Home > Frequently Asked Questions > Website Development

 

• What is the process?
   
• How long does it take to create a site?
   
• What do you charge for a website?
   
• Do I have to come up with all the ideas, or will you?
   
• Do I have to write everything?
   
• We want to be able to update it ourselves. Can we do that?
   
• What kind of ongoing maintenance is required?
   
• How do search engines work?
   
• How is your approach different than other site designers?
   
• I don’t have the first idea where to begin. Can you help?

 

 

 

What is the process?

Creating a website for your business can be a very comfortable process, even if you don’t know the first thing about the internet. Here’s how to get started:

• Give a bit of thought to why you want a site (the business purpose), and why people would want to visit it (the benefits).
   
• Think about what features on your site can save you money on printing, advertising, and time spent answering commonly-asked questions.
   
• Think about how a site can open up new markets, either making it possible to sell your existing products or services to new markets, or selling new products or services to your existing customers.
    
• Contact us to arrange a free consultation. We’ll brainstorm some more, and come up with ideas to match your goals with on-line solutions.
   

Once we’ve met, we’ll present you with a proposal outlining content and estimated costs.

Harrison McKay is unique among website developers for offering a fixed-price quotation. This means that even if development takes us more time than planned, you won’t pay more.

When you decide to proceed, here are the next steps:

• We will take care of all of the technical areas. You won’t have to worry about registering your domain (“dot com”) name, and arranging for hosting and e-mail.
   
• We will present a site plan which shows how the information is organized, drawings showing the look of the site, and a detailed listing of content required (research, writing, photographs, graphics, animations, programming, etc.).
   
• We will work together until we agree on the structure, design (colours, theme, identity/image), functions, navigation and content.
   
• We will research and write the content, take the photographs, and create the graphics and animations. We’ll install specialized applications for forms, shopping carts, auctions, bulletin boards—whatever is required.
   
• We'll set a launch date, and plan for companion marketing such as print and web advertising, media releases and launch events.
   
• When we’ve all agreed that the site is ready for launch, it will go live, and we’ll roll out the rest of the promotional plan.
   
• When you're ready to make updates, just contact us and we’ll make it happen.

 

 

How long does it take to create a site?

This depends on how complex the site is, and if custom animation or programming is required.

All Harrison McKay sites are fully custom-designed, and we take the time to create unique solutions for our clients.

From initial meeting to launch, most sites require eight weeks. Complex sites requiring research, writing, illustration, custom programming or storyboarding for animation may take longer.

Effective sites incorporate quality input from the client. Timelines may be shorter or longer, depending on your time available to contribute the required information.

We do not take on more work than we can handle while maintaining our quality standards. During these times, the next launch window may be two months or more away. Popular launch windows are the May and July long weekends. To ensure that you launch on time, it’s best to get an early start.

Our talented team includes a web developer with expertise in custom web applications. Would you like a shopping cart? Multiple languages? Photo galleries? Databases and search functions? Custom programming for your unique business need? We can do it all!

 

 

What do you charge for a website?

Web sites vary greatly in price, depending on the complexity of the site (content, design or programming), and on other factors. including the quality of the design company’s work.

Our websites are fully custom designed, and integrate your branding, communications strategy and business purpose. This makes your website investment worthwhile, and ensures that it integrates with the rest of your marketing plan. We offer a full suite of available design services to ensure that your advertising and marketing materials complement your website.

Custom websites generally begin at $3,500. Flash animation, custom illustration, custom programming (such as for Content Management Systems), content research and development, and on-location photography are factors that increase costs.

Harrison McKay offers something unique in the business: a fixed-price quote. We’ll provide a quote and stick to it. You don’t pay more if the site takes more hours than anticipated.

 

 

Do I have to come up with all the ideas, or will you?

We’re all about ideas and results for your business! The site planning process is where you get incredible added value. We look at your business and marketing strategy as a whole, and work with you to ensure that your site has a function within that plan.

When you have your site done with Harrison McKay, integrated marketing consulting is available. This means that we can help with business and product naming, merchandising, pricing—and integrate your look and message across your website, printed materials and advertising.

 

 

Do I have to write everything?

No. We can write the content for your site, or you are welcome to provide content. Harrison McKay writes web copy (which is different than writing for print), and we also write to optimize search engine ranking.

As you are the subject matter expert on your own business, we will ask you for the content that’s necessary to best explain what you do.

 

 

We want to be able to update it ourselves. Can we do that?

Yes. We can develop a Content Management System for you, if you need to frequently update information on your site (such as a listing of events or an appointment calendar).

 

 

What kind of ongoing maintenance is required?

Well-designed sites require little maintenance, but updating the content on your site helps keep it fresh. You can update the content on your site as often as you wish, but to minimize maintenance costs, you may wish to plan for scheduled updates.

Aside from the content on your site, new or upgraded computer operating systems and web browsers are occasionally introduced. These updates sometimes require site updates, so that your site can be viewed properly by visitors using these systems and browsers. We only create standards-compliant designs to minimize the need for site updates.

We are happy to explain this in more detail during our consultation.

 

 

How do search engines work?

What are search engines, and how do you get your web site listed on them?

Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and Ask Jeeves are web sites with software that allows you to retrieve information from the internet using “keywords”. Search engines maintain huge databases, containing millions of web pages (and the text and certain hidden codes) from each page. When you use a search engine and tell it what words you want to use in your search, the search engine checks its database, finds matches, and then displays them for you in “ranked” order (how the ranking is arrived at is unique for each search engine).

Instead of indexing web sites by individual words, some search engines also maintain the information in “directory” form. This means that you can find information by category listings. Often the same information is listed many different ways, so you could, for example, locate a business by geographical area or type of business. Getting your business listed in this type of directory requires you to submit it to the editor for the category or categories that you want to be listed in. There are no guarantees that your site will be included.

How do search engines get the information in the first place? They use automated programs called “spiders” or “robots” to crawl through the internet, following links and indexing sites along the way. Information from the spiders is added to the database, and queued for “ranking”.

You can submit your site to a search engine for “crawling” by a spider. This may or may not speed up the process of your site being indexed, as there is a two to three week backlog of requests. If you simply posted your site and waited, it would eventually be indexed. Whether or not it is added to the index, and how well it ranks in searches is another matter.

Search engines do not add every site to their indices. The ones that are added are determined by the computer to have “quality” content. The interpretation of “quality” is open to interpretation. In many cases, it simply means that certain words or phrases appear often enough within the text of the site that it is presumed by the search engine computer to have lots of relevant information on the subject.

Ranking: How do search engines decide which sites get listed first in search results? Every search engine has different algorithms, or ways of processing information, to decide which sites are the most “relevant” for the keywords you’ve entered into your search (the “search string”).

Search engines look beyond the text in your web pages to:

• Page titles and heading text : Do these titles contain words matching the search string?  Do the words in the title appear elsewhere on the page, and how often?
• Hidden keywords: This is text entered into the code of your site that is indexed by search engines. The “Description” section allows you to insert a one or two sentence summary of your business/site. The “Keywords” section allows you to insert words and phrases that are relevant to the content of the site (“hardware store”, “invermere”, “paint”, etc.). It is best to limit the keywords to the most relevant, as it strengthens your site’s ranking with most search engines. It is crucial that these keywords are relevant to the actual content on your site.
• Reciprocal links: This refers to how many other web sites have direct links back to yours. Google took the web world by storm by using a unique algorithm that placed more emphasis on reciprocal links, and less on other factors.

Can’t you just “trick” the search engines into ranking you higher by putting “Invermere” on each page in your site a thousand times, or putting a bunch of extra text in white letters on a white background. No! This is an unethical practice as far as the search engines are concerned, and if you do it, you will likely be caught and removed from the search engine databases.

There are plenty of ways to improve your ranking, but the best way of all is to have actual quality content on your site! If you have an existing site, one of the things you can do right away is make sure that your page titles and keywords are relevant to the subject matter of each page, and that each of your pages contain “meta tags” in the source code. Also, you can encourage other people to include a link on their sites back to yours (keep in mind that the quality and relevance of the site linking back to you is also a factor). Ensure that all of your photos and other images have “alternate text” (the text that displays if the image doesn’t load), as this is also indexed, and some sites penalize for incomplete alternate text.

Ranking is a complex process. All Harrison McKay sites are built with your customers and search engines in mind. Contact us for a free consultation to learn more about our site development services.

 

 

How is your approach different than other site designers?

It’s better at Harrison McKay because:

• we contribute real insight into your business, and what your site can and should achieve for you.
• we are sensitive to the unique needs, style and image of each of our clients’ individual businesses.
• we generate unique ideas that improve your overall business, and your finished site.
• we make the process enjoyable, and deliver more than you expect.
• we integrate your site with the rest of your marketing plan.
• we contribute a combined 50 years of experience as professional designers, and top it off with business sense, technical skill, and significant experience in writing and photography.
• we understand that technology on its own can’t build relationships with your customers—and our site designs reflect this understanding.

 

 

I don’t have the first idea where to begin. Can you help?

Yes! Just contact us to arrange a free consultation.