Why is it so important that I have a web site? (Of course, you are going to tell me it is, because Hairy Dog Digital creates websites.)
A website is the most public venue for marketing your organization’s brand and messaging.
Whenever prospective clients/members/stakeholders want to find out more about your organization, the first thing they’ll do is search to see if you have a web site.
Your website may serve multiple purposes: credibility, heightened visibility, information resource, education portal, sales channel, etc. Do it right, and you’ll elevate your brand and the organization’s bottom line.
My kid is learning how to make web sites in school. Why should I pay Hairy Dog Digital to do it?
If your child is the Mozart/child prodigy of web programmers and designers rolled into one, by all means let her/him create your site!
Otherwise, bring in a professional. It may be tempting to do it yourself, or let a volunteer or in-house marketing or IT person develop a site; however, in the long run, you will save man-hours and frustration-hours by bringing in a pro.
Hairy Dog Digital provides a full team (designers, programmers, writers, etc.) to make sure your site looks good and performs well behind the scenes.
How much is this really going to cost me?
After meeting with you to discuss specific requirements, Hairy Dog Digital will provide a well-thought-out estimate of costs and turnaround times for your website project.
There won’t be any surprise invoices... ever! We’ll keep you up to date throughout the web development process. If we anticipate additional costs based on changes you request, Hairy Dog Digital will review the additional costs with you before proceeding.
Why can’t you give me a fixed price?
Each project is unique. Building a web site is sort of like being a mechanic. The mechanic gives you an estimate based upon the basic work to be done.
As any experienced mechanic will tell you, expect the unexpected. You (the client) may have changes from what you first thought you wanted. Or, specialized programming functionality may take longer than expected.
Hairy Dog Digital will communicate any anticipated changes in delivery time or hours needed to complete your web site.
But this other fellow told me he could do it a lot cheaper!
Hairy Dog Digital isn’t the least expensive web site development company, and we’re certainly not the most expensive. It’s our policy to not enter into bidding wars for projects.
Often times, what starts out as a low price, creeps up and up, because the website project wasn’t properly estimated, or the development company or freelancer is inexperienced. (The same is usually true of schedules.)
Hairy Dog Digital estimates are extremely fair and competitive—we stand behind our pricing.
Oooh, I saw do-it-yourself templates and they’re really cheap!
Don’t do it! Yes, templates are tempting. They seem so easy. But, you’d be surprised how many hours you’ll put in, tweaking and trying to make it look good with your content and images. You’ll also likely get frustrated very quickly by how many things a template cannot do.
Then, if you create a template-based site, but need to move the hosting (or don’t like the template provider’s level of service), you’re stuck. Those templates are proprietary; meaning your site design essentially belongs to that template company. To move it, you have to recreate the entire website.
By choosing Hairy Dog Digital, you’re guaranteed a custom, hand-coded, quality web site design that is portable—wherever you choose to host it.
My hosting company says they can offer unlimited bandwidth.
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth! Read the fine print of that other guy’s Terms and Conditions. In the fine print you’ll find that they can, and do, throttle traffic or otherwise limit bandwidth in some fashion. Touting “UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH!” is really just marketing double-speak. Any server connected to the internet has a limit.
Honestly, most web sites don’t require much bandwidth anyway. 10G of monthly bandwidth equates to roughly 65,000 page hits a month. More than enough for a typical business website. However, if your is Flash-rich (not recommended), has lots of video, or has a high-traffic blog or discussion group you may want need extra bandwidth.
Hairy Dog Digital offers affordable standard and expanded hosting packages that maximize your website’s functionality.
How long does it take to create a website?
The turnaround time depends on the complexity of the web site: number of top-navigation pages and sub-pages, programming required, design elements, etc.
If you need the contact forms on the site to tie into your database, for example, that takes a little time. Or, if you need to add e-commerce, we’ll need to work with you to establish a merchant account and purchasing functionality.
Generally, Hairy Dog Digital can produce a basic web site within four weeks. The timeline also depends, however, on how quickly you gather elements (e.g., logos, images, original/rough content), and your responsiveness to questions and design approvals.
Do you do the work yourself, or do you outsource it?
Hairy Dog Digital does most work in-house. When it’s the right fit for a project, we bring in partners—other web design, content and multimedia experts whose diverse backgrounds and talents strengthen Hairy Dog Digital’s team.
What happens to my project if a bus hits you?
Hairy Dog Digital has contingency plans in place for every aspect of our services. If one of our key personnel takes disability leave for some reason (or truly does get hit by a bus, which we really hope doesn’t happen), another project manager will step in to ensure website completion, continued hosting, maintenance, etc.
How do I make changes to my web site?
It depends on your needs and how Hairy Dog Digital creates the website, based upon our consultations with you.
We provide content development services, which enable you to simply send rough verbiage to Hairy Dog Digital, for editing and posting to your site.
Hairy Dog Digital can also build your site within a web-based content management system. This approach makes it easy for you (or assigned staff) to control site content assets and make changes, without affecting the website’s design or functionality.
What forms of payment do you accept?
Hairy Dog Digital accepts payments via: company check, credit card, PayPal and cash.
You use both "website" and "web site" on your site. Which is correct? Don’t you proofread your work? It’s sloppy and inconsistent!
Both are correct. Website is a compound word that may be spelled as one or two words. And, yes, we do proofread our work!
Hairy Dog Digital intentionally uses both variations on our website, and we highly suggest doing the same to yours.
Why? Search engines distinguish between the two spellings, and people searching on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. may type: "web site," "website" or just "web." So, we allow ourselves some inconsistency in the use of the word website (see we just did it), to make it easier for folks to find our web site.
> Read more about Content Development
Yeah, but it’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out, isn’t it?
As a kid, our owner, Rob, was notorious for putting his eye out, doing stupid things with sticks and whatever else he could get his hands on. He was the kid wearing an eye patch, and getting concussions from flying over the handlebars of his bike. Today, he’s a respected member of the community and a responsible father!
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