Yes! Sometimes a client already has a designer who has already developed their company identity, brochure, or the beginnings of a site design. We can work with your designer (or their designs) to turn this into a fully functioning website. Our portfolio projects that have "Third Party Design" in the description are examples of such collaborations.
Design
We certainly can! One purpose that a website can serve is that of an online brochure. Therefore, it only makes sense that your have a paper "offline" brochure to match. Our designers can do both as part of the same effort. This makes sure that they match as well as economizes on costs.
Logo development is typically done as a separate project, often before the website design. We can arrange for a logo to be created as an add-on. And we recommend that it be done first so that the website design works well with and matches the logo.
It is not uncommon for a client to have had a bad experience with a designer in the past. Often they say something like, "if I knew what I wanted, then I woudn't have hired a designer." This can happen when the designer has insufficient experience or lacks a sufficiently robust process.
We have a time-tested design process that will deliver the level of design that you expect. We begin with the site content, since these days content drives design. Then, depending upon level of design, develop color palettes, wireframes, and finally Home page design concepts. Once the Home page design is selected and refined, we then develop specific designs for interior pages.
Development
There are several very good reasons why you should care if your website works well on a phone.
The first reason is a very practical one: more than half of all website views are now done on a phone. The phone has become our collective web browser of choice. Even if you don't use a phone that much, many of your customers probably do. If your website is difficult to use on a phone, people will just move on.
The second reason has to do with search engine ranking. Google recently changed its search algorithms to reward mobile friendly webistes, and conversely penalize mobile unfriendly sites. This is just a recognition of how dominant the mobile platform has become, that sites which are not mobile friendly are simply viewed as less relevant by Google. Everybody knows that your website is not much good if it can't be found on the search engines. If it is not mobile friendly, the changes of it being found goes down significantly.
Whether or not we can update the technology for your current website really depends on when and how it was built. Sometimes we can convert it directly to the latest content management system, but often doing so requires rebuilding the site from the ground up. The best thing would be for us to evaluate it.
Another factor to consider is that website design standards have changed considerably in the last couple of years. This has been driven by the shift to mobile platforms. While in the past, pages tended to be short and rigid. Todays designs feature pages that are long and flowing, and approach that tends to work better on phones and tablets. Therefore, if it is time to upgrade the technology on your site, it is also likely that the design and interface needs to be reimagined as well.
We provide hosting for the sites that we develop and almost always require clients to use our hosting unless they have equivalent hosting of their own. The reason is that today's websites are complicated. They require a hosting environment that is optimized to the particular content management sytsem in order to run efficiently. They require parallel environments for development, testing, and production. They require proper backups or face the prospect of an expensive and time consuming rebuild if an upgrade goes awry. And the list goes on... ultimately boiling down to quality of service and cost-effectiveness. When problems arise there is never any finger pointing, because we alone are accountable. And we can be efficient, saving time and money, because we have control over the technology and how it operates.
Content
An SEO campaign can take time to take effect because the search engines run on their own schedule. Sometimes they purposely lag in order to not be unduly influenced by short-term factors. So, be prepared to wait 6-9 months before you see the full results of an SEO campaign, and if it comes sooner, then you can be pleasantly surprised.
It's common for businesses to spend more on internet marketing than the website itself. A business that spends $20,000 realizing a new website can reasily spend $5,000 per month on Google Adwords. Consider that internet marketing almost entirely replaces traditional paper advertising for most businesses, and think about what you have spent on newspaper or Yellow Pages advertising in the past.
If you rely on your website to attract new prospects through search engines, then you'll probably need to make special efforts — such as SEO and PPC Ads — for search engine visibility. Just because you have a new website doesn't mean that customers will find it. In fact, many people make the mistake of thinking that a new website will automatically rank highly in the search engines, but this is not the case.
Support
We have been in business since 2003 and are not planning on going anywhere! We typically develop an ongoing plan with each of our clients and then meet on a predetermined basis (quarterly or annually) to reassess your needs and update the plan.
Yes, we can! Often clients first come to us when they need help updating their existing website. We are familiar witih most website platforms, and if yours happens to be something that we haven't seen before, we can probably figure it out. However, we will need you to have logins and passwords for the various systems that your site relies upon.
We offer support plans that provide a significant discount when you commit to a block of hours over a time period such as one year. Unused time rolls over (so you don't lose it) and you can always change your commitment if your needs change (so you are not locked in).
We have full-time staff in our office weekdays during normal business hours (9AM-5PM). Outside of these regular hours we always have someone available on call to help you in the event of an emergency.
General
The fact of the matter is that you can. There are any number of templatized solutions that are available for the do-it-yourselfer, and these are almost always much less expensive than a site created by a web developer. But the old adage still holds true that you get what you pay for. If a do-it-yourself solution works for you, then great. Often, this is a good place to start. However, if you require design, features, content, and technology that are more sophisticated and of a higher-level, then you may need to turn to a web developer for a custom solution.
At T324, you own your site. Furthermore, we use non-proprietary open source technology, so that your site is portable. You can take your site and move it to any standard web host that meets the system requirements.
Billing
The price of a website varies. it depends upon many factors: size, complexity, features, sophistication. In this way, a website is a lot like a car. You can purchase a car for $300 to $300,000. Somewhere in between those two extremes is probably your car. Similarly, a website typically costs from $3,000 to $30,000. Somwhere in that range is probably your website.
For clients who qualify, we can offer you a payment plan that allows you to pay for a project over a time period of up to 12 months. We also take credit cards. So, you can always "finance" your site by paying with plastic.
As a rule, we do not offer discounts. In order to provide our clients with the level of service that they have come to expect, we need to charge our full rates. If we do not, then our quality inevitably suffers. That being said, we will make every effort to scope a project so that it will fit into your budget.