"How It All Pulls Together"

e approach design from a partnering perspective. You will be assigned a primary designer, who will work directly with you to develop an attractive Web site that meets the needs of your business. When developing the site, we will offer a preview of the Web site so that you may view the creative process step-by-step from beginning to end. This way, you can make suggestions, additions and corrections as work happens.

We approach design with many factors in mind: File size (files that are too large will adversely affect download times), cross-platform color compliance (things simply look different on a Mac than they do on a Windows machine). To ensure that your Web site will look attractive to everyone who visits it, we test our graphics on a variety of systems before declaring them "Web-ready."

Question: How long will it take to develop my Web page?
There of course can be no definite answer to this question. When we give you an estimate of how long it will take to build the Web page, please realize that this is after a final design has been approved. There are several steps to reaching the final design stage.

Step One-- The Consultation
The first step is consulting with you either in person or by phone to develop a game plan for your site. We will discuss content, how the content will be organized, general page layout, colors, logo placement. Please remember that if you wish to add content or goodies to your site beyond what you purchased in your contract, it may result in extra charges.

Step Two-- The Initial Design
After consultation, your Web designer will build a sample "screen shot" of a look and feel based on the consultation. You will get two screen shots: One for the front page and one for the interior pages. These designs will be uploaded to a draft site for you to view. Please be aware that this will not be an active, working Web page, it will simply be a graphical representation of what your Web site may look like. In some cases you may get several different "looks" to choose from. At this point, you should be gathering and writing all the content for the Web site. You cannot leave it up to the designer to do any content development for the site, this must be provided by you.

When submitting art and/or text to be included in your Web site the following formats should be kept in mind:
Art: We prefer to recieve the files in either EPS, TIFF or BMP format. If you need to save them as jpeg or gif, save them on the highest possible quality settings.
Text: QuarkXpress, PageMaker, Microsoft Word, BBEdit, Acrobat PDF, simple text files, ascii files or in the body of an e mail message.

Step Three-- Design Adjustments
After you view the screen shots, you should contact the designer with any adjustments, changes or concerns you have. Or you can just approve the design. The designer will then make the appropriate changes and upload the updated look. Or, if the changes are minimal, she or he may just go on and start building the actual site. There may be several adjustments needed to get the site just right. At this point, the designer can give you a more accurate idea of how long it will take to actually build out the Web site.

Step Four-- Building The Site
There are many factors that go into the building of a Web site. If you have a lot of multimedia development, engineering or high-end scripting, this will be more time-consuming than a basic site. If there is a lot of customized engineering needed for your site, it will take even longer.

Step Five-- Final Proofing
Once construction of the Web site has begun, you will be able to view progress on the draft site. We will do our best to be accurate, but please check the site carefully for any errors. At this point, you will be notified of any updates. When the site is completed, at your approval we will upload to the actual domain and register it with six search engines. (Please see note on search engines.)
At this point your Web site will be considered done, and you may make any final minor changes. From this point on, you can make updates in accordance with your contract. Please remember: we are eager to make this experience as smooth and pleasant as possible. Always feel free to contact your Web designer directly with comments, concerns and ideas for your Web page.

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