The short answer: pricing depends on so many factors, it’s impossible to say in one sentence. Avoid any web developer who can answer this question without getting to know you and your company first.

The long answer: To get a better idea of the cost of what you want to build, give us a quick phone call or email. We’ll ask you a few questions about the nature of the site, what sort of interactivity the site will have, your graphic design needs, etc. Then we’ll be able to give you a ballpark figure. If you’re still interested, we’ll come to your place of business and come up with a firm quote. If you talk to a web developer who gives you an instant quote, run away! Imagine telling someone you want a car and having them immediately giving you a price for that car. Any fair and honest car salesperson would want to know the make, model and engine type of the car you’re looking to purchase, right? The same goes for building web sites. Depending on the features you want for your web site, the cost can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a 10 thousand dollars or more.

The short answer: There are many reasons. Here are several good ones.

Another company says they can build a web site for us for $600. Why shouldn’t we use them? We’ve seen those ads on the side of the road, too. Be wary of anyone who says they’ll build you a web site or sell you a car for $600. There’s a possibility they’ll take your money and run. What’s more likely is that they’ll take your money and then build your site with a template. They may have a lot of templates to choose from, but they’ll all be rather generic. They’ll ask you for five pages of text and then slap it into a template and that’s it. You can’t have custom graphic design; you can’t have any interactivity; your site won’t be optimized for search engines and it will look like a $600 site. Remember, a consultation with Tiger Web Designs is always free and we just might be able to prevent you from wasting a thousand bucks.

Will I have a say in the graphic design process? Absolutely. Our goal is to please you. We can’t do that without your input. If there are other sites with a design style that you would like to emulate, we can do that. If you have a logo or brand collateral that you’d like us to work around, that’s no problem. We’ll be sure your new site will be a consistent and integral part of your overall brand.

How does the web development process work? Get the full answer to this question here: The Web Design and Development Process

Does Tiger Web Designs provide copywriting services? How about photography? Not directly, but if your project calls for copywriting, photography, original illustration, video or other creative service, just let us know. We have an extensive network of creative associates that we work with. We would be happy to make a recommendation.

The short answer: No. And be cautious when other web design companies say they do.

The long answer: Most real web hosting companies have massive data centers that have hundreds of employees, triple power redundancy (in case of a blackout in the region) and 24-hour security staff guarding the facility. When a local web developer claims that they also host web sites, they’re almost certainly just a middleman for a real web host. That means that they mark up the cost of hosting and pass it along to you. And it means that if your server ever has a problem, you’ll have to go to them and they’ll contact your host for you. Are they on call 24-7? Of course not. Another major disadvantage to using a web developer as a host — if you’re ever dissatisfied with their service, they control the server that hosts your site. Extracting your company from the relationship could be very difficult. At Tiger Web Designs, we listen to your needs and suggest the most affordable web hosting option that meets the technical specifications of your new site. You’ll pay the host directly and you may contact them directly if you ever need to do so.

The short answer: It varies from website to website based on the requirement. In the initial consultation, we will provide you the timeline estimates for your project.

The long answer: If you have the content for your site written and your logo, company colors and pictures ready before the design process begins, it will help in completing the project quickly. Content should be in electronic format. Not having your copy completed before the design process can significantly delay the completion of your website. Business cards, letterhead, brochures, TV commercials, mailers and anything you are currently using and like will be helpful.

Once the final payment is received, you will receive 100% ownership of your Website. We will make all the files including PSD files available for you for download. If your website is large and file sizes are very large, we will mail you a CD with all the files.

As a rule your home page should not take longer than 8 seconds to open. If it takes longer than that you can risk losing visitors. People on the web are usually wanting instant gratification. Graphics should be optimized to load quickly. You can save your slower loading pages for after you get the visitors attention. Your site should reflect your target audience's wants and needs. Your website should be easy to navigate so that your visitors don't get lost.

All the web pages developed by us are optimized to load quickly. We move all common code, i.e., code that is loaded in each page, into a separate page which is loaded by the browser only once and cached for the rest of the page. We remove all unused HTML tags, white space so that page size is reduced and loads quickly. We optimize all graphics to have best quality at the lowest possible size to load quickly. If the website is hosted on our web servers, we also use server compression that decreases download time by an order of magnitude.

Websites are very flexible. What you start with can change and evolve as you need or want. A website is not like purchasing printed material where once it is printed you are stuck with it as it is. Your website can change any time you want. We can change anything from the text content to the overall design, or add new feature to your existing website any time you choose. Keep your visitors interested in returning by keeping the information on your website current and changing the website to include new information.

A static website is one that is written in HTML only. Each page is a separate document and there is no database that it draws on. What this means functionally is that the only way to edit the site is to go into each page and edit the HTML - so you'd either have to do it yourself using a web page editor or we can edit the site each time you wanted something changed. A dynamic website is written using more complex code and can do a lot more. For instance, we can make an area where you can log in and change various parts of the website, such as adding information or products or changing existing products. eCommerce websites, news websites are some examples of dynamic websites. This is because each page is constructed based on the information in a database, and the information in that database can be changed via another interface.

Dynamic websites can reduce ongoing maintenance costs if you don't want to change things yourself with a web page editor or with the HTML. They usually cost more to develop, as they require more complex coding and a content management utility needs to be developed to help you manage your website information. Another benefit of dynamic websites is that they allow you to change only the content of the website and not the design, so you will not be able to accidentally break the visual style of the website. They have other benefits when websites start to get very large, as they make data management much more efficient and your website more expandable. Many clients do a combination, having some dynamic areas such as a product catalog where they have to change information or pictures regularly, and leave other pages such as contact information as static pages.

Absolutely! we can study your current website, analyze it, discuss your goals, and redesign your website according to your requests.

The site needs to be marketed on an ongoing basis. Fresh information also needs to be put into the site to keep it up-to-date and interesting. If you sign-up for the maintenance contract, we will update the website as and when it is needed and content is provided by you. You also need to monitor the website traffic, analyze the keywords that are being used to reach your website, where and what time of the day the traffic is good or bad and act on it to improve them. You need to monitor any emails or requests that are generated by the visitors of your website and reply them as soon as possible. Early replies get good image about your business.

Ongoing Costs Website hosting, email hosting and the domain registration renewals are the minimum annual costs for any website. If it is a e-commerce website which accepts data via secure forms, you need to renew SSL certificate on yearly basis, unless you purchase it for multiple years. If your website is very popular and exceeds the allocated bandwidth, there may be additional bandwidth fee. Some website owners prefer to market their site more pro-actively, make regular updates, send email newsletters etc. Ongoing costs depend on exactly how you wish to use your website.