Every now and then you get the have your cake and eat it too. Websites are one of those yummy circumstances. Simply put, good web design drives up traffic, extends the range of visitors you can reach, makes sure they get the right impression, and all this while saving you money.

Small Biz Home Bases

First Impressions and Usability - The actual design of a website can have a profound effect upon the viewers' perception of your quality of service/product. Not only does good design help people navigate through your site, but it actually shapes their impression of your business. A picture really does say a thousand words.

Economy - A web page is the cheapest way to reach potential clients. You can reach a global market from your website and host it for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day. You can also make your marketing materials available in the form of PDF files for download therefore saving printing costs.

Increase sales and connect with new customers - When a customer is interested in your product/service they can immediately get all the information they want from your website - 24/7. Then when they're ready to buy they can conveniently buy online or call the 1-800 number listed on your website. With search engines ready to find your website, you have changed your market reach from down the street to around the world without the cost of advertising.

Flexibility - Unlike other mediums, a website allows you to change information quickly without the need to reprint. A well planed out, strategic website is easier to maintain and to incorporate changes in the future.

1.    Defining Your Needs - To gain insight into your company and its' internet marketing needs, I offer a free initial consultation. This can be done via email, telephone or in person if you are in the Ottawa Carleton area. This will give me a general idea of the number of pages and technical utilities your website will need.

2.    Proposal - I will then send you a Web Site Development Proposal, which outlines the contents to be developed, the graphic and technical requirements, proposed timeline, and the total cost to produce your website.

3.    Project Initiation - Upon your approval of the proposal I require a 30% deposit. Along with this invoice, I will send you a contract. The contract will state the project amount, terms and agreement, and other miscellaneous items. Upon receipt of your deposit and signed contract, I will schedule your website design.

4.    Domain Name Registration - If you have chosen a domain to register for your website, we will register it now to save your chosen name.

5.    Defining the Sites Goals - We start the process by having you fill out a Website Design Brief Questionnaire. This gathers information about your company, services, clients, local and national competition, target market, industry, audience, purpose, site goals and more. This planner will also give both of us a full scope of how you see your future website, and allows me to learn your objectives and goals for this project.

6.    Collecting Materials - This is the time to start collecting materials for your website. This includes anything that you can provide me with to help design your website; current marketing materials, logo files, text, business cards, photos of your employees or place of business, catalogs, etc. If you are selling products, I will need product photos and specifications. You can email, mail, or drop off any content that you have at any time.

7.    Site Framework and Graphics - It is then time to sketch an outline detailing the site architecture. Once we know what your site needs to do, it's time to start planning out the sites structure. The goal here is to let people browse your web site easily, and intuitively. After the structure in mapped out, we can then add personality to the site in the form of color palettes, fonts, custom graphic images/buttons/headlines, photos and illustrations, etc. I will provide you with three different concepts for the home page and 1 or 2 other pages. I send proofs of those pages as a JPG image file "snapshot" of what the completed site will look like.

8.    Narrowing down our focus - You will be asked choose one concept and to critique and discuss the mock up architecture and layout. We'll go back and forth with drafts, narrowing down the look and feel of the site until a design is established to be used overall for the website.

9.    Search Engine Optimization - Now is the best time to start optimizing your site. It starts by strategically naming the files within your website: page titles (contact_creative_eq.html, rather than contact.php), image names (contact_creative_eq.jpg), alt tags (text appears when the cursor hovers over an image), and more. All of these little touches add up to make a big difference in your placement with the search engines and spiders.

I also add Meta tags to every page of a your site. Meta tags are invisible notes to search engines that help them place your site by keywords, description, subject and more. I even place a message to the spiders to come back and re-index the site often.

10.  Content - Now is the time to "pull it all together". Combining the graphic style created in the concepts with the text and data for your site to populate the all the pages in the sitemap.

11.  Special Functionality - If you require any special scripting (contact forms, feedback forms, database tables and programming etc.) we will integrate the scripting into your website at this point.

12.  Testing and Debugging - While your site is being developed, I will host it within my client site for your online review. After you have reviewed the website, and everything is in correct order, I will thoroughly test the site myself. I will check website load time, browser testing, resolution testing and the overall performance of your site.

13.  Launching the Site - When everything looks great, you'll sign off on the project and pay any balance on the account, and we'll transfer the site to your www server location and your site is published for the world to see! I will watch the site for the next 10 days or so in case there are any problems, and if necessary fix things.

14.  Search Engine Submission - After your site is live I will submit your website to dozens of search engines.

15.  Ongoing Needs - Once your site is up and running, Creative Equilibrium can meet your site maintenance needs. I'll keep the site up to date with changing information, dates, new products, and current programs. I offer a monthly maintenance package ($100/month) to keep your site in tiptop shape. This includes resubmitting your site to search engines, checking and updating links and making all the little changes you need (up to 4 hrs. per month). Major changes can be done on an as-needed hourly basis ($40/hr).

16.  Customer satisfaction survey - I value your feedback and input on how I did, and how the end product is working for you.