FAQs

That's a good question. There's a whole lot of reasons why having your own business website makes good sense.

First, people today are researching what they want to buy and where to get it before they spend their money. And, they want that information quickly. So, they use an Internet search engine like Google or Bing. The only way you can be in this game is with a website. No website, fewer inquiries from potential customers. Fewer inquiries means less sales and lower profits.

Then, there's your Brand and how that can influence people to do business with you rather than someone else. Your "brand" is much more than just a logo and what you're offering. It's what you are, how you want to be perceived in the market, and why people should deal with you. The best way to pull all of this together, and present it to your potential customers, is through your website. It's not only the best way to market your business, it's also the most cost effective.

Finally, you need to be there when someone is ready to buy what you're offering. And not just between 9 to 5. You need to be there 24/7/365. A well designed and search optimised website will handle that for you better than any other solution.

One more thing - you can bet your competitors are already online. If not already, they soon will be. Without a web presence, you can be certain you'll be losing business to them. Getting your business online at least puts you on an equal footing with your competitors. A well designed website can give you the edge!

Most businesses have an annual budget for advertising and promotion.

Traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV, even mail outs and catalogues - all have their place in advertising. So yes, where appropriate, you should certainly consider using them.

The problem with those advertising channels, is that their rates are based on circulation or frequency. The larger their audience, and the more often you advertise with them, the more you'll have to pay. Your website solves that problem. For a one-off fee for design and development, and a small ongoing monthly maintenance cost , your website is essentially "forever". And, it's free for you to expand and update its content whenever you want, as often as you need to.

Here's what we recommend to all our clients. Keep your annual advertising budget the same. But in the first year, use your advertising budget to pay for your website. Once your site is online, if you have advertising budget left, use it in traditional media to promote your website and drive people to it.

Once they arrive on your site, you have the opportunity to turn them into customers. You can also encourage them to join your mailing list. From then on, you can easily market directly to them, any time you like, at no cost to you. As your mailing list grows, your marketing and sales efforts should build your bottom line.

If you take this approach, the savings you make on traditional media advertising will recoup the cost of your website. And those savings will continue year-on-year for the life of your website..

The cost of designing and building a new website varies considerably. There’s no single answer to this question.

A website design is based on the needs of each individual project. Each project is unique, with different components, depending on the purpose of the site.

We design and develop custom websites from the ground up. Each site is specific to the business it represents. Once we understand what you want from your website, we'll assess the design and development requirements, and give you a quote based on that assessment.

Most of our sites fit into the $3,000 - $5,000 range, but can be more or less depending the scale of the project.

To get an exact cost for your new website, just fill out our Contact Form, and we'll get back to you to discuss your requirements.

No. If you want to, you will be able to update information on your website at any time.

We design and build websites on the WordPress platform. WordPress allows us to include an industry leading "drag and drop" page editor into the design of every website. This feature makes it quick and easy to add new content, change existing content and delete anything that's no longer relevant.

Training on how to edit your website is generally included in our project proposals.

However, we have some clients who prefer to spend their time running their business. In those cases, they simply send the details of the update required, and we look after it for them. We charge an hourly rate to do this work - but the good news is that we are happy to heavily discount the rate for clients who have signed up with us for a website maintenance service.

Yes, in some cases.

Plugins:

Plugins add functionality to a website. For example, most sites use a plugin for a contact form people can use to send you a message directly from your website. Many plugins are provided free but with feature limitations. Most of the plugins we use and recommend are free. To get full featured functionality, it's usually necessary to pay an annual license fee. Fees can run anywhere from a few dollars a year, into the to hundreds, depending on the complexity of the plugin and the features it offers.

Domain Name:

Every website is required to have a domain name. This is the "address" assigned to the site, so that it can be located on the Internet. A typical domain name in Australia would end with the ".com.au" classification. This indicates that is a site representing an Australian business or organisation. So, your domain name would look something like "yourbusinessname.com.au", where "yourbusinessname" is the name of your business. As long as no-one else has registered it, you can use pretty much whatever wording that you like. It costs around $44 every two years to keep an AU domain name registered.

Logos:

If you don't have a logo already, you'll need one for your website (and your business generally). You can learn more about logos here.

You can create your own logo of course, and many small businesses do. However, you'll often get a more professional result by hiring an expert to design a logo for you. Some large corporations and governments pay as much as several hundred thousand dollars for a professionally designed logo developed by a marketing agency. For small businesses, you can expect to pay much less - usually within the range of $500 - $1,500. Whatever you decide, make sure you register your logo to prevent anyone else from using it.

Email Accounts:

If your email address looks like this, "yourname@google.com:, or "yourname@yahoo.com", you're not going to look very professional.

To create the right impression, you'll need email accounts for yourself and your team that are linked to your website domain. Email accounts of this type can cost anywhere from $5 to $15 per month each. That can quickly add up if you have say, five or ten people on your payroll, each with their own email address.

Website Maintenance:

The WordPress platform we use to build websites is also referred to as a CMS (Content Management System). A CMS like WordPress is a very powerful software system that is extremely flexible and supports almost any website design imaginable. This power and flexibility comes with technical complexity.

To keep a CMS secure and performing at its peak level for those visiting your site, regular systems maintenance is critical. You can try maintaining your own website if you want to put in the time and effort, and you're prepared for the steep learning curve.

Or, you can avoid the headaches that often arise from the technical stuff, by subscribing to our website maintenance service.

The Good News

If you choose to subscribe to our monthly website maintenance service, we'll cover the costs of website hosting (basic), domain name registration for the first year, and up to 5 email accounts linked to your domain. And, as long as your a subscriber we'll cover the annual license renewal fees for most, if not all of the plugins we use in the design your website.

Most web designers will ask you to pay up-front. Some will want full payment in advance. Most will require a part-payment up front - usually 50% of the total - then the balance upon completion.

Webinate is different. We prefer to trust our clients. In most cases, we require nothing up-front. We require no payment until your website is completed, you've seen it working online,  and you're reasonably satisfied with the result. At that point, we'll send you an invoice for the total agreed amount as stated in our original proposal.

We'll request payment of the invoice in full within 10 days of sending it out to you. As soon as we've received payment, we'll move the website from our temporary hosting to your own dedicated domain name. From then on, it's live on the Web and there for all the World to see.

The time required to design, build and test a new website varies according to the scope of the project. Obviously, the bigger the project, the longer it will take to complete.

Having said that, most of the sites we create are for small to medium business, and they're typically similar in scale and features.

If yours is a small business with fairly standard requirements for a website, you can plan on 4 - 6 weeks from when you give us the go-ahead.

Please note that if you're providing your own content for your website, the time you take to get that material to us should be added to the overall project timeline. The sooner we have your content, the quicker we can complete the project for you.

Yes. From the start of the design and development, right through to launching your new website live online, you'll be able see what's happening in real time.

We'll provide you with a link to the development site we use to create your website. You will see how it's looking and be able to "play" with it as much as you like. Of course, if there are others involved such as business partners, you can also allow them access to get their feedback.

Throughout the process, we're happy to get progressive feedback, and provided your suggestions stay within the overall scope of the project defined in our original proposal, we can make changes on the fly. You can of course wait until the first draft of your site is complete before checking it out. We allow for our clients to have at least two specific website draft review and feedback opportunities, whether they choose to monitor progress online or not.

Occasionally, we have clients who request major changes to the project scope part way through the design and development phase. When this happens, we assess what's required, and provide a written confirmation of any additional time and cost involved. If you agree, we'll happily adjust the project scope to meet your new requirements.

If you choose us to design and build your website, you will own it outright. Your website will be built on the WordPress platform - the most popular website platform in the World.

This means that should you ever need to, you'll be able to move the entire website to any other suitable web hosting provider you like. You'll also be able to hire any one of the great number of technical specialists across Australia to provide you with technical and design expertise at any time in the foreseeable future.

It also means that since you paid for it, and you own it, your website becomes an asset within your business or organisation. If and when you decide to sell your business, you can recover the asset value of your website by adding it to the sale price of your business.

There are many on-line website providers who could supply you with a website. There are also designers who sell such services on to their clients. This approach is often a cheaper way to get a website initially. The problem is that you are renting - you will never own your site. In most cases, no matter how much time and effort you've put into it over the years, everything disappears if you stop making the monthly payments. And, because technically it's not yours, it's unlikely you'll ever be able to sell it, and you definitely won't be able to move it anywhere else.

Note that over time, renting a website may well cost more in the long run that owning your site right from the start.

From day one, Webinate Web Design Geraldton has ensured that our clients own their websites after handover, and can therefor do whatever they want with them. We don't attempt to lock our clients in - we prefer to work hard for them so they will happily choose to stay with us in a long-term relationship built on respect, trust and fair value.

Yes. If you hire Webinate Web Design Geraldton, you will own your website once we hand it over to you.

Because you own it, you can certainly sell it at any time in the future. Why would you want to sell it? Well, perhaps one day you'll want to sell your business. If you do, you can legitimately add a commercial value for your website into the price of your business. When the time comes, you might be surprised to discover what it's worth.

Remember though, that if you're paying a monthly fee to rent a website, you will not be able to sell it outright. Technically, it belongs to whoever you're renting it from. You may be able to transfer the website account to someone else, but that simply means they will take over renting the site - they too will never actually own it. In this case, your website's value as a business asset will be limited.

Websites that are owned and trusted are worth more. For example, here's the independently assessed trust score for our website at https://webinate.com.au :