Web Design > FAQs

If you don’t ask, you’ll never know ...

And if you can’t find the answer to you question here please contact us and we will be more than happy to help.

How much will my website cost?

That’s an easy one - we don’t know! Only after we’ve discussed the website concepts thoroughly with you can we give you a quote, but we have given you some ball park website prices to give you an idea. Don’t forget to check out some of the additional costs of a website other than just the initial design and build.

What do you need from me?

During our initial meeting we'll discuss some design concepts and the needs of your business. After that we'll need you to supply all text and images. If you're not much of a wordsmith or don't have any suitable images we also offer copywriting and photography services or source stock images for you.

What's involved in making a website - do you just draw it up and stick it on the web?

Many first-time website owners don’t realise what actually goes into making a website operational. A website that looks simple on the screen often requires a great deal of work to make it look so. Sometimes the simpler a website looks the more effort has gone into building it since websites should always be relatively easy to navigate and use.
Some of the most important considerations when building a website are:

  • Standards compliant code - It’s important that the code used to build your website today will still be applicable in years to come. By using XHMTL, CSS and conforming to W3C standards we ensure all our websites will survive the test of time.
  • Cross-browser Compatibility - There are a wide range of browsers in the marketplace (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc) and they don’t all conform to the same standards, especially older versions such as Internet Explorer 6. Your website has to look the same no matter what browser it is being viewed in.
  • File Size - Speed is imperative. If your page takes longer than a few seconds to load, many visitors will simply click away from your site. It’s important images are optimised and any extra content such as flash banners and slideshows are created with file size in mind.
  • Optimisation - Increasingly more important as the web becomes ever more popular, a website must be built in a way that allows “spiders” from search engines such as Google to come along and index your content. Your pages must be accessible and searchable, and the right information and keywords need to be placed in the appropriate places so the spiders know which is the most important content on the site.
  • Statistics - Once your website is live you only realise it’s true potential if you monitor the statistics regarding visitor traffic. How do visitors find your site? What keywords are they typing in to find you? How long do they spend on each page? By utilising these statistics can you maximise the benefit of having a website.

There’s also a great online article called Websites Made Easy that explains how websites work.

What is web hosting?

For a website to be visible on the internet it has to be hosted on a server. In the same way you may rent a business premise, you need to purchase space on a server for your website files. This is usually a monthly or annual fee. Check out our hosting prices for current rates. If you want to understand it in a bit more detail try this article called Web Hosting Explained.

What is a domain name?

This is the address of your business on the internet. Just as you have a physical address for people to find you, your website has an address on the web. This is what appears in the top of the browser in the address bar. For example ours is "www.highleycreative.co.nz". You will need to pay a yearly fee for exclusive use of a domain name. Generally you will want a suffix relating to the country you are in such as ".co.nz" or ".com.au". Check out our domain name prices for our current rates.

What is optimisation?

Many businesses know they need an optimised website, but aren't sure what that means. Optimisation effectively covers anything that drives more business through your website. We find it easiest to explain optimisation in two parts:

  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) includes making sure your website is seen favourably by the search engines and contains the right information to rank highly in search results.
  • User Optimisation involves making your website user-friendly so visitors can easily find what they need. Key factors include intuitive navigation, quality content and quick loading.

You can read more about search engine optimisation and user optimisation on our optimisation pages.

What is a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system allows you to update the text and images of your site yourself rather than getting us to do it for you. You will be provided with a web address such as www.mywebsite.com/manager where you can log in to the back-end of the website. Here you will find an interface that allows you to open up each of the pages and edit the content, similar to how you would with Microsoft Word or Open Office.

This obviously has many benefits, although it does cost extra so you need to think (realistically) about how often you will be updating your site. Despite being relatively simple to use, it's not as simple as Word (although I think even that is confusing at times!) and if you are not technically-minded or not updating regularly it can be difficult to become accustomed to what is essentially new software. The time spent trying to remember how to do things might be better spent simply letting us do it for you. We'll be more than happy to chat about what works best for you.