Frequently Asked Questions:

Why Do I Need a Website?

Without a website you are 'invisible' to the majority of potential new clients. These days, most of your potential clients are using the Internet to find services, information and products. Even those that are not comfortable using the Internet will know somebody who is, and ask them to search for them.

Visitors to your website will have already visited several other websites of businesses offering similar services to yours. It is therefore crucial that your website sets you apart from the rest by looking more professional, trustworthy and established, and also by being more informative and easier to use than those of your competitors.

All of your smart competitors will already have a website, which will give them a significant advantage over you (if their website is well designed, optimised and securely hosted).

A website provides a very effective means to inform your existing clients of changes to your services and prices etc. It can also be used to help generate more income by presenting special offers or deals to existing and potential new clients. These can be as short as a single day offer or as long as a seasonal offer, either way, your website provides you with an instant method of tuning your business to match your clients needs and wants.

Why Should I Choose You to Design and Host my Website?

We genuinely want you and your business to become more successful and we have the experience, skills and knowledge to achieve this for you.

We always try to gain a good understanding of your business before designing and optimising your website. We will research your competitors to ensure that your website sets you apart from them.

It is always very difficult to choose, when you are looking for a new service provider of any kind. You browse through several websites offering the services that you require; some will offer lower prices, others will appear to offer more features, some will be confusing and others will be lacking in the information that you require (prices for example). In the end, people tend to decide based on their ability to make some sort of emotional connection with the service provider, through their website content, presentation and feel.

In our case, please take a look at our Client Testimonials page and our About Us page. If you feel comfortable, send us an email or call us and we will be very happy to answer any questions you may have.

Can You Guarantee That my Website Will be Listed at Number 1 in Google?

No! This is a common misconception; no web design or marketing company can guarantee that your website will appear in any particular position in Google or any other search engine. That said, we do achieve consistently high results for our clients and we will guarantee that your website will be correctly catalogued by Google and the other major search engines.

Exactly What do I Need to do, and What do I Need to Send to You?

With our help you need to decide which of our web design packages is most suitable for you and your business. We will then help you to choose the best domain name for your business (unless you have already purchased one).

You will then need to send us the content material for your website (text and photos), preferably as an email or email attachment. We will of course guide you in the preparation of your text content if you are unsure of what to provide. We will take care of most things for you and during the design process we will communicate with you regularly via email, so please keep an eye on your inbox.

What is Optimisation?

We want your website to be successful; in order to achieve this your website needs to be 'optimised' to suit your market and your potential new clients.

The main purpose of optimisation is to help search engines to catalogue your website correctly. This in turn ensures that your website will have a better chance of being presented to your potential new clients in their search results. For example, if you run a guest house we would use optimisation to tell Google (and other search engines) that you run the best guest house in your area and that your website would be worth including in its search results.

Optimisation is only one method that we use to help your potential new clients to find your website, but it is one of the most important aspects of your website's design. Optimisation works best if you can provide us with good informative text content material for your website, especially for your 'Home' page.

Why Do I Have to Pay For Hosting, After the First Year?

Your hosting and domain name renewal fees are included in the web design package cost for the first year. After the first year we charge a fee of £100 per year.

We took a decision many years ago to provide only the highest quality hosting for our clients, and to provide this as part of a complete web design package. It was simply not practical to design a website for a client and then expect that client to go and find suitable hosting for it. Also, much of the code required to run a successful website has to be installed on the server itself, and alternative or cheaper hosting would not necessarily provide this code or sufficient access to it.

We have our own servers based in London and we maintain them ourselves. This is the only way to guarantee reliability and security for our clients' websites. We host a maximum of fifty clients on a server, then we purchase another one and carry on from there (this means you are hosted alongside other professionals and reputable businesses) whereas, free or cheaper hosting providers will allocate many hundreds or even thousands of clients to a single server, all sharing the same CPU and memory resources (also, you have no control over the type of websites hosted next to yours).

Each of our servers has a fixed IP address (a bit like having a fixed business address on the high street). Each server also runs a number of softwares that keep your website and email safe and ensure that your website is quickly and easily accessible.

Your website is a very important component in the success of your business, it therefore makes good business sense to ensure that it is well maintained, regularly monitored and secure. Think about how much you pay to your accountant, financial adviser, bank (bank charges), etc. each year, for their professional services.

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Tel: 0161-707-7556   e-mail: Affordable Web Design Enquiries   Registered in England and Wales No: 4351257