When you first contact me, I will get back to you within two days or less to arrange for a consultation either by email or phone, at which time you can tell me your objectives for your web site. We will work together on a structure for the site that will provide your visitors with helpful information about your company and what it has to offer them, and result in a smooth, easy-to-follow navigational flow.

You can give me any materials you want to include in the site, in whatever format is most convenient. If any graphics you want to use are available both printed on paper and stored on your computer, please send the digital version, as it usually results in a cleaner looking image on the web page. If you prefer a certain layout or color scheme, you can do a rough sketch or send me the web addresses of one or more sites that look similar to what you have in mind.

Sometimes one of the most difficult aspects of developing a new web site is gathering content---writing the text and deciding what information to include. If you are having difficulty finding content for your pages, a good place to start is material you already have published, such as brochures and promotional flyers. At the very least, you will want to provide contact information such as your telephone number and email address, as well as the street address of your establishment and the hours it is open for business. You should tell prospective customers something about your business, the people involved, what you do, and what products or services you have to offer. Beyond that, you may decide to showcase your inventory and make items available for direct online purchase, or promote special sales events.

Once I have the material you want to include, I can begin to design your new web site. While I am working on developing your site, I will put it online, in a private area of my own web space, so you can watch the progress and provide input regarding any changes or additions you would like. We will work on this together until your web site looks and works the way you want it to. When the site is completed to your satisfaction, I will move the files to the server that will host your site under your own domain name. At that point, the job of designing the site is finished. The design process is a one-time fee, payable after your site is finished.

If this is your first web site, you will also need to choose and register a domain name, such as my_company.com, that people will use to find your web site on the internet. Additionally, you will need to set up a hosting account. Both of these are separate fees, renewable annually, for as long as you keep your web site online. If you choose DebWorks as your hosting provider and register a new domain at the same time you sign up for your hosting account, the fee for the domain registration is included in the hosting package, for as long as you renew the contract.

One other component of a web site is maintenance. Once your site goes live, do you plan to leave it the same, or will you be making frequent changes, updating inventory, adding information about special promotions, etc., to keep your site current? If you want to be responsible for maintaining your own pages, I can give you easy-to-follow directions for making minor changes, such as rewording text or replacing an image with another one of the same size and shape. Another option is to have me maintain your site. The cost for this depends on the extent and frequency of the updates, and may be charged on a monthly or per-update basis.