FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What are the benfits of having a web site?
What's the procedure to get my site on-line?
How much does it cost to get on-line?
How long does it take to get my site on-line?
What do I need to supply?
What is a domain name?
What is hosting?
What are the benefits of having a web site?
A website can reach out to new markets or it can help retain your current customers. It can act as a multipage advertisement or it can be an online business that generates its own income. It can act as a meeting place, a resource center or even entertain. If you need to advertise, inform, sell, communicate or entertain then a website can be built to fit the bill.
Your website is available 24 hours a day to a global audience. This creates an opportunity to provide valuable information for your customers. A professionally designed website can:
act as a multipage advertisement
display the products and services you provide
enable customers to purchase goods or services
allow reservations to be made online
convey branding identity and promote trust
develop customer loyalty through the provision of services
provide contact information or direct contact through email
What's the procedure to get my site online?
Whether you have a small site in mind or a large budget project to be developed, we still go through the same process.
Planning
1. Free initial consultation.
We determine the purpose of your website and gather information on your target audience. To give you some ideas on what to think about when planning your site we have a website planning guide.
2. Research
We research both the local and global competition to help determine the best online strategy for your business. Using this information we modify our plan and discuss the look and feel of your site. We explain the technologies involved in the more complex designs using plain language and offer pricing packages on the variations we discuss.
3. Domain Name
Domain names are decided and registered.
Design and Development
4. Draft
A draft site and/or samples are prepared for your approval.
5. Production
All resources required for the project are collected or produced.
6. Ongoing Consultation
We design and develop your site with ongoing consultation and testing.
Publishing
7. Site goes live
After your approval the site goes online with your choice of web hosting partner.
Promotion
8. Search Engine Submissions
We submit your site to the major search engines and provide advice on how to market your site effectively.
Modification
9. Fine Tuning
We monitor the traffic to your site so we can make suggestions for improvement in either holding the web users attention or increasing the number of visitors to the most important pages.
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What does it cost to get online?
There are five basic costs.
domain name registration
design and development
hosting
promotion
maintenance
Domain name registration
You must register a domain name for your business. The name must comply with certain rules. It will cost about $120 for a "www.yourbusiness.com.au" name for two years.
A well-chosen domain name can help customer recognition and increase traffic. It is increasingly more difficult to acquire a catchy domain name so a little imagination is required and certain restrictions on names apply, particularly to the ".com" and ".com.au" domains. Redfox can register your name or you can do it yourself.
Design and development
Generally a small business website will cost between $A800 and $A5000. In a nutshell, you are paying for the time involved in building the site and the level of expertise required to make it work. A four page site with graphics and text supplied by the client will cost about $800 and a site which needs photography, artwork, some flash animation and more complex programming could cost up to $5000.
Options to achieve your site objectives are discussed in our initial consultation so you can choose the most cost effective method to suit your business. We give a fixed quote with clear design objectives agreed upon at the beginning of the project.
Web hosting
Most small business website hosting requirements fit into the $A110 to $A650 per year price bracket depending on the size and technology required for your site.
Promotion
Search engine placement is crucial to the success of your website. Redfox will optimise your web pages to gain excellent position in the search engine indexes. We make careful submissions to the major search engines for free as part of our service and mass submit to many of the lesser-known search engines.
When planning dates for your website to go online, you need to consider that it takes a couple of months to be placed on some of the search engines. Traffic to your site will increase as your site gets listed and other methods of promotion are utilised. We can discuss further options to increase traffic to your site as on ongoing service.
Maintenance
The Internet is a dynamic environment and stale web sites just get passed over. Your site needs to change regularly to keep visitors coming back. Four options are:
Update the site yourself with the right software and a little training.
We build a database driven site where you can edit your own content.
We perform any changes based on an hourly rate ($50/hr).
Use our proven content management system where changing content is as easy as changing text on a word processor.
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How long does it take to get my site online?
Websites vary enormously in content and complexity. The time involved to create them is a reflection of this.
It usually takes about 1-2 weeks for a small site with up to 5 pages.
For larger sites with interactivity, rich graphic content, flash animation, original photography or advanced scripting it can take 3 weeks or more.
A large e-commerce or database driven site will usually take 4 weeks or more.
Hosting and domain name registration only take a few days.
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What do I need to supply?
Because you know your business and market best, your input is valuable to designing an effective site. Generally we supply you with a list of necessary items with our website planning worksheet but we leave the amount of control in the design process up to you.
It will save you time and money if you have any of the following items:
text content
company logos or letterhead
quality photographs or images
brochures
previous print advertising material
If your business does not have the time or the resources, we can take care of all the content. This can include copy content, original photography, logo design and branding.
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What is a Domain Name?
Your domain name is an address where Internet users can find you on the web. An example is www.yourbusiness.com.au.
You should have a unique domain name for your website. There are certain rules in place regarding what names you can register particularly if you want a ".com.au" name. Redfox can register your domain name or you can do it yourself.
Check to see if the domain name you want is available.
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What is Web Hosting?
All the files for your website are kept on one or more computers called web servers The server computer is said to be a host for your site. In other words, they look after your site and ensure it is available 24/7.
The web hosting requirements for any site vary according to the technology used to create it. The standard of the service can vary greatly from one company to the next. The speed and reliability of service are crucial as is the level of customer support provided.
Redfox will assist you in choosing a suitable web hosting service that suits the needs of your business. See some of our web hosting packages.
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