the size of the operation. E-commerce costs can only be realistically assessed on an individual basis. Don't forget that you can avoid these charges altogether by marketing and taking orders online, with payment via the traditional existing methods.

CONCLUSION:
We recognize that designing a website to project your image is a very personal thing. Your investment in our design will bring you a sensitive, comprehensive service, tailored tightly to your needs. It should pay dividends for your image and profitability and it will focus on quality and originality.

Call or e-mail today for your copy of our website design checklist and we can get started working together to build an effective and attractive website to enhance your corporate image.

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