Website Design Service
Contents
Design Philosophy
Website Features
Input Data Formats
Design Process
Fees
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This section describes the Aardstorm website design service, including a range of standard features that can be included in your new site, details of the information we will need from you to complete your design, a description of how we will produce your site, and how much we will charge you.
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Design Philosophy
Here at Aardstorm, we believe in keeping things simple. We therefore produce websites that are themselves clean, simple, and easy to use, yet still get their message across effectively. This simplicity also maximises the compatibility of our sites with a wide range of web browsers, and makes them easy for the search engines to read. If you commission us to produce your new website, we will therefore endeavour to produce a site that gets your message across to your customers, clients or other users in a simple yet effective way, within a site that is easy to use, and widely compatible with the common web browsers and search engines. Your site will allow your users to get to the information they need with just a few mouse clicks, and a minimum of typing (ideally no typing at all).
Our standard approach of adapting a standard design to your requirements, rather than starting each site design from scratch, minimises the work we need to do to produce your site, and therefore keeps our fees (and your costs) down. To further reduce your costs, our standard fees also assume that you will provide most of the text, pictures, and graphics to be used on your site; we then convert them as necessary to a form suitable for the web, and arrange them on the individual pages of your site. You can, however, also commission us to produce some (or all) of this content for your site through our authoring and picture services.
Website Features
The following sections briefly describe the individual features that can be included in the design of your new website. These are our standard offerings, with standard fees summarised below; if you require something different, the please enquire for a detailed quotation.
Page Header
This appears across the top of each page of your site, and identifies both the site itself, and your organisation. Unless you specify otherwise, this will be designed to match your company letterhead or logo design.
Site Navigation
Depending on the number of pages in your new website, and the complexity of any section structure used to organise them, this will typically consist of horizontal and / or vertical row(s) of buttons or tabs that users of your website can use to move between individual pages. You can select from a range of button and tab designs, and can specify the colour scheme to be used. If the complexity of your site justifies it, we will also include a 'breadcrumb trail' of context-sensitive links that allow users to easily keep track of where they are in the page hierarchy, and return to higher levels.
Page Footer
This appears across the bottom of each page of your site, will typically include a row of simple links to key pages in your site, together with a copyright statement and 'top of page' link.
Custom Page
Each page in your site will typically contain a custom arrangement of text, pictures, or other graphics, together with the standard site header, navigation facilities, and footer described above. Our standard design fees below assume that you supply all of such text, pictures, and graphics to be included in each page; we will convert the information you supply into appropriate web formats, and arrange them on each page. You can specify what appears on each page, or you can leave the division of your data into individual pages to us. If you want us to generate some or all of the detailed text for your site from general information that you supply, then you can commission us to do so using our authoring service. We can also similarly locate or create suitable pictures or graphics for your site through our picture services.
Standard Page
We also offer a number of standard pages that can be included in your new site. The design and/or content of these pages change little between different sites, and are therefore offered at a lower price than our normal custom pages. The standard pages that we offer at present are:
Contact Us Page
This page contains your basic contact information, such as contact names, postal address and telephone and/or fax numbers. It also contains a set of text input boxes and a submit button to allow users of your site to contact you by e-mail. A control allows users to select from a limited number of destinations for their message. When the submit button is clicked, the message text and contact details they have entered is compiled into an e-mail that is sent to the selected destination. This form-based contact technique is used to hide your actual contact e-mail address from the automated e-mail address gathering programs commonly used by spammers. We will automatically add our own 'webmaster' contact destination to this page, so that we can handle queries about your site as part of our standard management service. See the 'Contact Us' page in the forms section of this site for an example of the content of this page.
Link to Us Page
You may wish to encourage other websites to link to yours (for example to help improve your search engine ranking). To help with this, we can provide a simple 'link to us' page that gives others permission to link to your site (possibly with certain conditions), together with example code for them to use in constructing that link. See the 'Link To Us' page in the forms section of this site for an example of the content of this page.
Terms and Conditions Page
We can provide a simple terms and conditions page to cover use of your site, and the material contained within it. See the 'Use of this Site' page in the terms and conditions section of this site for an example of the content of this page. Note that these terms and conditions will not cover the purchase of goods or services through your site; you will need to supply the text for these as a normal custom page.
Template Page
Some pages of your new site may share a common page layout of text sections and picture locations, differing only in the actual text and pictures included on each page. Examples of such pages are a catalogue of item descriptions, or a gallery of pictures with captions. These pages are most efficiently handled by separating the page design from its content into a template page and content database. The individual pages are then automatically generated by running a suitable script program. Further pages can subsequently be easily added by adding the relevant content to the database and running the script again. Note that we retain control of the template, database, and page generation script ,and will add, update, or remove pages as part of our management service.
Index Page
A group of template pages, as described above, will typically be linked by one or more index pages containing descriptive links to the template pages arranged in some logical order. These allow users to easily find the page of interest by simply clicking a few links. There may also be several sets of index pages for a single set of template pages, to allow the links to be sorted according to different criteria.
Search Facility
We can also supply a site search facility for your new website, to allow users of your site to search it for pages containing key words of their choice.
Interactive Forms
These are used to gather information from users of your website, for example to contact you (or us, as your webmasters) with questions, request a quotation for your services, or place an order. We expect you to specify what information you want to gather for each form. We will then create an appropriate set of input controls, such as a text entry boxes, drop-down lists, radio buttons, etc., to request each piece of information from your user.
The information gathered by each form on your website will be automatically formatted into an e-mail that will be sent to an address of your choice. You can use a separate address for each form, or several forms can share a single address: the choice is yours.
e-Mail Facilities
As part of your new website, we can also provide a set of mailboxes to allow you to receive e-mail through your site. These will share the same basic domain name as your site, with individual box names that you specify. For example, if the domain name of your new site is www.your-company.com, then the mailboxes will have addresses of the form box-name@your-company.com. We will provide the necessary information to allow you to set up your e-mail client program (such as Microsoft Outlook, etc.) to receive the e-mail from these boxes, or we can set them to automatically forward all e-mail to another address (or addresses) of your choice. Once your site is up and running, it will be up to you to regularly check your mailboxes for received mail. You will also be able to request changes to the way your mailboxes are set up through our site management services.
e-Commerce Facilities
At present, the only e-commerce facilities we can supply for your site are simple PayPal 'pay now' buttons. You will therefore have to have a PayPal account to be able to use these features, although your customers will be able use a wide range of credit or debit cards, and will not need a PayPal account themselves. We are working on providing a simple shopping cart facility, and also alternative payment services.
Input Data Formats
We can accept the text, pictures, and graphics for your site in a wide variety of electronic file formats. These basically include those fomats readable by the Microsoft Office (2003 or earlier) program suite, and by the Adobe Creative Suite (CS2 or earlier) programs. If the amount of data you are to supply is relatively small, then these files can be supplied as e-mail attachments. Otherwise you can supply them to us on data CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. The text you supply will be placed into the relevant pages of your new site, and your pictures or graphics will be converted as necessary to an appropriate web format, and reduced in resolution to reduce download times for users of your site while retaining adequate quality.
We can also accept your text and/or pictures on paper or film (35mm negatives or transparencies only). However, supply your data to us in this way will incur additional transcription or scanning charges, see below for details.
Design Process
The design process used by Aardstorm to produce a website designed to your requiremets will normally consist of the following steps:
1. Request Quotation
You request us to supply a quotation for the design of your website. At this point you need to supply us with sufficient information about your requirements for us to accurately estimate the work involved in producing your site. This will include such information as:
- The number and type of pages required
- The type of navigation facilities required
- The number of pictures or other graphics required, and an indication of how these will be supplied
- The amount of text required, together with an indication of how this will be supplied
2. Supply Quotation
On receipt of your request, we will use the information you supply about your requirements to estimate the amount of work involved for us to produce your site. If anything about your requirements is unclear, we will request clarification from you. We will then produce a firm quotation and send it to you. This will include a firm price and schedule for the work to be done (subject to no significant changes to your requirements), together with a summary of your requirements so that you can check that we have understood your request.
3. Place Order
If you accept our quotation, and decide to commission us to produce your new website, you then place a firm order, and pay a deposit of 50% of the total design fees, plus 100% of any domain name rental fees (see our hosting service for details). At this point you need to also supply us with the full text, pictures, and other graphics to be included in your site.
4. Produce Website
Once we have received all necessary information from you, we will implement your new website, and place it in a temporary location on our servers. We will test your site against a range of web browsers, and will exercise all input controls on any interactive forms to ensure that they work correctly. We will then notify you of the completion of your design, together with instructions for how you can view it in its temporary location. We will also at this point send you our invoice for the remainder of the fees due.
5. Approval
You should then carefully check the website we have produced to ensure that it contains no errors, and meets your requirements. We will correct any errors against your original requirements free of charge. However, if you now require something different, we will be happy to accommodate your changes, but will charge you extra for the additional work involved - we will provide you with a quotation, and will only proceed with your changes once you have accepted the revised fees. Once you are satisfied with our work, you then pay the remainder of our design fees (and initial hosting and management fees).
6. Website Goes Fully Live
Once we have received your payment, your new website will be moved to its final location on our servers. A link to your site will also be placed in the 'examples' section of this site, so that the search engines can find your new site. If you have also commissioned us to do more extensive search engine notification, this is when we will do it.
Communication
Throughout the design process, communication between us will normally be via e-mail; you will therefore need to supply us with a valid e-mail address that we can use to contact you. You will also need internet access for web browsing, in order to be able to view and approve new website design. If you require a face-to-face meeting, we are willing to visit you, but will charge extra for the travelling and subsistence costs incurred.
Fees
The standard fees for our website design service are as follows:
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Design Feature / Service
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Fee
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First page (includes header / footer design)
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£150
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Subsequent pages (includes navigation design)
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£75 / page
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Standard pages
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£25 / page
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Template pages
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£150 / section
+ £10 / page
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Index pages
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£150 / index order
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Search facility
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£150
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Interactive forms
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£75 / form
+ £5 / input control
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e-Mail facilities
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£5 / mailbox
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e-Commerce facilities
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£50 / pay button
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Meeting Travelling Fee
(hourly rate applies to total return travelling time, as estimated by public route planning websites)
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£25 / hour
+ £75 if one-way travelling time exceeds 3 hours
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Where you supply the text, pictures, or graphics to us on paper or film, the following additional scanning and transcription charges will apply:
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Input Format
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Fee
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Text on paper (typed)
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£20 / page (up to A4)
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Picture on paper
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£10 / picture
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Picture on film (35mm negative or transparency)
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£10 / picture
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Once we have provided you with a quotation for our work, the quoted fee will be firm and fixed; if we take more or less time than expected to produce your website, the price you pay will not change, unless you change your requirements.
Aardstorm is not currently registered for VAT, and therefore cannot charge VAT. Once we are registered, the fees above will be the VAT exclusive rates.
