FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Yes and no.

There's lots of technical detail and it can be very complicated. However, that's our problem, not yours. At Creative-i-Design, we handle the technology and leave you to get on with your work.

When we get started we'll sit down with you and map out what we need from you (usually text, images and logos) so you're absolutely clear what you need to provide, when and how long the project will take to complete.

And you'll get regular updates throughout the project so you know exactly where you are at all times.

Buying a domain name is one of the cheapest elements of getting your website established. The costs aren't high (around £25 for a .com and £8 for a .co.uk) so if you can afford it, we usually suggest you get both. If you do, they can both point to the same website.

There are domains for individual countries (.co.uk for the UK, .eu for Europe, .fr for France, .it for Italy, etc) and domains that are international (.com for companies, .gov for government, .org for non-profit organisations, etc). There are hundreds of different domains, most of them country-specific.

Pretty much every country has one and some (such as .tv for Tuvalu) are sold for particular business sectors.

This can be a problem: you risk paying over the odds to get "your" domain name back. Some companies buy up lots of domains in the hope of forcing companies to reclaim their brand identity, and sometimes real companies with similar names get there first. If you're a limited company and the domain name is the same as your company name, you've got a reasonable chance of being able to get your hands on the domain.

Sometimes you might have to go to law and the courts will usually find against the domain squatter, but it can be a long and expensive process.

If you find yourself in this situation, give Creative-i-Design a call and we'll talk through your options.

Yes, it's very easy.

You typically buy a domain for a couple of years, so you have to renew your registration every so often. Creative-i-Design registers domains for many of our customers and we hold them in our client account, so we keep tabs on when the renewals are due and manage the whole process for you (there are a few scams out there, so it's worth being careful).

Creative-i-Design doesn't charge extra for this service - we just pass on the registration costs.

Getting your website online doesn't have to take forever, but it's one of those "How long is a piece of string?" questions. If you have a clear idea of what you want on your site, then we can give you a fairly good idea of timescales.

Be careful if a designer tells you they can get you online in a matter of hours or days - they're either very, very idle (in which case, ask yourself why) or they're using a bog-standard template, which means that your site will look like everyone else's.

Creative-i-Design builds sites from scratch, so your design will be unique to you. That might mean we take a few days longer, but it's worth it in the end.

There are a couple of elements that you should be aware of when you set out to get your organisation online for the first time:

• Your domain name (such as www.yourname.com) needs to be registered with a domain hosting company.
• The website files need to be located with a web hosting company. How much you'll pay depends on the size of the site and the amount of traffic it'll generate (the number of visitors).
• Your email (me@yourname.com) needs to be organised so that you can send and receive your mail on your own machine in a format that you're used to.

Creative-i-Design will advise you on all these elements and we can manage the whole process to make everything as simple as possible.

No.

We use the best service at the time to get the best deal for you. We tend to stick with the larger hosting organisations, as they can provide the price, fast access, high availability and resilience that a smaller hosting company couldn't possibly compete with.

We'll manage the process for you, so you don't need to.

When we give you a proposal, we'll tell you exactly what the likely hosting charges will be.

Yes!

Smaller organisations can have a set of unique email addresses which they can pick up from different computers, while larger organisations might use an Exchange Server to manage their business-wide email systems.

Creative-i-Design will handle this as part of the project. If you already have a list of the email addresses you want, let us know and we'll make sure it's dealt with as part of the project.

If you've already invested in design and branding, we'll use that identity online as well. Creative-i-Design can work with your design company to get it just right, or if you have the files yourself, we can use those.

Your brand identity is vitally important. Creative-i-Design often works alongside marketing teams and branding specialists to create a logo, layout and identity which best reflects you and your organisation. We also have professional, in-house graphic design expertise to give you a seamless, integrated service.

Yes!

Creative-i-Design can retain the elements you like and bring a site's design up to date, add to it, re-edit the content and bring in new imagery. The extent of the re-design is entirely up to you - we can make subtle changes to bring in new elements, or completely revamp the whole design.

Creative-i-Design already looks after a number of corporate clients on an ongoing basis, adding updates, news stories and product changes when required. If you'd like to make use of this service, let us know and we'll make sure to include it in the design proposal,

Of course.

Once the site is completed, we'll give you a CD of the complete site - all the files and all the working documents. If you want to do any additional work yourself, everything you'll need is on that CD.

We also provide Content Management Systems that allow you to make the changes yourself, and they're geared to the non-technical user. Creative-i-Design can arrange to install them, configure them and train your team.

It's something of a challenge, as search engines like Google don't publish the criteria they use for ranking a website. However, there several strategies which Creative-i-Design can advise you on, including Search Engine Optimisation, key words and site submissions.

Absolutely.

You should consider your website to be one element of your online marketing: social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and similar will update much more regularly, and they will each feed visitors to your site and to you.

We'll give you a run-down of your integration options and you can decide how much (or how little) you want to do.