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| | Q. Why do we need a website? A. The main reasons people use the Internet is because:
* Convenient
* Easy to use
* Provides valuable information
Regardless of what country you or your client's are in, the Net is always available. Your customers can access your products, services and promotional material when it suits them, not just when you are open. |
| | Q. How much? A. How much are you willing to invest? How important is a website to your business and what do you wish to achieve by creating a website? Strobe Net can provide you with a free consultation and an obligation free quote. We often set up development plans with our clients and create the website in stages so that the initial investment is limited. We often have specials running from time to time that might assist if your budget is tight. |
| | Q. What ongoing costs are there once my site is published? A. This is quite important and you should find this out before making a final decision on a designer. Sometime they might create the initial website at a very reasonable price but try to recoup the costs through other services.
The ongoing costs could include:
Hosting
Maintenance / updates
Email
Marketing
Credit card facilities (if you are in an e-commerce situation)
Strobe Net offers both a monthly or annual (a 5% discount for prepayment applies) hosting option. You decide which best suits you. In regards to maintenance and updates we provide 15 minutes free of charge per month but the rest is charged at our standard rate of $110 + GST per hour or part of.
Usually if we know that there will be a lot of regular maintenance and updates we will come to an agreement with the client at a special rate under a maintenance plan. If there is a definite plan in place for further development then we’ll arrange a plan with a budget per month as required.
In regards to marketing online we continuously look for new opportunities to get your name out there. We’ll often resubmit your site to the search engines to improve your ranking. Anything beyond this such as banner advertising is a new service. Please ask us if you are interested.
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| | Q. Can I have more than one domain name? A. Certainly and we can direct them all to the one website unless of course you desire to have more than one site. Sometimes it’s a good idea to have a New Zealand domain name as well as an American based name and visa versa. |
| | Q. Should I have a .com or a .co.nz domain name? A. It really depends on who your target market is and if those names are available to you or not. If you are a hotel or in the adventure tourism market then a .com may provide the image that you are international and as such provide you with more credibility with the international market. The same applies to a business which exports products internationally. If your market is primarily Kiwi then a .co.nz will be expected and if they’re trying to find you on the web they may type in your domain name with .co.nz first. As per point two above you can have both.
There are now more options than just a .com for international businesses. Recently new domain name extensions such as .info and .biz were released on the market and are available for purchase.
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| | Q. If I register my domain name with Strobe Net am I obligated to design with you? A. Not at all. We provide a whole range of services of which design is only one. It is best that you work with the company that best meets your needs and that you are confident of having a strong working relationship with. In saying that though there are advantages to getting all your needs meet by the one company as this reduces administration and confusion over who’s responsible for what component. |
| | Q. Can I have email using my domain name without having a website? A. Yes you can. Creating email addresses using your domain name such as Amanda@MyCompany.co.nz creates a more professional image, reinforces your company / domain name and is a great way of marketing your website when you take that next step. Email addresses such as this are also easier for your customers to remember. |
| | Q. How do I know how many people are visiting my website? A. If you host your site with Strobe Net we provide a secure statistics section off your website which you can visit when ever you wish and check out how your site is doing. These statistics summarise the months but also allows you to go in and look at the whole month. It provides information about the number of visits per month, per day, the most popular time of the day, the most popular day and even which country the person is visiting from. All of this is included in the cost of hosting with us. If you choose to host with another company then ask them if they can provide a similar facility or perhaps a monthly report.
You may of seen sites which have a ‘number of visitors’ counter on their sites. Most professional designers will not encourage this as in their opinion it looks highly unprofessional and if by chance you aren’t getting many hits then the viewing public will know you aren’t.
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| | Q. Can I host my website on my own server in house? A. The simple answer is yes if you have the following as a minimum….
Continuous, high speed, stable link to the Internet
A firewall (software that protects and limits access to the other information on your server)
One of the reasons Strobe Net hosts our sites in America is simply because the firm we partner with only does hosting and is dedicated to hosting. Through them we can guarantee our clients
24 hour / 7 day data and physical access security
Onsite monitoring of the equipment
Spare parts and servers in case of a failure (redundancy plans)
Qualified technicians onsite
Multiple, high speed dedicated links to and from the Internet
Fire prevention practises
Specialised servers in a controlled environment
Daily backups
If you host on your own server can you guarantee the equipment will not fail on you and in the case that it does how will you deal with it? Have you the equipment to take a backup of your site so that you can restore it if you need to?
As you can tell there are risks involved in hosting your own site. This is why it is often more economical and practical, i.e. less stressful, to host with a professional firm.
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| | Q. Why don’t you recommend your client’s to use a free hosting service? A. Our client’s can choose to host where they wish but from our point of view it is easier for us and more economical for our clients to host on a server which we control especially if the site needs regular maintenance and updates.
Free hosting services are fine for private / personal websites. The reason why they are free is because the company will use your site to advertise on – this is how they afford to give it to you free. You will have no say or limited say on who can advertise on your site. For example if you have a site based on environmentally / animal friendly products then you would not want a company who uses animals for testing to advertise on your site. You loose the control you would otherwise have.
Another downside is that often you won’t need your own domain name and you’ll use one they provide for you. Often this will be long and difficult to remember as well as appearing unprofessional.
If you pay for hosting then you have total control. You can still sell advertising space on your site if you want but then you’ll receive the income from the advertising and you’ll have final say as to who and what advertises on your site.
In summary, you get what you pay for.
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| | Q. What’s the difference between hosting in New Zealand and hosting in America? A. Experience, infrastructure and availability of services. From a ‘surfers’ point of view they may see little or no difference between the two in fact they probably won’t notice. The differentiating factor is the service you receive as the client. New Zealand has some great ISP’s who provide secure and stable hosting but sometimes do not have a person with the right knowledge answering the phone. Once again Strobe Net chooses to host with a company who provides dedicated hosting and doesn’t do anything else. They specialise with specialist knowledge. |
| | Q. How do I transfer my hosting business to Strobe Net? A. If you decide that you would like to transfer hosts to join the ranks of our happy customers then please contact us. Usually it’s as easy as collecting some core information from you and then we’ll deal directly with your current host company to facilitate the change over. If you have email then this will need to moved as well but this usually does not cause any disruption to service. |
| | Q. How long does it take to design a website? A. This often depends on the size and complexity of the website. Usually when Strobe Net starts a site, we’ll usually work on it towards certain deadlines which are set before we begin. One large factor that often affects the length of time taken to complete a site is collecting/compiling the content and any photographs / images that are required. It’s very important to understand that as a rule the content of your site is your responsibility. We can always offer advice and guidelines but you know your business and customers better than we do. Compiling the content can be time consuming and does require a bit of dedication. If all of this is prepared before hand and you have a clear idea of want you want then the design aspect can be achieved in a week or two. |
| | Q. I want to link my website with others – what should I do? A. Usually most other website owners will encourage this as it’s a great method to encourage extra traffic to both websites and the more links you have the greater your response in the search engines listings.
However, it is always best to ask the owners of the website if they’d mind you linking to them and if they agree ask if they can link back to you. It never hurts to ask.
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| | Q. Can I design my website by myself? A. You certainly can and there are a lot of software packages out there that will assist you. But here’s a warning for you….... a poorly designed site that is not easy to use can cause more harm than not having a website at all.
Retailers spend a lot of time (and money) making their shop windows look inviting and interesting. The first impression counts and can draw the shopper into the store. The same goes for the website. If it's badly designed, unattractive and looks home made then your image of professionalism is damaged. Even if you have great content, products or information your credibility may be damaged.
If you are serious either get a professional to design your site or learn how to do it right your self. Most designers are happy to work towards a fixed budget but you may have to make some compromises depending on the available funding. If you are determined to do it yourself learn how to do it right. Enrol in a night course, play around with it, ask for advice and look at sites you do like to get some ideas. High quality but highly compressed graphics are important to portray professionalism so perhaps it would be worth while paying a graphic designer to turn your logo into something web worthy.
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| | Q. What software do you use? A. Primarily we use the following software to create our websites:
HTML
Dreamweaver
Fireworks
Photoshop
Flash
PHP
MySQL
Javascript
Often we’ll hard code parts of the site as we find this gives us a lot more control than using a package such as Dreamweaver.
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| | Q. I’m unhappy with my site, can Strobe Net fix it for me? A. Sure. One service we provide is called ‘Strobe Repair’. We’ll look at your existing site, examine what your requirements are and in what way you feel that the site is letting your business down and then provide an obligation free proposal on what positive action can be taken. Sometimes the repair may simply be an exercise of making the site easier to navigate and use other times it could require a total revamp especially if the business has recently re-branded or changed it’s focus. |
| | Q. How can I market my website by myself? A. There are lots of ways you can do this yourself. The most important piece of advice is to get your URL (website address) out there. Place it on your business cards, letter head and any other offline promotional material. Perhaps performing a mail out to existing clients and prospects that your website is out there. Encourage them to visit and feed back to you. Other ways are to ask business’s that provide complimentary services to link to your site then we can link your site back to them. For example a real estate company might link with a mortgage broker or a financial advisor and visa versa. |
