Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need a website?

More and more people are turning to the Internet to find goods and services instead of using traditional printed directories.

An effective website puts your goods and services in front of people who need them at the very moment they are looking for them.

Printed advertisements age quickly; prices and special offers change; goods go out of stock. A managed website tells visitors what you have to offer today, not what you were offering three months or more ago.

Interested visitors can contact you directly, either by clicking to send an email or by phoning you. You can talk to prospects whilst your web page is still in front of them and their interest is high.

And perhaps most importantly, how many of your competitors have websites?

The Internet, websites and email have become as important to businesses as a telephone and fax machine, and how many people set up in business without a telephone?

How much is it going to cost?

This just isn’t an easy question to answer. It depends on exactly what it is you’re looking for.

Websites with animation, lots of pages and large databases tend to cost more, as you would expect, but sometimes seemingly simple features can turn out more expensive than expected, especially if they prove to be labour-intensive.

One electronic book (ebook) for downloading from a website is much like any other – you may think – but our largest so far (over 460,000 words in 800-plus pages) took a far greater time to compile than the average 24 to 32-page ebook.

We have created full websites for as little as £150 whilst others have cost thousands. As a (very) broad guideline, a budget of £250 to £850 should cover all but very ambitious plans.

If you already have a budget or an absolute maximum spend figure decided, why not tell us what it is? We will then be able to advise you early on just what your budget will and won’t get you and you can make your plans to fit. In fact, you may well find cash left over in your budget.

We want you to be satisfied with your Silkweaver-created website and our service, and that includes feeling you got value for your money. Happy clients not only repeat or follow-on business in the future but often recommend satisfactory suppliers to their friends and business contacts.

Over 50% of our business is from such sources.

How long will it take?

This is another difficult one to give a simple and general answer to. There are two main factors that influence the time to create and launch a website:

• The design brief.

  The more specific the design brief you can give us, the better we can work out what you’re looking for and the quicker we will arrive at an agreed website design.

  But don’t worry if you have little or no idea what it is you want; we have ways of helping you to focus your mind. Or leave it to our creative designers – you’d be surprised what they can achieve.

• The design process.

  We will create sample website designs based on your design brief and put them onto a development website where you can look at them in a real Internet environment. We then need your feedback to agree a design and move to the next stage: putting your content – text and images – into the website pages.

  These also are put onto the development website for comment and feedback.

  Ideas will go backwards and forwards between us a number of times depending on the size and complexity of your website; the quicker we respond to each other, the shorter the development time.

Complex features will obviously take longer to implement than simpler ones but this actually has less effect on the start-to-finish development time than the two factors mentioned above.

Having said all the above, if we take a 10 to 15-page website, with half a dozen email accounts and a client database as an example, the guideline development time is about four to five weeks.

In urgent cases we have completed websites from scratch in a matter of days, but we recommend taking things a little more leisurely if possible. Snap judgments often cost more time to correct than they save.

“I haven’t a clue where to start”

This is what many of you say to us when we first start talking about your website. There are some simple guidelines and techniques you can use to start getting ideas into your head – and then across to us – to help ensure you get the website you really want rather than someone else’s ideas.

They fall into three main categories:

• Questions you can ask yourself
  
  
• Things you can do
  
  
• Ideas you can include (or rule out)
  

Questions you can ask your self

Why do you want a website? Think about your reasons for having a website in the first place.

What image does your business project / do you want your website to project?

Are your products or services branded? Is there a trading or product name that people might instantly recognize?

What sort of website do you want?

• Just describing you, your business, your products and services — sometimes called a “brochureware site”.
  
  
• To provide information about your products and services to current and potential clients — an “informational site”.
  
  
• To sell your product or services online — usually called an e-Commerce website.

What sot of impression do you want to create with website visitors? What sort of “experience” do you want them to have?

Things you can do

Gather together any other promotional material you have — letterhead, business card, compliments slip, flyers, brochures, etc. Do you want to maintain a common feel between them and the website — corporate image.

Your website is going to describe your business. Write a few sentences describing each of your services or products. Don’t worry if you don’t think your writing skills are up to it or not — just do it. We’ll help put it into a web-friendly format.

Visit other websites – those of both similar product/service providers and completely different businesses.

• Note features you like and dislike about them.
  
  
• Bookmark websites with features you particularly like and dislike.
  

Do you have any photos (especially digital) that could be used on your website?

• Of your business.
  
  
• Premises.
  
  
• Work done/in progress.
  
  
• Products.
  
  
• Vehicles.
  
  
• People.

Things you can include (or rule out)

Whilst surfing around looking at competitors’ websites and website in general, note down some of the features and effects they are using.

Which ones do you like?

Which ones look pretty naff?

Consider which you might like to include in your website:

• Animation – but beware of this; too much animation can completely distract visitors from what you’re trying to show/tell them.
  
  
• Multimedia – sound and movies – similar warning to animation, plus multimedia can get expensive.
  
  
• Newsletter – a great way to keep in regular communication with present and future customers.
  
  
• Bulletin Board / Blog – let your visitors tell you, and the world, what they think.

These lists could be almost endless. Maybe reading through them you’ll start getting a few more ideas of your own — write it all down. It’ll all help us work out exactly what you really want.

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