Web Design : Frequently Asked questions (and Answers!)

Do I really need a Web site?

A website is cheap (see below) and is an enormously useful tool! Can you afford not to have a presence on the internet? A website puts you in touch with customers anywhere in the world at any time of the day - it is always there, always available.

A website, in its most basic form, allows you to tell customers about your business. It tells them what you do, where you are based and allows them to contact you. A website provides information, and does so effectively, quickly and cheaply.

How much does a website cost?

There are quite a few factors that are going to affect the ultimate cost of your website. These factors include how many pages you are going to have, if you will sell products on your website, the graphic work involved, and how interactive your site will be.

Our starter package costs just £349 and includes everything you will need to be totally up and running on the World Wide Web. This is incredibly good value for money, and includes domain name registration and web hosting for a period of 1 year. The subsequent cost for renewing your domain name and hosting would be just £50 a year - less than £1 per week! No other form of advertising is so cheap!

Do I need to hire a "local" website designer?

Nautilus Web Design is based in Surrey (England), and we love to work with local clients, however distance is not a factor when it comes to web design. By using the Internet, e-mail and telephone we can communicate with clients in any location and 'work in progress' versions of your website will always be available to view online so that you can see our progress and provide feedback during the construction process.

How long does it take to build a website?

The time frame is determined by the size of the project, the complexity of the site design, the availability of content and images from the client, and our current client design schedule. We aim to provide a prompt service and would hope to have a Starter Package 5-page website completed within about one week to ten days.

What do you require from me, before you can start building my site?

We would need to establish what 'look' and 'feel' you wish your site to have. Maybe you already have a company image or colour scheme, and would like your website to represent this. We would like to known if there are any designs that you particularly like, or any that you dislike.

A website is really only as good as the content that it displays. We would require that you type up the text for inclusion on your new website, and provide us with good quality images, logos or anything else that you may wish to display.

What if I do not have any pictures for my website, or I am not very good at writing textual content?

We can help! - We can purchase images of practically anything from a variety of online image banks - prices are quite reasonable. Of course if we can find appropriate copyright-free images for no charge, we will use these, but note however that we will not knowingly infringe on someone's copyright or use images off the internet without permission.

We can provide a proof reading service, and will be happy to re-work your textual content for you if you are unsure that it reads correctly. All our web pages are spell checked prior to publication.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is a specific website address that you choose, and will be the name that clients see when they access your Web site. Our domain name is "nautilusweb.co.uk". This is also the name that your e-mails will come from, and where clients can send email to.

Choosing a good domain name is very important - You should choose your company name or a domain name which describes what your company does. However, there are many domain names which are already taken! A domain name costs about £10 for a year, and must be renewed yearly if you wish to keep it.

Our starter package includes a domain name of your choice and registration for 1 year.

What is web hosting?

A website must be stored somewhere, so that everyone in the world can access it. Web sites consume storage space and also consume internet bandwidth as people access them to retrieve data. Web Hosting is the service of storing your website and making it accessible to the world.

If you have an existing website, and do not require our hosting facilities, then we can work with your existing host - you will have to provide us with your web hosting FTP login username and password so that we can upload your website for you.

If not, we can host your website on our servers - in fact this is included in our starter package as standard, for a period of 1 year. Subsequent years web hosting are priced at just £40 each.

What about future updates to my website?

Most good websites have their content updated regularly - fresh content is what will keep your visitors coming back. We can add, remove or amend content on your site. Our rate is a very reasonable £12 per hour, and minor updates such as a change of price, or amended paragraph should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.

If you want to maintain your website yourself you can do so. We will provide you with the FTP details in order to access your site.

I already have a website - Can you just make some changes to it for me?

Yes - Our rate is a very reasonable £12 per hour. If we did not build your site, we would have to familiarise ourselves with it before we can make any changes. (We provide a free quotation service). You would have to provide us with your web hosting FTP login username and password so that we could upload any changes for you.

How do I get listed in search engines?

Achieving consistently high search engine rankings is very difficult, however, we set you up with the best start. We create an XML sitemap which is used by Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN in order to include your web pages in their results. We submit your sitemap to Google. In addition all our web pages are designed to be very Search Engine Friendly - we use descriptive pages titles, Keyword & Description Meta-Tags and code your web pages in such a way that makes them 'content rich' and highly visible to the search engines.

I've still got some more questions.

Simply contact us and we will answer them.

I've made my decision - I want you to build my website. Now what do I do?

Simply fill out our web design quote request form to start the process.