web design
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, fewer than one in seven Americans were online in 1995.... Today, Pew says, two out of every three Americans spend time online. —CNN.com, The Internet Transforms Modern Life
This is the major reason every business should have at least a "Business Card" Website, a simple site that gets their information out where people can find it.
Isn't Web Design Expensive?
Professional web site design doesn't have to cost a huge amount of money, but it is no longer cheap due to changes in search engines requring the website be designed for desktops, laptops and now be mobile device-friendly. This has increased cost substantially because of the additional expertise, design and testing required to produce such a site. Since each site is individual, cost must be estimated based on the design and what the site owner wants.
Please note that you do NOT have to host with us in order to have us do your website design, but we can provide this service for you if you need it. We are pleased to work with the hosting service you already use, as long as they provide the services one should reasonably expect of a web hosting company. We will advise you if your current host is not the best choice for your business, and tell you why.
What about E-Commerce?
Larger sites like e-commerce sites cost more money because they require a great deal more labor and knowledge, but they do not have to cost thousands of dollars for a small store. We will estimate the cost of your website for you so you know what it will cost.
And if you find a professional web designer who can do it for less, we will make every attempt to meet their price.
I'm a start-up and I'm on a tight budget. How can I keep my cost down?
The better prepared you are before we meet with you, the more you will be able to keep your costs down. Please call for our current hourly rate, but keep in mind that an hourly rate is not a true indication of cost. The speed at which a designer completes work is very important. Years of experience means that we can complete a lot of tasks faster than someone with far less experience, or someone who is reliant on software and does not know how to hand code a site. We might take only a few minutes for a task that others often take much longer to complete elsewhere.
We do offer discounts to non-profits and first-time customers if you request it. We also offer specials from time to time.
I don't know much about the Web and creating a website. Can you help?
We are here to help you in any way we can. It is an important part of our process that our customers become comfortable dealing with the Internet and learn how to cope well with it.
Designing your company's website should be an exciting and positive experience. And it should do more than just look good. It should enhance your business, reflect your company's mission and goals, and provide you and your customers with a user-friendly method of contact and sales.
Professional business web site design can accomplish these goals. Good planning is an essential part of the design process. Remember that a website is available to your customers 24 hours, 7 days a week—it's working for you even when your brick-and-mortar business is closed.
Each project we handle is carefully planned to offer not only visual appeal, but also good "information architecture" that makes it easy to use and navigate AND will work well with the search engines. It should load fast, even at 28.8 connection speeds, so that your customers are not spending a lot of time waiting. If new visitors have to wait more than a few seconds for your website to load, you're going to lose them...and they won't be back.
I hear a lot about Content Management Systems. Will it work for me?
A Content Management System, usually known as a "CMS", is used with almost all sites we have created over the pas few years. These CMS's make it easy for the site owner to change content and images on their website. If you can use a word processing program somewhat successfully, you can usually manage a CMS.
The main difficulty for most users with maintaining their own sites lies in resizing photos for the web. The photo you get fresh out of your digital camera is way too large for use on the web. Not only will a photo of this size make your pages load very, very slowly, but it will overwhelm the page with its size. It's important to learn how to resize a photo, not just change the space it occupies on the page with the handles one can see for making the dimensions smaller, but literally making the file size (as well as the dimensions) much smaller. Most digital cameras come with software for doing this. If you need help learning how, we can help you with
software training.
What about search engines?
Once your site has been created, we help you optimize your home page for the search engines, and make sure the rest of your pages are technically sound so they will appeal to search engines. It is preferable to optimize all the pages in a site for best results, but as part of any web design package we do optimize the home page. We also offer additional search engine services to help your site do better in search engine searches.
It is essential that you be involved in the process of search engine optimization--no one knows your business better than you. If your time is too short we can handle this alone, but it's always better when the client is involved in this process.
Toner Design offers you the following website services:
- Website Design or Redesign
- Website Hosting
- Domain Registration
- Custom Graphics to enhance your site, as required
- Flash Animations
- Streaming Video or Audio on your site, converted into a Flash movie for greater compatibility with most browsers (video must be provided in digital format).
- Scanning and optimization (for the Web) of your images.
- Custom Writing/Editing of web page content from materials you supply, if you don't have time for this task.
- Search Engine Optimization (seo web design, included with website design or redesign).
- Free Search Engine Registration with the major search engines upon completion of site.
- Training to manage and maintain your site, if you prefer to do your own maintenance.
- Website maintenance for those who prefer we handle changes and updates.
- ...and more! Call and ask for the specific services you require.