Never had a website built? Been burned by crappy designers who don’t answer calls and want to know how we work? You’re in the right place. Below are some of the common questions we get all the time, but if you have more feel free to contact us today.
How long does it take to get a website made?
Every site we do starts with a free consultation. Usually, we just jump on a call to talk to you about what you’re trying to do to make sure we’re all on the same page. Once we figure out what it is we’re going to build for you and you give us the green light it can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks, but every project is different. If you have a ton of pages you need to be built out it might take longer, and it can actually be even faster in some situations, but we generally say 2-4 weeks to give you a rough idea. Believe it or not, the thing that usually takes the longest is waiting for our clients to give us their images or text for their website – that’s a subtle hint to let us write your content for a nominal fee.
I don’t live near you guys, is that a problem?
If you want to come by and say hi to us on a weekly basis that might be a problem, but if you’re comfortable with working with us via phone and email – like 99% of our other clients then we should be just fine. The world is a digital place now and most business is conducted without ever meeting face to face – I mean have you ever met an Amazon employee in person (and we don’t mean the guy who delivers your Prime packages).
What is a domain name? How do I get one?
Your domain name is literally the name of your website in the URL bar on your browser. Our website name is RhinoMarketingGroup.com – that’s the domain. You might have a .org if you’re an organization. There are fancy ones these days like .tv and .co and .io but we usually stick with .com because that’s what everyone expects.
We recommend buying them at namecheap.com. They cost around $10-$15/year. We like NameCheap because they keep your registration information private for free whereas GoDaddy and other registrars charge another $10-$15 to do that. What does that mean? Well, if you don’t have private registration you’ll end up getting letters in the mail trying to con you into renewing your site for a hefty fee. They come in this little official-looking letters that say Domain Registry of America but it’s all just a scam. We try to avoid scams as much as we can – they suck.
What is Web Hosting? Why do I need that?
The way the internet works is that all the text and photos on your website have to be stored somewhere for someone to see them. That somewhere is a computer somewhere. That computer is hosting your files 24 hours a day 7 days a week and it usually has lots of back up computers just in case one goes down. In fact, some hosts even have their back up computers in another state just in case of a power outage – how cool, right?
Without hosting there would be nowhere to put your text, photos, and design up for people to actually be able to access your site. They would type your domain name into their url and they would see nothing – or some “coming soon” page that your domain registrar put up.
Hosting varies in quality DRASTICALLY. You can find hosts that will literally host your site for $1/month but they suuuuuck. Your site will load SUPER slowly and be prone to viruses and hackers. Also, the more popular your website is the more people will visit it and that traffic will slow your site down even more if you don’t have a good host.
What’s included in the hosting package you guys offer at Rhino?
- No Contract
- New Website
- Mobile Responsive
- Premium Plugins
- Premium Hosting
- SSL Certificate
- Premium CDN
- Regular Site Backups
- Regular Security Updates
- FREE Malware Removal
- Site Maintenance
- Content Updates
- Google Analytics
- GMB Connect
- Transparent Pricing
- U.S.A. Phone & Email Support
Do I have to host my site through you?
Most of our clients – and we’re talking over 90% – ask us to host their site for them. This allows us to monitor the site, make sure it’s malware-free, make updates for you faster and make sure your site loads as fast as possible. If any of those things we just mentioned goes wrong your site can start to a die a horrible death and when you go with cheap hosting that’s typically what happens. But if you’re insistent on hosting elsewhere we can definitely accommodate that cause we’re not going to hold you hostage or anything – at the end of the day it’s your site. We just need to be able to get into your hosting environment to install the site on your server.
I already have a website, can you guys just make some edits and stuff for me?
If you have a WordPress website we can definitely work with you. We have hourly rates or monthly packages to manage existing WordPress sites, but we would have to take a look at your site to give you an accurate estimate. The truth is that a lot of WordPress sites go neglected and sometimes when we take a look under the hood we see that your website engine is essentially blown and there might be some major updating necessary just to make it stable. But if your site is running smoothly generally we can work with you at a reasonable fee.
When do I need to fork over the cash?
We require a 50% deposit for new websites. The balance of our fee is due upon completion of your site. Pretty simple.
What about e-commerce? I got stuff that I need to sell sell sell
We definitely do e-commerce. For e-commerce sites we do require hosting with us if you want us to warranty the site at all because they can get slow fast and are much more prone to hacking attempts. We build all of our websites on WordPress and for e-commerce we use the wordpress plugin WooCommerce. We found it’s a robust, flexible shopping cart system and works quite well for nearly all e-commerce needs. There is an additional charge to set up an e-commerce store as there are automatic emails that need to be fired off, shopping cart integration and other things that need to be implemented. Depending on how many products you want to sell and other features (like coupon codes, subscription products, digital downloads, integrated shipping and tax rates) the additional costs will vary according to your needs.