designsinfluxBlog

Type the phrase “website designer” into Google and what do you get? At last count, you’d get roughly 1,090,000 results. Yes, folks … that is one million ninety thousand. It’s no wonder you’re confused — that’s a pretty mind-boggling list of options. Unfortunately, there’s no quick and simple method of picking the jewel out of those results. It’s going to come down to doing the necessary legwork to find the right person (or company) for the job.

I can’t do the legwork for you, but I can give you this little bit of advice: Do your homework! Just like with any investment you might make, you need to have as solid a grasp as possible of the objectives or goals that you want to accomplish. If you don’t have some kind of foundation to begin with, you’re just going to end up fumbling in the dark for that elusive needle in a haystack.

Oh yeah, here’s one more piece of advice for you: Don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors. “Flashiest” doesn’t always equal “best” (or even “good”, for that matter).

No, no, definitely not. I like to consider myself an equal opportunity service provider. Whether you are a one-woman / one-man operation, own a “mom and pop” shop, or are a large corporation with offices across the country, I am happy to work with you. I’d really rather not limit myself (or my services) based upon how many employees you may or may not have.

That’s kind of a loaded question. The time-to-completion stands on top of several different factors. For example, a simple business card website consisting of one page with some text and a couple of graphics is going to take far less time to complete than a full-blown blog-based website consisting of hundreds of pages and a catalogue of graphics. The former could only take about 1 week, whereas the latter could take a few months.

Another factor to consider, beyond the sheer size of a project, is the level of customization. The more customization a project requires (graphics, programming, testing, etc.), the longer the process is going to take. Something else that could potentially drag the process out is your availability. If it takes you 1 week to respond to an inquiry that keeps me from moving forward, then you’ve just extended your project’s time-to-completion by at least 1 week.

Much like the answer to Question #3 above, it really just depends on the scope of your project.

Website design or development projects are going to range between $500.00 and $10,000.00. I know, I know. That last number looks pretty scary but trust me, only about 1 – 2% of projects are going to fall under the $10,000.00 umbrella; the other 98 – 99% are going to fall within the low-to-mid range of the scale. Social Media-related services are generally billed by the hour (flat-rate).

In any event, please Contact Me and tell me about your project(s). Once I get an idea of what you’re looking to accomplish, I’ll better be able to provide you with a rough-draft quote that you can use to help in making your decision to choose designsinflux.

No! I personally don’t condone the use of either of those products … by anyone. I get the general concept behind both of them — they’re supposed to make it easy for the “Average Joe / Joan” to create websites — but all they do is produce horrid code on the back-end and cookie-cutter styles on the front-end. So, what do I use? I do admit to using Adobe Dreamweaver on rare occasions, but for the most part I use Notepad++ to code everything by hand.

To be perfectly honest with you, if you’re looking for any amount of Flash for your website project, you’re probably going to want to consider someone else. I don’t currently work with Flash, nor do I intend on working with it in the near or distant future.

There are a few things in addition to Flash that I won’t touch. The ones that I can think of off the top of my head are: Drupal, Joomla, and ASP. If you have something potentially wonky in mind that you’re just not sure of, please Contact Me and I’ll let you know “yay” or “nay”.

Credit cards, processed through PayPal (Google Checkout coming soon – maybe), are the primary and preferred method of payment; however, in certain circumstances, I may be willing to accept checks upon prior approval. I do indeed require a deposit for all projects that I take on. If the cost of your project is $500.00 or less, payment is due in full prior to any work being performed. If the cost of your project is more than $500.00, I require a 50% deposit with the balance to be paid in full before your website gets released to you.

You do! As soon as your website is “pushed live”, you own the copyright to it. There’s really no reason for me to retain the copyright or ownership of any part of it — it’s not my website, it’s yours. If anyone out there tells you differently, run as quickly as you can in the other direction!

I may provide website-hosting in the future; however, I don’t offer that or domain name registration services at this time. If you would like me to provide suggestions for a website-hosting company or a domain name registrar, I’d be more than happy to do that for you. Additionally, if you would like for me to take care of either of those two things on your behalf, I can do that as well for a nominal fee.

If you have a question that I didn’t address, ask me. Seriously. Contact Me and let me know what you have in mind. I personally answer all e-mails within 24 – 48 hours.