Your website is a reflection of your brand and your business. Like your business card, a website is usually the first impression a potential customer will have of your business.
If your website looks cheap or unprofessional, what impression does that give your potential customer? Would you use your services based on your website?
It is also important to update your website periodically. The information should always be up to date, and it should be used as a sales tool, not just a place to find a phone number.
This is a common question. But there is no easy answer. The cost for a website will depend on the requirements and scope of your web development project. Variations on the number of pages, amount of custom images, photography, text, special features, e-commerce capabilities etc.
After reviewing and discussing the requirements and the goals you have set for your website’s success – we will then be able to provide a detailed quote for your website.
There are a few red flags that should be raised when reviewing SEO or web design agencies when they make false statements, or offer un-ethical practices:
- NO ONE can Guarantee top ranking. SEO firms generally can’t provide guarantees due to the constantly changing nature of the industry. But they can predict a high ranking when ethical SEO practices are provided.
- Instant results. True, some SEO tactics can get “instant results” by gaming the system. Be warned that these can hurt you in the long run. Instant results often involve SEO practices that are against webmaster guidelines put out by search engines. Invariably, Google seeks out these techniques and penalizes them, resulting in lost rankings that can take months to recover.
- #1 spot on Google. If an agency promises you the number one spot on Google, it sounds great. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get it. However, it’s not something that a firm can promise to hand over to you.
- Low cost SEO. When it comes to SEO, you aren’t shopping for the lowest price; you’re seeking the best level of service. Be wary of rock bottom prices or “unbelievable deals.”
- Shady link building services. Link building is a crucial part of SEO. You can’t have a highly-ranked site without inbound links. But there’s a dark side of link building. Link trust is gaining importance to appear high in the rankings. Link brokers cannot give you any good links. All their links are already devalued by Google – because it is against Google’s webmaster guidelines to use their practices.
More information can be found on our SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) page.
It takes time for the results of SEO
SEO is a process. It takes time for the results of SEO to be fully reflected in search engine results.
Your website has been optimized with better SEO content, links, page titles, and meta descriptions — then a new site map created — then submitted to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Now what?
After the site-map submission, search engines will index your website. The indexing of your site is now in the hands of the search engines. It may take a few days for a few or just one of your web pages to be crawled and indexed. It may take a few weeks for your entire site and all of its content to be crawled and indexed. Only after that will you see accurate results, which can be seen through tools like Google Web Tools or Google Analytics.
You should then see your key words or search words ranking improve week over week. In most cases, there should be some tweaking made to your sites content. This will then be reflected only after the search engines have crawled your website.
So to answer the question, you may notice a slight improvement in search results within days, but in most cases, it will take a few weeks to truly see any results.
More information can be found on our SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) page.
There are various factors that affect the amount we charge for our SEO services. The main factors are the size of your website, and the dedication and resources you want to put into the on-line marketing of your business.
Monthly Retainer
For best and ongoing results, we recommend a Monthly Retainer
- On the low end, this would be $300 a month ($75 a week average). This will provide a limited range of key SEO services. Ideal for small businesses, and smaller websites.
- On the high end, $5,000 a month. This is for full-service SEO. This will entail an average of about 15 hours a week that will be spent on keeping your website ranking at the top of search engines.
Contract – Fixed Price
This would be for the initial SEO services that every website should have. Website SEO audit, SEO copywriting, page titles, meta descriptions, site map building and submissions.
Some other SEO services that can be added are: social media set-up (Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook etc.), basic link building, and analytics set-up.
The range in costs for this will start at $400, and on the high end would be $5,000. This will depend on the size of your site and what services we provide.
After a follow-up (after 3 months) SEO audit of your website. We can discuss further if you would like us to provide further SEO services.
Hourly SEO Consultant
On an hourly basis, we charge our clients $100/hr for SEO services, but you can save money if you have us on a retainer basis.
More information can be found on our SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) page.
With just a little knowledge, you will be able to make changes to your website.
After your website is designed, you can do whatever you want with it. We make it possible so that you will be able to make basic text changes and maybe add a photo or two. But we recommend that only trained or experienced individuals make major revisions or additions to your site.
For site revisions, we charge in 15 minute intervals, and then invoice at the end of the month.
It’s nice to have a new sleek website. But if search engines can not find it, you will miss the full potential of having a website.
Wikipedia defines “SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION” or SEO as: The process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results – often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.
There are a number of factors that enable your site to be ranked high in searches through Google, Bing, Yahoo and others.
Google constantly changes their algorithms for website rankings. But one of the keys has always been the content of your website, its relevance, and where it is placed. No one can honestly guarantee you the top listing in Google. But we will guide you in getting your website moved towards the top of search engine rankings – hopefully the top.
More information can be found on our SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) page.
We have years of experience managing print projects.
Sourcing print estimates and creating a specification for the print enquiry can be time consuming and prone to error. You may be asked questions you don’t understand or be engaging with a supplier not familiar with this type of work. Print is not simply ink on paper, there are an array of processes that make up a final job such as paper type, press settings and finishing requirements.
We work with a selection of excellent printing companies that we know are capable of delivering an excellent end product.
This is very rare. More often than not, after the initial discussions with our clients, we immediately provide them with design concepts they are very happy with. Sometimes we have to just tweak things a little, and sometimes we go right back to the drawing board. Ultimately we always ensure our clients walk away satisfied that we have put out a job to our highest standards within the confines of the timescale, brief and budget provided.
We can, and we do work with companies that are located outside of the Calgary area. With today’s technology it is not necessary to see each other face to face on a regular basis. We have provided our services to both Canadian and U.S. based corporations.
We like to present our clients three design concepts to choose from before we go into production.
Yes. We have an experienced photographer that can deliver for all of your commercial photography needs. Portraits, Products, Landscapes, Models etc.
We use the latest industry standard software applications. This includes the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Premiere etc.), MS PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, WordPress.
Yes. We will provide you with a web address for you to check on the progress of the web development. We will ask you to review the website for your feedback at key moments before we complete the project.
In most cases we will provide a PDF proof for your project. Although sometimes it will be beneficial for us to create printed mock-ups for you to review.
Also, the printing companies used will provide a proof to you once the files have been sent to them. After you have signed off on them, they will go ahead and print your project and deliver the final product to you.
We no longer provide web hosting. We will recommend a web hosting provider to you that we believe will be of good value for your website.
We do not provide printing services, however we prefer that we manage the printing of most projects.
We work with a selection of excellent printing companies that we know are capable of delivering an excellent end product.
If an unforeseen circumstance requires you to cancel a design project that has already commenced, you will be charged for all work completed to date, at our hourly studio rate.
We like to provide two or three unique design options. If too many options are provided, it just gets confusing for everyone. After a design is chosen, it can be refined until you are happy with the end product.
For new clients, or for larger projects with existing clients, we usually ask for a 30% downpayment at project commencement. The balance will be due at the end of the project.
We ask that all invoices be paid within 30 days. We accept cheques, electronic money transfer, or credit cards through Paypal.
There is no simple answer to this because most projects are unique.
For new clients, we will create a quote for you based on a project’s specifications. Nobody wants a surprise when we issue our final invoice.
We will provide you with Vector and Raster that can be used for print or online purposes. This file types include .eps, .ai, .png, .jpg.
Yes, once we have completed the design process, and you have paid in full for your final logo design, the copyrights of that final individual logo belong to you.
We back-up all of our files. They are kept in case you wish to have updates made to past projects, or just incase you lose a file or it is damaged.
You can email us your copy in MS Word. We also will accept all Adobe product files. We DO NOT accept MS Publisher files. If your text is sent as an image or a fax, you will be charged at an hourly rate for us to transpose your document.
Most logo designs will cost $500 – $1,500 for a new company. This depends on how much time we collectively decide to spend on your logo project. The more time we spend, the better chance you will have in getting an identity that you will be proud of. We will try to work within any budget.
We first learn about your company as well as your competition. We will then brainstorm several ideas for your logo > refine a couple of the strong ideas > present you with these concepts > refine (fonts, colors etc.) a final logo that you have chosen > present you with your final logo.
Many people use the two terms “web design” and “web development” interchangeably, but they really do have two different meanings.
Web Design (Front End Design)
Web design deals with the look, feel, and how a customer interacts on a website. Good web designers know how to put together the principles of design to create a site that looks great. They also understand about usability and how to create a site that customers want to navigate around in because it’s so easy to do.
Web Development (Back End Design)
Web development is the back-end of the website, the programming and interactions on the pages. A web developer focuses on how a site works and how the customers get things done on it. Good web developers know how to program CGI and scripts like PHP. They understand how to keep a site running effectively.
Graphic Structure retains our source files unless stated differently by contract. If hired to design a brochure, we deliver the brochure…It’s just that straight forward. When dining at a restaurant, it isn’t assumed you will be given the recipe and extra ingredients after paying for your meal. We keep our clients happy and pride ourselves on being easy and pleasant to work with. You can always request the files or work out a fee for them.
Logo Design – You will receive digital formats of the logo that can be used across multiple platforms (print or web).
No one likes surprises, at least not when invoices are involved.
With all of our projects, we like to be up front about all costs. We prefer to have a quote that everyone agrees on prior to a project commencing.
Unless they are specified in our quote, some of the items that will be considered extra are listed below:
– custom photography
– stock photography
– illustration
– web domain registration
– web hosting
– printing
– copy writing