You’d expect me to say this, but in today’s market – yes! Put simply, if you don’t have a website, you are putting your business at a serious disadvantage. You will be invisible to the millions of people that use the Internet daily and your competitor could be the one that is found instead. The number of people going online in Britain is now estimated at 18 million, with three in five people in Britain using the Internet from home. On average, five hours per week are spent online. Think of all the wasted opportunities if you don’t have a web presence.

Precisely because everyone else doesn’t. I believe that many people are put off from enquiring about the cost of having a website designed because they thinkit is going to be expensive. Often companies will tell you that they can’t give prices because every website is unique and so the total cost can be dependent on several factors. I disagree. For alot of websites where you might only need half a dozen pages, the cost is going to be broadly similar. So, pick the package that suits you best and talk to us about your needs. If it turns out that you want something alot more complicated we’ll tell you, and quote you a fair price for doing it, but chances are that won’t be necessary.

For most websites between 3–6 pages (a good size for a small business information website), it can take as little as 3–5 weeks. It partially depends on how fast you can feed information to me as well. For the larger and more complicated websites it could take approximately 4–6 weeks. However it is possible to do things quicker if required – contact me to enquire about my workload.

Generally you do as you know your business best! However if you find it difficult to write about the business or yourself then a copywriting service is available. I can also source quality, copyright free, photographs should you require for minimal costs.

No. Although I have several clients who do live locally as they prefer the ability to meet up if required. But with the ease of the internet and email contact it is by no means necessary. I have created websites when I have never met the client face-to-face.

This is a big area to tackle here! Basically this is the art of getting a website to achieve a placing on search engine listings e.g. Google, MSN and Yahoo. This refers to the ‘organic’ method rather than paying for advertising or sponsored ads. I ensure the basics of seo are included in any website I build (other companies will charge additionally for this) and I can advise you on writing the text to please search engines. However, it is very difficult to achieve that elusive no 1 ranking so no guarantees can be made.

A domain name is the www.something.co.uk or .com (usually) that people enter into the search engine address field to find your company. You need to have something relevant to your business and this can be purchased very cheaply.

A website host is a computer located somewhere on the Internet that sends the actual pages of a website to a viewer’s computer. It is similar to paying line rental for a telephone line. You don’t really see anything tangible but without hosting if someone entered in your web address it wouldn’t go anywhere.

That depends. We would need to check that the hosting package you have supports the file systems your website may require. If it doesn’t then I can always arrange hosting for you. If it does, then I just need certain information to use your host for the website. But it may be that you prefer to keep it all under the same roof and have me as the one stop shop!

In a lot of cases the only re-occuring cost you should have is to pay the annual hosting fees. However, some clients choose to opt for a maintenance contract whereby I make a certain amount of changes for a set fee in an agreed time period. Or it may be that you require a bit of text or a new page adding as your company grows.

Sure! It is good to keep all branding across your company the same and so with a new website it might be time to freshen up the business cards as well.