We specialize in the design and development of original small business web sites in Chicago.
"Contact Us" and "Privacy Policy" pages are included at no charge- they do not count towards the 5 page limit.
Graphics include creating a custom background, web buttons, and image resizing/optimizing. We charge extra for animations, we do .gif and .swf animations. Prices for animations are quoted as needed.
We currently code sites in XHTML and CSS. Click here to jump ahead for details.
A 5 page site such as we offer can easily cost $3000 or more elsewhere. We've made our services affordable especially for small business owners. More information about competitors pricing is here.
When we design a small business site, your marketing interests are top priority. All of our sites are original design, tailored for the individual business in all aspects.
Content and keyword meta tags are optimized for the search engines, a sitemap is made and submitted to Google and other search engines and directories. A search engine friendly robots.txt file is also placed in your root directory.
Web sites generated by software from templates (usually online do it yourself web creation) are very limited and not unique. Another business similar to yours may have the exact same layout, with changes only to background colors and some images.
Many templates will not even pass W3C validation before any content is placed in them. Depending on the software used to generate the web site, the code of such sites may also be very difficult to manually edit for SEO or any other reason.
We code to W3C Standards. See here for more information about Standards compliance and the value it has for your pages.
There are more web designers who do not code to W3C standards than there are designers who do code to W3C standards. You can check the code of any web page by inputting its url (or copy/paste from your browser's address bar) into the W3C Validator.
Web sites created by other designers often contains bad code. A common problem when not coding to W3C standards is that the web may look fine in IE or whatever browser the site was designed in, but has issues in other browsers.
IE will render a great amount of bad code (as well as being vulnerable to the most browser exploits by hackers), and pages will break down in IE but appear fine in other browsers such as Firefox or Opera. Visit our Internet Security Section page on browsers here for more information on browser security issues.
We design our sites in a CSS compliant browser (Firefox), then after you approve the basic layout of your site's pages (header, navigation, footer) we apply code hacks to your layout to eliminate cross-browser issues.
We also design personal web sites for $100 per page.
If you need a logo we can create one for you for a small fee.
We do scripting, Flash, pdf brochures, Powerpoint presentations, and animated gif. More information further down this page.
When your site is completed and live, we give you a backup CD of your site, along with all information on your hosting and domain registration so you can renew your domain and registration yourself without assistance from us or other developers.
Or we can assist with those routine annual matters (registration & hosting) for a minimal fee.
Advantages of Using XHTML and CSS
XHTML is the most modern code to write pages in, and the modern approach to web design is the use XHTML and CSS, they are designed for use together to create better web pages that load faster and with less cross browser issues.
So naturally XHTML is preferred over old HTML and table layouts.
Using CSS to style web pages speeds up load time, especially when a site has mutliple pages.
Also, seperate CSS files, instead of inline CSS, makes creating sites larger than 1 page easier, because the syle of each page does not have to written into each page individually.
The CSS file is simply called for in one line of each page's code.
So CSS also reduces the file size of every web page the CSS file is used in conjunction with.
That speeds up each page's load time, especially useful when a site is larger than 1 page, because the CSS remains loaded in the visitor's brower cache and only needs to be downloaded once into the browser, regardless of the number of pages.
Multiple CSS files download simultaneously because the browser allows multiple connections to each sever as connections are made to view thw page, making pages load faster.
W3C web industry standards for CSS file size is 8kb.
CSS files larger than 8kb will not fail validation for that reason, but the file size will generate a warning message when you validate the page at W3C's online CSS Validator. It is to your advantage to use CSS files less than 8kb in size.
Scripting
We charge additional fees for Flash, Javascript, AJAX, MySQL, PHP, dynamic and e-commerce sites, and RSS feeds.
Such extras are usually desirable for large business sites only.
Fees are quoted on a case by case basis. For scripting, you can expect to pay a minimum of $500 in additional fees depending on the scripting and or required database.
We can provide ongoing support for an online database at reasonable prices, contact us for more information.
Shopping Cart pages start at $500 for the first page, and $100 minimum per page thereafter. We give you a flat rate on additional pages when we quote your site.
Online Appointment Scheduling pages start at $1000. That price is for a simple form that sends the appointment email to you, and sends a confirmation to the web visitor that the appointment was sent.
More complex Online Appointment pages and systems are quoted on an individual basis.
There are several options available for you in regard to how you handle incoming reservations.
You may use online services (which cost about $10 per month), or you can set up a system at your business for daily management of the reservation system.
Search Engines
We use Google Sitemaps to inform Google's crawler about all your pages and to help people discover more of your web pages.
Your site and sitemap are also submitted to several other top search engines and directories.
We create a robots.txt file to make your site search engine friendly.
Screen Resolution Considerations
Sites are primarily designed for a smallest screen resolution of 800 x 600 pixels which will expand to fill higher screen resolutions, unless you request us to design for a specific resolution.
Most pages are also designed to be printer friendly.
We test our sites for cross browser issues and page collapse issues.
Changes to Your Site
You have a final inspection opportunity to correct any typographical or other errors in your page content before your site goes live. This is in addition to other reviews you get along the way to site completion.
After your web goes live, we will not rework pages without additional charges being applied.
Note on PHP
Please note that if your site will be hosted somewhere other than on our affiliate's server, that server must support PHP for any PHP features to operate. MySQL and PHP are platform independent. Most hosting companies have PHP installed.
Fast Loading Pages
We use PHP to compress your pages as they are sent out from the server, which speeds up the time it takes for your site to load in your visitor's browser, and it saves bandwidth.
Web pages that load fast are important for business sites of any nature.
Also, if you expect your site to generate a lot of traffic, bandwidth usage (a.k.a. data transfer) can be critical, depending on where you have your site hosted. Bandwidth is used each time one of your pages is visited.
Some hosts limit the amount of monthly bandwidth and will charge you for extra bandwidth.
If you do not pay the extra charges, the host turns off your site until the next month starts. That can be a business killer.
Our hosting affiliate does not limit bandwidth.
FYI, if you chose a different host, we will upload your site there, no problem. We don't force you to use our hosting affiliate.
It is not possible to compress CSS using PHP, but we can permanently compress your CSS files using a special coding process. We do that at our discretion, or if you request it.
We do our best to keep your pages within the industry standard of page loading in 30 seconds or less at 56.6 Kbps speed; results vary with the amount of photos and other objects on the page
PDF Brochures & Power Point Presentations
Our capabilities include creation of .pdf files for download from your site, usually company brochures or other technical information.
We have a sample .pdf document here based on 7ZIP, a powerful freeware archiving utility distributed under the GNU LGPL.
Our thanks to Igor Pavlov, developer of 7ZIP, for permission to reproduce his material as a sample .pdf here in our site.
Our capabilities also include creation of PowerPoint presentations. We can also convert existing PowerPoint presentations into Flash.
Flash Sites
Full flash sites are available at a higher cost, prices are quoted on a case by case basis.
Full Flash Sites also take longer to load in your visitor's browser, an important consideration.
The SEO of Flash sites is also more complex.
Payment
We require a deposit of 50% on the estimated number of pages before we begin work on your site.
If additional work not described in the contract will be needed or is requested, a deposit of 50% may be required for that - before that work is done.
Exceptions are made on a case by case basis.
In God We Trust, all others pay cash or by money order. No checks accepted.
Hosting
You have several options for hosting of your site. We do not require that you have your site hosted by us.
Business sites can be hosted for as little as $130 per year, with email accounts and support for all features you might need for your business web.
Contact us at sales@websitesnservices.com.
Be sure to mark your email heading "RFQ Design" in order to get past our spam filters. It's easier to reach us by phone.
Call us at (773) 406-0350.
That's the best method to contact us.
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