the process by valor for oregon web design

Startup Consultation
We offer an initial consultation meeting of 30-60 minutes at no charge. This is the beginning step in determining the content to be included in your website. Within this meeting we will define key components and characteristics of your site such as navigation menu, color pallette, main content, and special features. Below is a list of questions to think about before meeting with Valor Creations. These questions will help you establish what is important for your site.

  • Is this project a new website or a redesign?
  • What is the purpose of your website?
  • What is the nature of your business?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • How many pages will the site consist of?
  • What links will be in your main navigational menu?
  • Do you have professional images for us to work with?
  • Do you have a corporate identity or logo in digital form?
  • What is your proposed deadline for launching the website?
  • How often will your website be updated?
  • What is your proposed budget for this project?
  • Do you already have a domain name or are you planning to purchase a one?
  • Do you currently have a hosting plan for your website?
  • If so, how much are you paying for hosting?
  • Do you need any special features (such as: web forms, guestbook, photo galleries, videos, calendar, blog, etc.)?
  • Also, please supply a list of websites that you like and ones that you dislike and state why for each.

Initial Payment
After the startup consultation, we will have enough information to provide you with an official estimate and a services contract. Our estimate and contract will included a design fee minimum and a design fee maximum for the overall design and content that we have determined. This means that you can count on a price that we will not exceed unless the parameters for the design change significantly. At this point, you will be required to sign the estimate and the contract and send them back to us with your initial payment of one third of the design fee maximum. Once we have received the estimate, contract, and payment, we will begin your initial designs.

Site Creation and Testing
As you may have guessed, this stage of the process is where we start creating the website. We will initially create two main designs complete with navigational menus (the navigational menus will not operate yet, but they will demonstrate the look of the site) and sample content. We will upload these prototype designs to a testing web server where you will be asked to view them and choose which design you want to move forward with. The second payment of one third of the design fee maximum is due at this time and must be received before we move forward to the next step.

Site Completion and Website Launch
After we receive the second payment, we finish designing the site and adding content to the pages. We then upload the site to our testing server where it will undergo extensive testing through various web browsers and computers. You will be asked to view the site and note minor corrections that need to be made. Once you have approved the finished website we will invoice the outstanding balance and await payment. By requiring you to pay one third of the design fee maximum for the first two payments we have set up our billing so that in most cases your third payment will be smaller than the first two. Once payment has been received, we will upload the website to your domain and do another round of testing to make minor corrections. Your website will then be complete and you will be responsible for maintenance and updates (unless otherwise agreed).

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
Search engines play a vital role in gaining exposure for your website. Because of this, we design every website in a way that is optimized for search engines to recognize content and drive potential customers to your business. Search engine optimization is really important for any website on the internet. What's the value of your website if nobody finds it? During the design process, we do as much as we can to optimize your website for search engines, however not everything can be done during the creation process of your site. We need to analize search engine results once the site has been completed in order to fully optimize your website to gain traffic and potential customers. Valor Creations offers two search engine optimization packages (at additional cost) for your business in order to help drive traffic to your site via search engines like Google or Yahoo. Both of our SEO packages include weekly monitoring of search engine results and statistics, bi-weekly site optimization, and an average of 60-85% increase in Google rankings. Our 3 month package costs $300 and includes 6 optimization updates and your choice of 4-6 keywords to optimize for. Our 6 month package costs $600 and includes 12 optimization updates and your choice of 8-10 keywords to optimize for. We highly recommend using our search engine optimization packages to guarantee the most out of your website.

WEBSITE MAINTENANCE
Websites need regular maintenance in order to stay current and up to date. We offer website maintenance packages paid for per year or every 6 months in order to keep your site current and running effectively. Packages vary in price based on the amount of maintenance needed. Some businesses need to update their websites weekly with new content and news, others will update every 6 months if something changes. Our packages start at $10 per month for the most basic of needs. Please contact us at info@valorcreations.com to receive a quote. We also offer website mainenance as needed for $25 per hour with a 2 hour minimum.



Valor Creations: unique, effective, noteworthy. Web design, logo design, and website hosting in Eugene and Springfield, OR.
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© 2009-2010 Valor Creations — all images and photographs © 2002-2009 Joshua Rainey Photography