website design faq's

There are many things that enter into the cost of affordable web and graphic design. How many pages do you need?  How many photos do your web pages need?  Do you want an online form for visitors to submit information to you? In addition to the items mentioned, there are many other items that can enhance your website that you may need or want that can affect the final cost of your custom website.

We suggest that you take advantage of our Consultation, during which our consultant and you can determine exactly what website features you need and want included on your business web pages.  We then can give you a free estimate of the costs that will be involved.

Up-dates and revisions to web pages designed by Tom Rumish are free for 60 days after the website is finished. (Most website designers only allow 30 days of free up-dating service).  After the initial 60 free revision period revisions and updates to your website are charged for at our then current hourly rate.

Yes, you can up-date your own business website.  However, most people find that it is less expensive to have us do the revisions due to the cost of the software that you will need to purchase in order to update and revise your custom designed website.  In addition, you will of course have to learn how to properly use the required software.

Most websites do not require or need enough up-dating to justify the cost of buying software, learning to use the programs and taking the time involved to do your own updates.  In almost every case it is much more cost effective to have a professional website designer make the changes to your custom designed website.

Tom Rumish Website Development does provide tutoring, at our normal hourly rate, on how to use appropriate software for web page revisions.

No, we do not write or provide the actual text for your website and web pages. A website designer cannot possible know all that you know about your own company.  As a result you or one of your employees are required to write the textural content for the web pages that are in your website.. 

After you have the textural content for your web pages written we will instruct you and make suggestions on how to properly re-write and edit your text content for maximum Search Engine inclusion and placement.

We can usually provide "stock" photos relating to your general business or industry free of charge. However, the majority of photos on a business website are of that individual business and are not "stock" photos.

If you are located within 30 miles of our office we will come to your location and shoot high resolution digital photos for your website at no additional charge.  If you are more than 30 miles from our office you can either send us your digital photos as email attachments or mail hard copy printed photos to us.  If you mail us hard copy printed photos we will scan them and return the printed photos to you.

We also can create custom logos, photo slideshows, animated banners, animated graphics and custom page Flash headers for your custom website.

A small business web site Domain Name is a unique tag that identifies you to other computers connected to the Internet. Every domain name represents a set of numbers called an IP address. For example, (217.190.232.1). So, you could type that number into your web browser’s address bar, or simply type ‘yourdomainname.com’. Either entry will take you to our website.

Your domain name acts as your calling card on the web, since you can choose a name that represents your business, your family name, or anything else that can be remembered easily and associated with you.

A domain name can have up to 59 characters. Domain names can only use letters, numbers, and hyphens ("-"). Spaces, punctuation marks, and other symbols are not allowed. A domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen. IDN (International Domain Names) for .com, .info, .net, .org, .biz, .cc, .tv and .ws can contain ä, ö and ü symbols.

Once a domain name has been successfully registered on your behalf, you will be the owner of the domain for the duration of the registration period. You will also be allowed to extend your ownership by renewing your registration.

In most (but not all) cases website hosting accounts include a Domain Name for your new small business web site design at no extra charge.  However, this is not always the case.  It depends upon which company that you have host your website.  In the past you almost always had to apply for your Domain Name separately, through a domain name Registrar at a cost upwards of $65 per year.

However in today's environment, due to the fact that website hosting companies are scrambling to get your business a large number of hosting companies included a free domain name in their hosting packages at no extra charge as an incentive to get your hosting business.  We can recommend several hosting companies to you that include a free domain name in their hosting packages for as long as you host with them.

In order for your website on to be viewed by people on the World Wide Web (www) it must be on a Website Server that is connected to the Internet 24/7 with high speed connections. Companies that have website servers are know as Website Hosting Services.

A website is comprised of a multitude of different files.  For a fee, which is usually monthly, Hosting Companies allow you to place the files that make up your website on their hosting servers. Once the files for your website are placed on the web server, your  website can be viewed on the Internet.

No, website hosting fees are not included in the website design fees charged for the creation of your custom business website. Tom Rumish Website Development does not do any website hosting, however we can recommend a number of reliable and inexpensive Website Hosting companies that we and many of your clients use.

You may run across some website designers that will offer to host your website for you FOR AN EXTRA MONTHLY FEE which is charged in addition to the fees that they charge to design your website.  But, in almost all cases they are just acting as a "middleman" for an actual hosting company and do not actually do the hosting themselves. They generally get a monthly referral fee back from the actual hosting company and are just squeezing a few extra dollars out of you each month for doing nothing other than being a middle man. 

You work hard for your money.  Why give a "middleman" money each month for doing nothing. We normally suggest getting your own hosting account with a large, reliable nationwide hosting company that has 24/7 tech support, daily back-ups, etc.  We can steer you towards good reliable hosting companies and will do so for no charge.

SEO entails techniques that enable your site to appear higher in a list of search engine results.  A form of online marketing, search engine optimization (or search engine marketing) is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Successful search engine optimization helps a site gain higher positioning for relevant words and phrases used by people in their search engine query.  SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site.

Website designer Tom Rumish includes BASIC Search Engine Optimization free of charge to clients for whom he designs or re-designs websites.  Most website designers either don't do BASIC SEO or if they do, they will usually charge an extra fee for BASIC SEO.

SEO is very complex.  Because there are so many facets and ways to optimize a website there are actually "specialists" who do nothing except SEO.  SEO can take weeks of work on just one website to fully optimize a website.  Because SEO is so complex and time consuming only BASIC SEO is included free of charge by business website designer Tom Rumish.

In Depth SEO is available for your small business web site at additional cost.  Contact Tom Rumish Website Development for more information about the In Depth SEO process and associated costs.

Search engine submission is the process of informing a search engine or index of the existence of your website. It is the process of suggesting to a search engine or index that a website be included in that search engine or directory, so that it may be evaluated and included in the search results of that particular search engine.

Unlike most website designing companies, Tom Rumish does not charge for submitting your custom designed website to search engines.  Search engine submission is done by Tom Rumish Website Development at no extra cost to you.

Your website will be submitted to major search engines and directories worldwide.  The exact search engines that your website is submitted to varies slightly day to day due to the fact that the search engines in the online database they we for submissions changes day to day.  You can however be assured that your site will be submitted to major search engines such as Google and Open Directory Project (DMOZ).

Though the exact names of the search engines that we will submit your website to varies, we can assure you that we will submit your website to a minimum of 50 search engines. 

Because many search engines get their actual content from Google, the number of search engines that your website will be included in is much greater than the 50+ search engines that we will actually submit your website to. (Google provides primary search results to AOL Search, iWon Search, and Go.com. The engine also provides paid search results to AOL Search, Teoma, Netscape, iWon Search, Ask Jeeves, and Go.com.)

No, we cannot guarantee that your website will be on the first page of Google or Yahoo if someone searches by using a broad search term. However, if the search query is made for a very specific term, such as your business name, then you should be on the first page of search results in major search engines.

I would suggest that you be extremely cautious in dealing with anyone that's says they can insure first page placement in Google or other major search engines when someone uses a general and commonly used term for their search query.

A lot of what page of Google (or any other search engine) your website shows up on depends on how competitive your Keywords are.  As an example, if you have a business that sells model airplanes. There are more than 25,900 Web sites in existence that have been optimized for the keyphrase "model airplanes".  So, unless IN DEPTH SEO is used to optimize your website for the keyphrase "model airplanes" is is pretty unlikely that you would end up on the first page of Google when someone searches for that general term "model airplanes".

Let's face it, everyone wants to be on the first page of search engine results.  But, the fact of the matter is that the first page usually contains only 10 to 15 websites. The likelihood of your website being on the first page of search results is slim unless IN DEPTH SEO is performed on your website.  Even then first page results cannot be guaranteed.

"Tom was very patient with all of my questions and lack of knowledge but desire to learn. The entire process was a great pleasure and much less stressful then I had anticipated." - Tom Eckhardt, TEI Group, Inc.  read more testimonials