Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing

How much will a site cost me?
Our rate is $60.00 an hour, which is less than half of the average rate you might pay a bigger firm here in Charlotte. There are quite a few factors that are going to affect the ultimate cost of your web site. These factors include how many pages you are going to have, if you will sell products or services on your website, the graphic work involved, and how interactive your future web site will be. You will also need web hosting and domain name registration. We are very open about prices, and we want you to be aware of all costs up front.

General Design - $60/hr, 40hr ($2,400, 5 day) project minimum for new sites
Hosting - $35/mo. (1000GB transfer), $3.50/1000MB of data transfer thereafter
SSL Certificate - $240/yr.
Domain Registration - $15/yr.
E-mail - $10/mo. for up to 25 addresses, $15/mo. for up to 100.
Static IP - $5/mo.
Statistics - $15/mo.

Do you offer any discounts?
Schools & some non-profit organizations receive a 25% discount on all design services.

What is the structure and timing of fees paid in a typical project?
Once we’ve had an initial consultation to work out the details of your project, we will give you a final quote and our design contract to look over. 50% of the total cost of the project is due up front in addition to fees such as domain name transfer/registration, first month’s hosting fees, setting up an SSL certificate, etc. (these additional fees are usually $25-$100). The remaining balance is paid after your site has launched and you are completely satisfied.

Services

Why do I need a website?
There are literally thousands of reasons, but here are the most important ones:

Gives you a professional image in front of your customers.
Lets you do business 24 hours a day. When you close for the day, your web site will still be working hard for you all night.
Provide personalized support for your customers with answers to common questions; assistance on specific products or services, provide a variety of ways in which you can be contacted. Do all this without answering a phone or hiring additional staff.
Expose your business to millions of people. Customers, potential employees, business partners and investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer
Update your products and services easily at low cost
Put products and services on special instantly

Is it true that having a website can help employees do their jobs?
Some companies seem to think that a web site is simply a glorified billboard for their products or services. This is a shame, because they are overlooking one of the most amazing ways to boost productivity—using their website as a tool for collaboration and information management.

I already have a site but I want to improve it. Can you help?
Certainly we can. We will evaluate your site. Redesigning a site almost always costs less than creating one from scratch. You can go to smithdatagroup.com to get an instant quote right now!

Search Engines

Why can’t I find my site in [Google, Yahoo!, Ask, etc.]?
We will submit your site to the major search engines as soon as it launches (unless it is an intranet or other non-public site). After we submit, the search engines must visit your site and add it to their indexes. We have no control over this process, but it typically takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months.

I would like my site to be #1 result for [search term] in Google. Can you do that for me?
Maybe. No one can actually guarantee top placement in Google (or any specific placement for that matter). The ranking methodology used by Google changes on a regular basis and is not public knowledge. It is a closely guarded secret to avoid “gaming the system”.

Do I need to hire a local design firm?
Not necessarily. It’s always a pleasure to meet with our clients in person, but as long as you’re comfortable communicating on a regular basis and delivering content via e-mail or FTP, you have nothing to worry about.

Project Management

How long does it take to have a site designed?
Obviously the length of the project will depend on the scope, number of pages, and complexity of the site. A typical site with 20 pages, two forms, and some simple flash animation will take 4-6 weeks to complete. The most common cause for delay is a lack of content from the client.

Do we need to have a meeting?
Yes, but it doesn’t have to be in person. If you are in Charlotte or the surrounding area, we are happy to schedule an initial meeting free of charge. We have worked on several projects where we never met the client face to face, but it is important to maintain collaboration whether by phone or e-mail. This process is of paramount importance to delivering the site that you want. Don’t trust anyone who is willing to deliver a site without thoroughly discussing your needs and helping you refine your vision of the perfect site.

What about ongoing maintenance? Can I update my website once it’s completed?
A web site is not a static object. It will change and grow over time. After your site launches, we recommend updating the content regularly. A truism on the web is “content is king”. The reason the Internet exists is to provide easy access to information. People are arriving at your site to learn about your company, products, services, your people, history and much more. The more information you can provide to satisfy this curiosity, the more successful your site will be. There are several methods of keeping your site up to date:

Direct Access. If your site is hosted with us, we can give you direct FTP access. FTP will allow you to view the entire file structure of your site. Direct access is free, but if you are uncomfortable maintaining a local copy of the site (keeping files on your computer), making direct changes to code and then uploading them we do not recommend this option.
Assisted edits. If you are uncomfortable editing files yourself, you may submit changes to us via phone or e-mail and we will handle them.
Content Management System. If you are either uncomfortable or inconvenienced by FTP, we can create a content management system (CMS) for your site. This is the best option, but it is also the most expensive. If you have a team making edits, it is almost a necessity because it is easy to learn and can prevent mistakes.

Hosting

Where will my website be hosted?
If you choose to let us handle the hosting implementation, your web site will be hosted in a secure data center with:

24x7 security staff on-site
Fully integrated Monitoring System for all critical building, server and network systems
Advanced fire protection, suppression, and detection systems
Redundant power and network connectivity with two separate paths into the facility

Our comprehensive hosting package is $35 a month and requires a separate contract. Please see the hosting page for more detail on pricing and features.

What is a domain name?
A domain name is a specific web site address that you choose and register with us (.com, .edu, and .gov). Our domain name is "smithdatagroup.com".

What is web hosting?
In order to be accessible by the public, the files that make up your web site must be placed on a server (a specialized type of computer). You pay a small monthly fee to maintain the computer equipment, facilities, electricity and bandwidth costs.

How will I know who’s visiting my site?
In addition to hosting, we offer a monthly web analytics package. Please see the statistics page for more detail.
Provides detailed statistics and visitor tracking so you can see who’s visiting your site, how long they stay, and what information is the most popular. Here’s a quick list of the metrics:

Browser
Operating system
Screen Resolution
Page duration
Referrer (where they came from)
Search terms (what they typed to find you) & PPC effectiveness
Time on site
Bounce rate (% of traffic that stayed on your site for less than 10 seconds)
Repeat visitor tracking (“unique visitors”)
For sites using dynamic page generation, adds the capability to analyze server-side generation.
Client-side page load time
Track the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing

E-Mail

Can I have an e-mail address like “me@mycompany.com”?
Yes! E-mail packages start at $10 a month. This includes up to 25 e-mail addresses, spam filtering, virus protection. You must have ownership of the domain (“yoursite.com”) that you would like to use for your e-mail address(es). Customers, business partners and other recipients immediately recognize the origin of your incoming messages when you use your email address associated with your business domain name. The generic free "@msn.com," "@hotmail.com" and "@yahoo.com" domains do not provide email senders and recipients with this convenience.

What is a “catch-all” address?
A catch-all email account is an address that is specified to receive all messages that are addressed to an incorrect email address for a domain. For example, you have three email addresses set up for yoursite.com: info@yoursite.com, sales@yoursite.com, and jobs@yoursite.com, you can choose info@yoursite.com as a catch-all email account. Any email messages sent to manager@yoursite.com (or any other invalid email address), are sent to the catch-all account instead of being rejected.