Webwork

Site Design

The way your website looks is as important as your sparkling storefront, your full-colour brochures, and training your receptionist not to offer waiting clients a swig from the whiskey bottle under her desk. You wouldn’t decorate your office with flashing red and blue lights and cheesy clipart–your site should have the same level of professionalism.

The way your website works keeps your client there, reading or doing business. Running an amateurish or poorly organized site is like putting all your product in unmarked cardboard boxes and saying “Oh, I’m sure it’s there, just look around,” or watching and laughing as your client runs a rat-like maze to get to her meeting.

Sure, you could buy a template and fill in the blanks, but if you’re running a skateboard shop, you’d look odd set up in a lawyer’s office. If you’re a lawyer, you’d look strange in a storefront designed for fetish lingerie. Carbon copy sites, or sites that don’t match your image as a business, can both damage the initial impression that you want to give to clients.

I can design a website from the ground up for you, or take what you already have and improve it. We’ll discuss what you want to do with the site, what you need it to do for you, and what will work best for your websurfing client.

I can work within a budget, and understand that a small sole proprietorship doesn’t always need or want to spend $50,000 on e-design and webmarketing per year. Sometimes what you need can be accomplished with a few hundred dollars. Simple? Perhaps it’s all you need.

Site Maintenance

Many business folks don’t get around to doing the daily, weekly, or monthly upgrading of their business website. Perhaps you originally paid $200 US per hour to have it built, and can’t afford to continue at that inflated rate, or perhaps for lack of time, expertise, software, or connection, you don’t wish to do it yourself.

But fresh content is one of the important ways to keep site visitors interested–and you shouldn’t have to pay developer’s fees for simple upgrades or text replacement. My rates for ongoing site maintenance contracts are low, and yes, I do charge by the quarter-hour, not the hour. Why pay a full hour’s rate for the addition of a paragraph or two?

Site Content Development

I write. I edit. If properly plied with offers of cash, I can produce good, non mistake-ridden copy for your site. My two best styles? Upbeat conversational style, with obvious humour. Informative, descriptive, clear translation of technical issues into writing understandable by the average new computer user.

Mailing List Maintenance

The best way to get a web-audience, and keep them, is to form an opt-in mailing list. People who agree to receive your mail are far more likely to read it. They’re also not going to report you to your ISP for spamming. (Nice, huh?)

Also, the more entertained you keep your newsletter readers, the more likely they are to support you, come back to your site, click on your ads, buy your products, send roses to your mother, etc.

I can set up a mailing list for you (goshgollylist@yourdomain.com), and run the technical end, or the writing/content end, or both.

Web Graphics

I create graphics from scratch, to design, or optimize the ones you currently have that are slowing your site loading time and boring your visitors. Contact me for a conversation about the job you need done.

Set-up, Hosting and Domain Registration

I offer inexpensive, small virtual hosting packages (www.yourname.com), up to a medium-size site. Hosting info is over in this section.

Contact me for quotes.

I can also act as an agent for your business. As an intermediary between you and your domain seller or hosting company, I can offer a seamless experience; doing the set-up work for the site, altering DNS records when required, and dealing with those pesky IP addresses. Once the site is running, I can deal with troubles as they arise, and translate geek-speak if announcements come from the host. Set-up is charged as an hourly fee, with you being responsible for all charges coming from the hosting company, or the Domain Registration service.