Holly Knott - Website Design services: frequently asked questions

Some Frequently Asked Questions, compiled to help you understand my process.

What is the process?
How long will it take?
Do you host the site?
Do you use Flash or other animations?
E-commerce
Can I update my own site?
What size are the sites designed for?
What format should my images and files be in?
How do we protect my images against copyright violations?
How does my site get seen by search engines?
Do you redesign existing sites?

What process is involved to create a website?

1. Information/requirements gathering
Our first step is for you to complete the Website Design Questionnaire so that I can get a good feel for the type of site you're after. After that, I'll either contact you with additional questions or provide you with answers to yours. I will then send you a cost estimate that contains a projected schedule that works well for both my timeframe and yours. This cost estimate is just that – an estimate. If the scope of the project changes as we progress, I will alert you to the fact that additional charges may be incurred.

2. Contract and scheduling
If you approve the cost estimate, I'll snail mail you my contract. I require a 50% non-refundable deposit, and you'll send me all of the necessary files with the deposit (text and images), which I'll need in order to schedule and begin work on your site. Once I receive these items, I can schedule your site over a 4-6 week period that works for both your and my schedules. While I can estimate a start date prior to this, I can't give an accurate date until everything is in place. It has been my experience that customers think they'll be ready on a certain date and then many are not, so I can't hold a place on the calendar until all of the pieces are in place. If you are unable to work with me on a steady basis during that time period, my scheduling becomes difficult to manage because I need to begin other jobs during delays. Beginning other site designs during delays, only to have the previous customer come back after an extended absence, means I am suddenly swamped with more work than is manageable at a time.

As the customer, you’ll need to be available during our scheduled time period, which we’ll agree on at the beginning of this process. This way you’ll have your completed site in less than 2 months! If you’re unable to be available during this timeframe, I will have to move the completion of your site to the end of my schedule. Being available just means that you’ll be able to review potential designs and answer questions I may have as we progress during that scheduled period. It's a very interactive process and I involve you in every step of the way so that you're not surprised with anything at the end. If you’re going to be away or very busy, then we should probably schedule your site design for a more convenient time.

3. Design process – Homepage design
Based on your requests and the information you provided me about your site requirements, I'll design the homepage first, as the look and feel of that will be reflected in all other secondary pages. This design will be a non-functioning .jpg (just a picture) created in Photoshop. The links won't work until we finalize the design. During the design process, you'll be able to view the site "live" on my server, not visible to the public, so that as programming begins, the links will begin to work. That way you won't be receiving countless email from me with attachments to keep track of. Everything will open in your browser the same way the public will eventually see it.

I'll present you with one design taking into consideration your requests and specifications. Look it over carefully and let me know what you like and dislike about it.

You will be allowed 10 rounds of revisions within the first 14 days after I present you with the homepage design. You can request font changes, color changes, layout changes, etc., or an entirely new design (up to 2 unique designs will be offered total). After 10 revision requests, additional charges will incur. By day 14 we need to move on to the next step in order to stay on schedule.

The reasoning behind this is based on years of experience. This tweaking process can go on indefinitely, and in order to complete your site within our agreed-upon schedule, eventually decisions have to be made. More than 10 versions becomes utterly confusing for both of us, and I have had experience with customers requesting over 30 versions. This is called "Scope Creep" in the corporate world. Sometimes you don't know what you want until you see what you don't want, and that's okay! But the process has to have a defined start and end point or it could go on forever. I want your site to match your needs and I want you to be entirely satisfied with it, just as I need to be able to finalize the design and move on to other crucial steps in the design process in order to complete it within the 4-6 week period. This is why your being available to review steps in the process during our agreed-upon timeframe is critical.

Sign-offs
After you decide on a homepage design, because that page is graphics-intensive and has to be "sliced" into several individual smaller graphics with programming code attached to each piece in the navigation bar that is repeated on all or most secondary pages, any changes that you request to the homepage or navigation after sign-off will incur additional hourly charges.

4. Design Process - Secondary pages
After sign-off on the homepage, I will present you with the design of the "shell," or template, for all or most secondary pages. In most cases, pages such as your "About" page, "Links" page, "Contact info" page, etc., have the same structure. If you are an artist, your gallery pages will have a unique layout that will differ from other secondary pages, and I'll work closely with you on the design of those, too, and the approval/sign-off process will follow this format as well. Typically the navigation bar on the homepage remains the same on all secondary pages (including gallery pages) and I'll design how the text, any headers, and layout will appear. I'll present this design to you for your approval. You will be allowed 3 rounds of revisions within the first 7 days after I present you with the design of the secondary pages. You can request font changes, color changes, layout changes, etc. After 3 revision requests, additional charges will incur.

Sign-offs
After you decide on a secondary page design, any changes that you request to the design/layout of those secondary pages after sign-off will incur additional hourly charges.

5. Development and Testing
After your sign-off on the secondary page template, I will then build all secondary pages, and check the site in multiple browsers including the most recent versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. I do not test on a Macintosh or in AOL's browser.

6. Your Quality Control (QC) Check and Revisions
After I complete the site, before I upload it to your live server, you will have time to review it and you may request 2 rounds of minor revisions such as text edits*. As stated above under Design Process - Homepage Design and Design Process - Secondary pages, changes to the homepage, navigation, secondary page design layout, addition of forgotten images, etc. will incur additional charges.

*Minor text edits are defined as correcting typos, replacing a word or sentence here and there, adjusting alignment, etc. Replacing entire paragraphs or pages such as an entire resume, or adding additional images not previously given to me, may incur additional charges. Please write and edit your text prior to sending to me to avoid major edits at this stage.

Sign-offs
After you sign-off on the entire website, any changes that you request at this point will incur additional hourly charges.

7. Going Live!
After you sign-off on the entire website, I'll upload your files to your server and test the site again in multiple commonly-used browsers including the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Final payment is due at this time. I will send you an invoice.

How long will it take?
Typically my websites take 4-8 weeks to complete. The variables are whether the customer is able to supply me with all or most of the files upfront, the customer’s schedule and availability to answer questions and review initial designs (this can take some back-and-forth over the course of a few weeks), and the amount of revisions requested at each stage.

Do you host the site?
I don’t offer website hosting services, but can definitely help the customer choose a host and help them with the domain name registration process if they’d like. I use LunarPages for my own site and have referred them to many customers. Their customer service is excellent as well as their rates. If a customer chooses to sign up with them, and of course there is no pressure to do so, I will credit them one free hour of my time.

Do you use Flash and/or other animations?
While Flash does have its benefits and can certainly make a website look wonderful, I’ve chosen not to include it in any of the sites I design. Primarily because the incorporation of Flash on a site means your viewer will have to always have the most recent Flash plug-in in order to be able to view it properly, and you don’t want to lose viewers because they can’t even get past the homepage. A customer once pointed me to 3 websites he really admired so that I could see what type of look he wanted his own site to have. I try to keep all of the current and various plug-ins, yet I couldn’t open any of those sites without first upgrading each one. Needless to say, your casual viewer won’t bother and you’ll lose them right off the bat. And if they’re on a slow connection, the page might be painfully slow for them to view.

E-commerce
I can easily add PayPal to your website, but for various reasons have chosen not to work with any other types of e-commerce and other shopping carts. I also prefer working with small e-commerce sites that don’t require very frequent updates (i.e., quarterly updates are great; weekly is not something I want to handle).

However, my sites are structured in such a simple way using tables and CSS that a customer could take my site design to someone else and have him or her add their preferred shopping cart with no problems.

Can I update my own site?
I write my code using very basic and simple HTML in table format, using some CSS (cascading stylesheets). No javascript or fancy Flash animations. If a customer is somewhat computer savvy, they could do their own updates either using software of their choice like Dreamweaver, or by scratch in a text editor. Most of my customers have been people who don’t want to go anywhere near attempting that sort of thing, though! However, I do caution people that if they choose to do their own updates, I may not be able to easily troubleshoot any problems from afar, short of restoring the site to its previous version if things get messed up.

There are products available called "content management systems" that some web designers offer that allow people to easily update their own sites. I currently do not offer full support for these (it helps me keeps my rates lower), but there is one by Macromedia called "Contribute" that might be an option for those who really want to do their own updates.

What determines the overall size of the "page" on the screen?
I design for 1024x768 but create the homepage to fit within an 800x600 resolution for a couple of reasons. There are still some people running in 800x600. Last I checked online, one site said that 17% of the people in their survey are still in 800x600, with no one at 640x480 (thank goodness!), 58% at 1024x768 and only 19% at a higher resolution.

Sticking to 800x600 also hopefully helps fit at least the homepage on the screen without scrolling, even when a user is running 1024x768, because depending on their browser, and the number of menubars and toolbars they have open in the browser, the actual screen real estate might even be less than 600 pixels high. But of course, if your pages require a height higher than 600 pixels, by all means they will scroll vertically. I just don’t setup anything wider than 800 pixels, and try to keep the homepage shorter than 600 in height. 800x600 also will avoid any nasty horizontal scrolling that is a usability nightmare.

You can set up a website to adjust to the viewer’s resolution. That is, rather than specifying size in fixed pixel dimensions, you can use percentages, but then you can never, ever guarantee that what your viewer is seeing is what you’d like them to see, layout size. Things wrap differently as they view it at different resolutions that way, so I liked using fixed dimensions.

What format should my images and files be in?
I can work from any type of digital images. Most likely you will have .tiff or .jpg files. There’s an additional fee to scan 35mm prints or hardcopy. I am not equipped to scan slides.

Your digital images should be as large as possible. I will crop them (if required), as well as resize and sharpen them to create the thumbnail and large versions. You can always reduce in size but enlarging isn’t desirable, so send me your largest and best images. I can also retouch images including removing backgrounds, lightening them, etc., but extensive retouching will incur an additional charge.

It’s much easier for me to work from existing electronic text files as well, than to retype from hardcopy. Text can be sent to me via email or on your CD, in many formats including Microsoft Word, text, .rtf, etc., or just pasted into the body of an email message.

How do we protect against copyright violations of my images (other than by warnings)?
That’s a good question, and one that comes up often for artists in all mediums. Overall, there isn't much you can do to prevent someone from right-clicking on the graphic and doing a "save as" and saving the image to their hard drive. There is code I can insert with each image to prevent that, but an easy way around it for a savvy viewer is to just hit the Print-Screen key and the entire page is now in the clipboard for them to "steal." So I no longer include that code.

If you’re a quilt pattern designer, for example, even a small image, once seen online, could be redrawn (not even necessarily traced). In other words, by displaying your artwork online (or even in a printed brochure), it’s out there for the world to see. There are a few small things we can do, though.

I do include copyright warnings on the homepage, and if you’d like, on all other pages.

I also resize and compress all jpgs so that the highest resolution image is *not* on the server. That is, you may have a thumbnail page, in which those images are about 200 pixels at the widest or tallest, and if someone printed them on a 300dpi printer, they’d be less than an inch big. If those thumbnails are clickable and open to larger images, we can keep those sizes on the small side as well – nothing wider or taller than 600 pixels, for example. You may occasionally see websites with very, very slow-loading graphics. If you happen to right-click on them and save them to your hard drive, you might see that the HTML code is telling them to display at a size like 600 x 400, the real image on the server is the massive, high-quality original, at 2048 x 1536 or even larger. We will not do that! Not only for speed reasons, but so that the best resolution that exists for good printouts is not out there for people to snag. That’s about the best one can do.

You could also watermark each image, but that can be distracting and annoying to viewers. I don’t know of many people who like this or actually incorporate it in their sites.

How does my site get "seen" by search engines?
I provide several services for this. I still include meta tags (keywords and description) in the code of every page for those search engines who still use them. I also encourage my customers, when they are writing the body copy for each page, that they include relevant content for the search engines who can "read live text." A page consisting entirely of graphics or a Flash animation can’t be read, for example, so I make sure to include a blurb of live text on the homepage (which is typically graphics-intensive) that describes your site. I will also submit your site to a few of the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN when done.

I have a site that I’m not really happy with. Can you work with those files and redesign it?
Yes! I may not be able to use the existing code because I prefer to setup the files using my own formats to make future updates easier, but depending on your situation and current site, I may be able to redesign it for a slightly lower cost than if I were to create a site for you from scratch.