Your Web Site
So what do you get for your money? You get an original website, not based on Templates or pre-existing designs. You get all the Standard Features listed below - with the exception of Content Management which is not available for Basic Websites (click on the symbols to learn more) and any of the optional features you feel you need for your website, with the exception of e-Commerce systems and Flash or Animation work - these are priced separately.
In addition to this you also get:
- Free hosting for the first year
- A free domain name for the first year
- Five e-mail addresses (yourname@yourdomain)
- Free telephone support
Typically it will take around two weeks to design, develop and deploy your website. Sometimes it can take longer, but primarily it depends on the complexity and scale of your site.
Designing and developing websites based on published standards ensures that your website meets all industry criteria. It also ensures that your website maximises its visibility in Search Engines (Google etc), its speed of loading via modern browsers, its stability with the advent of new browser versions and hence its lifetime before significant re-development is required.
For more information on web standards go to the World Wide Web Consortium.
One of the key elements of having your own website is the ability for you to make changes and update it yourself. This ensures that you remain in control of your own content and that you are not beholden to any third parties.
In order for this to be achieved there needs to be a Content Management System (CMS) that enables you to edit your website remotely, typically via your web browser (Firefox, IE etc).
CMSs can be expensive and as complex to use as if you were designing the website yourself in the first place. Therefore at SpyderWebWorks I use a very simple, easy to use and free CMS which enables you to edit virtually any element of your website directly from your browser. You need have no technical knowledge at all other than the ability to produce a Microsoft Word type document.
Irrespective of its simplicity full training will be given - and even if you mess it up, I′m still here to correct everything if needs be.
Your Domain Name (the name of your website) is an important contributory factor to increasing your visibility on Search Engines and ensuring the success of your website. I can help you determine the most appropriate Domain Name and make sure it is available.
The Domain Name is free to you for the first year and typically costs around €10 or so a year after that.
I can also ensure that your website is hosted correctly and appropriately. Typically I would recommend using 1 and 1 in France. It is important to choose the correct “hosting plan” that meets your business needs in terms of reliability, uptime and technology components (i.e. Windows or Linux platform, PHP scripts etc.)
This too is free for the first year, and can cost from approximately €10 a month thereafter.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has a reputation of being something of a “black art”. It can indeed be highly complex and involved. However, there are some simple steps that can be taken to ensure high visibility of your site with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Bing and the rest.
These include producing a Google Sitemap for your website that can be submitted to Google and other search engines that utilise the same mechanisms. Equally usage of the correct “keywords” both as website “tags” and within the text will also assist. As will the domain name itself and ensuring your content is relevant.
There are also some more arcane methods that can be used. Suffice to say that I would work with you to ensure the highest ranking for your website possible without resorting to expensive tools and/or traffic generating engines.
Obviously you will want to know how popular your site is. Who is visiting it, how often, how are they finding you, how long do they stay, what are the most popular pages etc.
There are a number of statistics packages in the market, but I generally stick to two. These being Statcounter, a highly configurable, rich, award winning and free service or Google Analytics; equally free but perhaps less user friendly. Statcounter has the usability edge in that you can easily login to the system yourself and check all your statistics on-line in real time.
Both these packages will give you a mine of information upon which you can make decisions about changes or additions to your website and your marketing
How many website design companies take your money and run after delivering the site? The answer is most of them. Just when you need help most - they have suddenly disappeared.
Not me. As part of the package I offer free lifetime support for your website.
I am always happy to help in any way I can, not just with regard to your website but also any other IT/technology related issues you may have. I have lost count of the number of PCs I have “fixed” or networking problems I have solved - so feel free to get in touch anytime.
Website Options
Listed below is an extensive, but not exhaustive, list of optional elements that can be included in your website, click the symbols to learn more. These can help to make your website more attractive, functional and informative.
Photo Galleries are a must for gîtes or B&Bs, Membership facilities for Associations, Calendars for event based organisations, music and video for bands or theatre groups. The list is endless.
I can help you decide on the best options for you and if necessary explore many other features that exist.
All these facilities are included at no extra cost, with the exception of e-Commerce which entails considerably more work and expertise to implement correctly and Flash and Animation work, which can take a great deal of time.
Music and Video can be used to enhance the appearance and functionality of your site. In some instances it can be mandatory, such as for bands, musicians or theatre groups. There are a myriad of technologies available for delivering sound and vision via your website, I can advise on the most appropriate and have facilities for the manipulation of a large range of formats - delivering the best quality at the best speed.
Individual photos and slideshows are invariably needed on most websites.
There are lots of great ways to display photographs, in what are known as “modal windows”, like a pop-up, only much nicer and in galleries - both Flash and HTML based.
Equally, interactive maps are often required or desirable for many business sites. Using Google Maps, these can be embedded on your site using Google′s Application Programming Interface (API).
Event Calendars and Date Pickers are often required to enable visitors to understand what events are on where and when, get further information, plan their schedules, or book facilities or shows.
Chat Boxes enable visitors to your site to chat between themselves, something that may make your site more attractive to users. You could, for example, implement a chat box for your website “members” if you are an Association or similar, allowing for meetings to effectively take place on line.
The ability to provide your users with Secure Login facilities is key to building a strong, robust user base. This would be advantageous for providing more secure information or details to group/site members about pricing, or property if you are an Immobilier for instance.
There is some very insecure functionality offered in the market so it is important to make sure that your level of security matches the information you hold or wish to disseminate.
Allied with secure login facilities are Membership Systems - these can be as simple or as complex as you like, but invariably they include some elements of a Forum (something I avoid generally), but if you really want one; who am I to complain?
If you have a large, content rich website, it may be worth considering implementing a search engine on your own site that specifically searches your site for information rather than the entire web. Generally I would use Google for this, but there are other options.
If you are attempting to sell your products or services to the French marketplace, rather than just targetting the English residents, then it makes sense to implement your site in French (or potentially other languages).
My French is not particularly great, however, I know several people who can translate English to French extremely accurately - including my daughter. So no need to rely on automated translation facilities such as Babel Fish.
There are also simple services such as Google Translate.
RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a standardised format for delivering and receiving news type information.
If you wish your site to be really informative on a particular issue or subject, without having to produce all the content yourself, it might be worth considering implementing an RSS feed from elsewhere, which could deliver regular updated news and information.
Alternatively, you may decide that want to broadcast new and updated information regularly yourself. In which case you might want to invite visitors to subscribe to your own RSS feed.
Podcasts are essentially similar to RSS Feeds, but take the form of syndicated audio or video information. These too can be included on your site.
Flash is a multi-media quasi industry standard for delivering animation, video and effects to websites. In fact many websites are built entirely in Flash. I am not a great fan of this technology. Whilst it can look great, it can take an enormous amount of time to load for a visitor and there is a temptation to “over do” it. Equally Flash (and the Microsoft equivalent Silverlight) can be hugely complex and time consuming from a development perspective. Having said that, it is quite often useful to use in building more dynamic elements for the website, such as animated banners and such. Again, I can deliver Flash (but not Silverlight), but we would need to discuss the scale of usage before I could confidently quote prices.
Typically a single Flash advert type banner will cost €75 or 3 (Leaderboard, Skyscraper, MPU) will cost €175.
SpyderWeb-Works specialises in the design, development & deployment of elegant, efficient and standards compliant websites.