FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Click below to jump to a topic, or scroll down the page to read them all.


Why do I have to pay a deposit?

The initial stage of my web design process involves the creation of a photoshop outline of your website. The going rate for a professionally design photoshop outline is £100; if I didn't charge a deposit, it would create an opportunity for people to have the initial design of their website made for free!

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Do I have to pay for hosting and domain registration?

12 months hosting and domain registration are included in the price of all of my web design packages.

After the first year, hosting, domain registration and support can be renewed for an additional 12 months; the price varies depending on your package, and can be seen on the web design packages and prices page. The hosting and support package covers the costs incurred from hosting your website, renewing your domain registration with the registrar, and providing continuing support and maintenance of your website and emails. It also includes an hour's free content update.

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What is hosting?

A website is composed of a series of files on a computer. To access a website, your computer is viewing the series of files located on another computer across the internet. This computer is called a host.

In order to make your website available to a wide audience, as quickly and reliably as possible, it is necessary to host the files on a dedicated computer called a server; these servers are extremely fast computers, kept in temperature controlled rooms with fast internet access.

The service of purchasing space on one of these computers for your website is called "hosting".

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Domain

In practical terms, a domain is the address for your website.

Each website hosted on the internet is assigned a DNS number, which is its literal address. The internet is huge, and because each address needs to be unique, it is often a large number, such as 132.185.132.21. It would be a lot harder to remember how to access the BBC website if every time you wanted to visit it, you had to type 132.185.132.21 into your browser!

To simplify things, domain addresses point to a websites DNS address; to use the previous example, www.bbc.co.uk points to 132.185.132.21. This way, the person using the computer need only remember the domain address to access a website.

Typically, most Domain names are registered for 12 months at a time, although many companies offer registration for up to 10 years for when you are certain you want to hold on to a name. I register sites for 12 months as standard, and include renewal of the address in my yearly hosting & support charge.

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How do I pay you?

I offer three payment methods: bank transfer, cheque and paypal.

There is no fee for payment by bank transfer. Payment by cheque incurs an additional charge of 10% (minimum charge of £5) to cover the cost of administration. Payment by paypal incurs an additional charge of 5% to cover the cost of administration, plus paypal's own fees.

More details can be found in the payment table on the packages and prices page.

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My website says it has been suspended, what has happened?

If your website has been suspended, it means that your hosting and support contract has expired and needs to be renewed.

28 days before your hosting is due to expire, I will write you a letter informing you that your contract is coming to an end; the letter will contain an invoice for renewal of your contract for an additional 12 months.

If I have not received payment from you by the expiry date, your website will automatically go offline, and be replaced by a page that informs you that it has been suspended. In order to lift the suspension, I simply need to receive payment from you for an additional 12 months, be it by cheque, bank transfer or Paypal. There are no further charges for reactivating a suspended website.

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How do I get more visitors to my website?

Having a well designed and informative website is one thing, having people actually visit it is another thing entirely. Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO is the process of propagating your web page over the internet, so that whenever somebody is searching for something related to your business, they are directed to your domain.

There are many different things involved in optimising a website, but content is king - the information on your website needs to be laid out in such a way that it is easily accessed both by the end user, and by the search engines.

All of my standard and advanced web design packages come with search engine optimisation include

In order to defeat spammers, the search engines regularly modify the formula they use to rank web pages, so as to prevent irrelevant websites appearing in searches they shouldn't. Because of this, it is important to have your website optimised regularly.

For a more detailed explanation of how sites such as google rank websites, click here.

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What is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising?

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites (such as blogs) where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertiser's website. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. When a user types a keyword query matching an advertiser's keyword list, or views a webpage with relevant content, the advertisements may be displayed. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and often appear ahead of normal links.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators. Minimum prices per click, often referred to as costs per click (CPC), vary depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular phrase or keyword list—with some CPCs as low as £0.01. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular search engines.

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