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Search Image This! |
I understand, I am like that too. But due to the medium of the web, and all the variables - I do need information about what you want before I can give you a fair quote on it.
One of my standard practices is I will create a mockup site for you based on the information you give me. This gives us both an idea if the partnering is going to work, and you don't have to pay for a designer that isn't going to make something you like! If you don't think I am the designer for you, then you didn't have to spend any money to find out.
Some of the things we need to talk about before a quote are:
More question will come up as we talk, and this is to insure you that you are getting the web site you want, at the price you want to pay!!
Half of what I do is psychology, the other part is art. You have a vision in mind, I need to figure out how to help you explain it, design it, and then make it become a reality for you. All at the lowest cost possible.
Images and Graphics can come from a number of places. There are two kinds of artwork out there
Assume any and all pictures/artwork/graphics are copyrighted unless you know otherwise for sure!
Rule of thumb: if you didn't create it yourself, and didn't pay someone else to create it for you, then it's not yours to use, unless the artist has given you permission
example: My desktops are offered as Free, but can't be used by anyone for any other purpose then I have offered them (to be used as their personal desktop pictures)
So with all thesse copyright rules, how on earth do you get graphics for your site?
it's really not that hard....
I am a stickler on copyright violations, so Please don't ask me to use things on your site unless you can prove you have the right to use them. Should anyone complain about copyright violations, most all servers will immediately terminate your account. No one wants that.
I don't keep bankers hours. I am available most times from 9am - 10pm Pacfic Time. I will provide you with a number of different ways to connect me as we work on your site.
There is a big difference between SPAM and legitimate mailing lists. An acceptable mailing list is one where people willingly sign up for it, and easily can remove themselves when they choose. SPAM is unsolicited email of the same content to multiple email addresses and WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. I encourage all of my clients to also post and adhere to their "Privacy Policy" -which is a statement on their site about the use of any personal information they collect.
What's OK:
What's not ok:
In order to accept real time credit card and electronic payments online, you will need to have a Merchant Account for your business, a shopping cart program (that works with your specific server), and a gateway to have them processed approved and processed. This can get rather expensive!
I specialize in helping the smaller businesses get the tools they need to start accepting orders online, without having to come up without a lot of upfront money to get it set up.
A few different alternatives are companies like Kagi, Paypal and BillPay where you need a merchant account, and are based on a "pay as you go" system where you just pay a percentage of the actual sale. These are great for the people just starting out, selling on Auction sites or who don't have much of a budget to be making a start up investment. The draw back is that the systems are usually very limited, usually designed for single item sales, and don't have convient shopping carts to make it easier on the customer. Not to mention they tend to take a bigger percentage of the sale. Also, your customers statements reflect the company who processed the charge, not the name of your business.
There are also intermediate companies that will handle your orders, and you can manually enter your sales at your credit card terminal after downloading the orders from a server. A lot slower, and more work on your part, but more affordable for companies that aren't doing large quantities of sales, and already have a merchant account and terminal set up.
This is no problem, I do not require that I host your site, or anything else. I will happily work with you for a new design and look for your already exsisting site.
I also am happy to "help" you design your own site, and just handle the graphics.
How much and how little you want to do is up to you!
The Internet differs from what we are used to in that it's free flowing. It's not a book, where you start at page one, and go sequentially to page 2, then 3, etc. To force it into that format is losing the very nature of what makes the world wide web such a useful tool.
The best analogy that I can think of to describe the way a good web site works is this:
Think of your kitchen, you don't have to open EVERY cabinet in order from left to right before you get to the one that hold the plates. instead, you simply go directly to the cabinet you want, open it, find the shelf and grab a plate of the size you want
The web is your kitchen, you want someone to walk in, see the cabinet's clearly labeled, and let them go directly where they would like to, and when they would like to. You also want all the cabinets to MAKE SENSE... The large and small plates ought to be in the same cabinet, not separated, or your viewer will get frustrated and leave.
Graphics and multimedia can also frustrate the viewer if they are over used. If you open your cabinet, and a cute sound plays for say 10 seconds, it's humorous at first. But can you image keeping that sound happening EVERYTIME you have to open that cabinet to get a plate? How many days before it's more annoying then cute, and want to smash the little recorder playing it?? Same with the web site ... if you want your viewers to keep returning, over and over, use these things wisely, graphics are best SMALL and unobtrusive, sounds are best left to a minimum, and kept as short as possible (better yet, set up on a "play on demand"
What you call the cabinets is important ... if the cabinet has an interesting name, although they may be looking for Plates originally, they might see something of interest they also want to look at. This is why they call it SURFING ... it's free flowing, and allows the viewer more of an interactive experience where they have control.
The best way to save lots of time and money is to have all Text in it's final form when you send it to me. A good percentage of time and cost is caused by having to make correction on text over and over again.
I request that text is send in ASCII form, that means straight text without formatting -preferably in the body of an email with the page title as the subject. Styles for the text (bold, italic, etc.) are best send separately as notations
Also, make sure it's worded exactly as you want it, and with spelling and grammar corrected. I am MUCH better at math then I am at Spelling, so it's best not to leave me to have to come up with verbiage, or manually type out your text.