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Frequently Asked Questions

Listed below are some of the most commonly asked questions our customers ask.

Question :  I am an Internet novice. Would I be able to run and maintain a website ?

If you choose a database driven website then maintaining it is as easy as filling in a form. You do not have to know anything about coding, programming or any else technical. We also provide full training with any websites that are developed by us and a manual. We are also happy to provide support for your website.

Question : I already have a website but get very little response/sales/enquiries from it, why ?

This is one of our most asked questions. It is difficult to give an answer to this problem as there are numerous causes for it. The most common reasons are highlighted below :-

  1. Promotion - developing a website, placing it on the Internet and not promoting it is similar to opening a shop in the middle of nowhere and not telling anyone where it is, no-one will visit it ! Sounds simple but its incredible how many people forget about promoting their site and then are disappointed when it gets very little response. SEO is a complex topic but basically involves onsite and off site optimisation.

    Many promotion services claim to get your site listed in the top ten search results of search engines for a one off payment. BEWARE of these ! They have no control over which results are returned first, this is controlled by the search engines themselves

  2. Incorrect coding - Having incorrectly written webpages will prevent them being indexed and hence being included in the search engine's database.
  3. Poor Quality - Many websites look at best amateurish and at worse dreadful. They have garish colours (green writing on a red background is a favourite), broken links, slow loading images, incomplete information, poor navigation, irritating tunes playing in the background, public domain clipart........get the picture ? If a website looks professional, web users trust it.

Question : What types of websites are there ?

Basically we can identify three types of website

1. Static site manually updated - these are generally written using HTML. Such sites are modified by editing the HTML code of the actual page.

Advantages

  • Simple
  • Quick to develop
  • Can be hosted on 'free' ISP's (Internet Service Providers)
  • Inexpensive

Disadvantages

  • Inflexible
  • Pages have to be manually updated and uploaded to the ISP
  • Requires a degree of HTML knowledge
  • Are difficult to maintain once the site becomes larger than 10 pages.

2. Dynamic Database Driven Site - Are written using some scriptiing language such as PHP, ASP (Active Server Pages) or Coldfusion in conjuction with a database. The website consists of a series of 'templates'. Whenever a users requests a page of the website, the relevant template executed and displays the required data from the database.

Advantages

  • Large websites can be maintained very easily. For example if you require a webiste to sell products the code required to 'run' the website will be hardly any different if you sell 100 products or 1 million.
  • No HTML knowledge required
  • Large complex websites can be maintained by users with very little computer experience. If you can fill a form in you can run the website !
  • Interactive facilities can be added very easily. For example you can allow your users to enter their own information (eg links, articles etc) into the database. This information can be reviewed by the webmaster before being displayed.
  • As pages are created and displayed 'on the fly', the website will always be upto date.

Disadvantages

  • Require specialist ISP's which run the required server software.
  • Longer development time.
  • More costly to develop as an administration system must be contructed to maintain the website.

3. Blogs - For many applications use of a blogging tool such as Wordpress is ideal. Wordpress applications are becoming ever more sophisticated enabling complex, full updatable search engine friendly websites to to created very quickly.

Question : Is the web a good place to sell my products/services ?

A definate yes ! The Internet attracts thousands of new users (customers) every week and is growing rapidly. What other medium allows 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year worldwide advertising ? Providing e-commerce is handled correctly, the Internet is a superb marketing tool especially if your products/services are aimed at a specialist market.

Question : I am too busy to maintain a website

A correctly written database driven website can actually save you time. Not only can the information in the database be used to drive the website but can also be used for stock control purposes, printing catalogues, holding information on your products simplifying customer enquiries etc. You can even generate a CD-ROM based catalogue from your product database.

If you are too busy then we can run the website for you, updating content, handling emails etc.