WEB SITE DESIGN AND MAINTENANCE

Frequently Asked Questions

Web site Maintenance

1. What dos it cost to update an existing site?

The cost depends on what type of updates is required. Generally, adding
Certain items to an existing web site page does not take much time. Example
1. Adding images approx. 15 minutes per image prep time plus 20 minutes per
Image enlargement (pop up) if thumbnails are used on the main page. Plus 10 min.on main page to add the image and any text additions. (Time estimates are averages).

2. Adding text depends on positioning of text on the page and if new table structure must be created to house new text. An estimate will be given per instance. If only text changes with no revision to the page structure are required. Then the update will take approx. 10 min per page. Minimum time will always be 30 min for billing purposes)

2. How much does adding a shopping cart cost?

This is a tough question. There are many brands of Shopping Carts out there by
many companies and can be either simple or complex using original programming or purchased software packages or using Open Sources free software. Although our basic hourly rate is $45.00 per hour for Pay Pal specific shopping carts or simple cart programs or services, certain types of shopping carts may be charged at $60.00 per hour due to the unpredictable nature of the many types of cart software and methodology of the companies offering shopping cart services on various hosting companies or independent of the hosting companies. The number of hours required per shopping cart system could vary greatly. In many instances. Programming hours is required to modify or add options to a free cart. These are the types of projects that are the most expensive. The total number of hours can also vary greatly depending on the number of pictures, and items for sale on the various pages, links/bookmarks between pages and other web sites. Complete testing of the web pages to make sure everything works properly is also a time consuming process buy extremely necessary for a business site. After all a web site is the store and when it doesn’t work, sales and therefore the income for the store stops.

3. Many web hosting companies advertise “do it yourself” web sites and “do
It yourself” shopping carts. Why can’t I just use their simple web pages creation programs to make my own web site?

Of course you can “do it yourself” and many do. It’s a very inexpensive way to quickly create personal non-business web sites that do not need a market of sell products. For those businesses that only sell through their web sites, a homemade
web site with a hurriedly product store can cause problems when changes are  necessary and the code becomes “broken” due to unknowingly deleting necessary code for the page. Be careful, if you do not understand how the code works with
the shopping cart system. Hiring a professional to do the work ensures that your web pages will be clean and changes will not interrupt your customer’s orders. Beware of pretenders that do “cheap” web work. Many claim to be web designers
but use automated software to produce pages and to make changes. If they do not know how the coding of the pages really work, the automated software will eventually cause the pages to “Break” and no longer work property after multiple
changes have been done.

4. How soon can I get my on line store up and running?

A relatively simple store design can be ready to go “live” in a week. This depends on other customers ahead of you. Much of the time spent in design work is waiting for a customer ahead of you. Much of the time spent in design work is waiting for a customer to send in the text or pictures and decide on design questions. Completing a web design and producing the pages for review can take anywhere from five days to several months depending on complexity and customer changes. If a customer knows exactly what they want and has the information all planned out and ready for us to use, five to ten days in a normal time interval for going “live” with your store on the internet.

5. How easy is it to make changes to the web site store in the future?

Simple changes, updates, deletions and/or additions to an online store are available within one to two days. These involve changing or adding text, pictures, and minor rearrangements of information on a page or movement to another page. The more organized and planned your information is, the faster the turnaround time. See our Fees Page.

Additions of new store pages involves a bit more work to make sure the page “fits” the overall site design, has all the correct links and is positioned correctly on the site. This may also require a change in the site navigation menu and links/bookmarks, which affects all the pages on the site.

6. You have a current web designer with whom you are dissatisfied with. Is it simple to change to a different web designer if I want to try your services?

Yes, it is very easy to change web designers. A professional web designer is able to look at your site code and change or redesign as appropriate. It will take a few hours to understand the site layout and how it works buy that is not a problem.
This is the reason for the one time set up fee for a new customer.

Many of our customers transferred their existing web site to TDH Web Designs from other web designers or were in the position of having been abandoned by their old web designer. TDH Web Design specializes in creating and managing changes to HTML web sites and Pay Pal on line stores. We may also maintain other shopping carts other than Agroacart, Zen Cart, or similar on a case by case basis.

Note: For your future information, be aware that being good with code does not
mean a web designer is a good artist/designer. There are many good programmers
of code who also build web sites but do not have a good business background and
a good artist’s eye for design.

TDH Web Design has the good fortune of having more then 10 years of
experience in business management, marketing, service, computer programming
and last but not least, art and art design.

7. Is it necessary to keep updating my web site? Isn’t it enough to just put my business information and leave it at that?

Customers need to be encouraged to keep coming back to your web site. Old, stale information makes a person browsing for products or services suspect the business may no longer be in business or isn’t doing well and cannot afford to update their site. Actively changing and updating information is a good sign to a customer that the business is doing well. Updates can include news, sales, promotional information, specials, more recent testimonials on new products, introduction newsletters, etc. Customer feedback medium such as message forum boards (bulletin boards) can give a business valuable feedback on customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

Inquires

Please send us an email if you have any other questions about our web site services. Payment instructions are on the orde page. Payments are to be sent to us after work contract is signed. Payments are accepted via Pay Pal.

Thank you
TDH Web Design

Email: sales@tdhwebdesigns.com