Frequently Asked Questions

Ask yourself, "Does my business need 24-hour exposure 7 days a week, 365 days a year?"   The answer is obvious.  What other medium allows you to expose all the benefits of your small business to your target market at their convenience and provide a source of direct correspondence from them to you? The benefits of a website are innumerable.

In business today, a website is no longer a luxury or an option. A popular phrase was "a business with no sign, is a sign of no business". Your website is the equivalent of your business' sign in the 21st century. Like yesterday's storefront sign, today, most peoples' first impression will come from your website. Also, many people question the legitimacy of a business with no web presence. Consider that statistics show that 80% of people now go to the internet first BEFORE they even consider the phone book or yellow pages. Click Here to read what Entrepreneur.com has to say about the need for every small business to have a website.

If you are serious about your Internet presence and you are utilizing your web site as a marketing or e-commerce tool, you want your web site to be optimized to reach your target audience. A professional developer/designer goes beyond the visual aspects of the web site and assures that the site functions properly,and provides "behind the scenes" enhancements and development that may not be known by nonprofessionals or seen by the user. This includes but not limited to optimization for search engine readiness, meta tag development, graphics optimization, and script and code development.

North American Multimedia is not just a webdesign and eMarketing firm, we are a team of small business sales and marketing experts that build websites that will do more than look good; they will make you money.

Unlike organizations headed by designers with limited real world knowledge of how to market small businesses, North American Multimedia is lead by experts in the field of sales and marketing that create a online strategy that integrates with your offline sales practices and revenue goals. Put simply, our sites are built with your business goals as our primary concern, and the design created to accomplish those goals. A beautiful site that doesn't make you more money is a disservice to your business, but an attractive site that brings in new clients each and every month is invaluable.

It takes us 1-2 weeks to complete a web site that has up to 15 web pages. For a larger web site up to 30-40 web pages, it takes about 3-4 weeks. Also, factors such as eCommerce and the need for database technologies can also effect how long it takes for us to complete your project.

it takes us about 3 days to have a prototype design for your approval from the time you choose us for your website and eMarketing needs.

Simple websites can run under a thousand dollars.  Complex ones run in the tens of thousands.  Pricing a web design project requires understanding the size and complexity of your intended result. North American Multimedia starts by providing a free consultation in which we complete a Client Information Sheet. This sheet is filled out together with the client, going over the possibilities of what to include, and how much the client will contribute in existing graphics and content.  The client sheet provides the basis for a detailed quote. 

Currently, most of our small business starter packages run around $1,000. We recommend that most small businesses without the need for eCommerce begin with one of these packages. This allows our clients to begin realizing the ROI from a relatively small marketing investment before spending additional money.

For jobs with a quote of under $500, payment in full is required. For projects with a quote between $500-$5,000, payment in half is required along with a signed contract for beginning work, with the remaining half due upon completion of the project. For projects over $5,000, an initial payment representing one-third of the estimated total fee is required along with a signed contract. The second one-third is billable upon the halfway point or second phase of the project, with the final third due upon completion of the project.

The least expensive option is an online order form.  You continue to accept payment through traditional methods only.  For example, the customer can send his or her detailed order online but call you with a credit card number.   Accepting online payment is the next step up.  A service such as Pay Pal can be inexpensive and easy to use.  Alternatively, you can open an online merchant account that will process payments for you, providing a secure server, encryption and the other components of accepting online payment.  The most comprehensive solution is to incorporate a full shopping cart. North American Multimedia can provide you with the shopping cart and the online merchant account.

North American Multimedia can register your domain for you, and domain registration is included at no charge in all of our web design packages. If you prefer to register your domain on your own, we can provide you with the information necessary to do so.

A hosting service makes your website accessible over the internet.  When an internet user types in your web address, the hosting service responds by sending the requested page. The cost of hosting depends on the size of your site and the traffic it receives. North American Multimedia provides several low cost hosting options for our clients. Our servers have a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

Strategies and methods for search engine listings and rankings are constantly changing. Several years ago it was reasonable to expect that submitting your web site to search engines would result in being listed, which in turn would bring visitors.  Today the wait for a search engine to respond to your request for inclusion can be several weeks.  Even being listed can do little to bring visitors to your site if your business does not appear in the first one or two pages of a search query. 

The best strategy is to have a well optimized website that is easily found, indexed, and ranked high by all of the major search engines. North American Multimedia includes Search Engine Optimization services in almost all of its webdesign packages.

As a rule your home page should not take longer than 20 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 site should be easy to navigate so that your visitors don't get lost. Your site should be developed so that it works with the most popular web browsers. Not all web browsers function the same, some features that are available in Microsoft Internet Explorer do not work in Netscape Navigator and vice versa. Design By Linda will assure that all your pages are functioning properly and are optimized to gain the most effective web presence.

A web site is very flexible. What you start with can change and evolve as you need or want. A web site is not like purchasing printed material where once it is printed you are stuck with it as it is. Your web site can change any time you want. You can change anything from the text content to the overall design, or add new feature to your existing site any time you choose. Keep your visitors interested in returning by keeping the information on your site current and changing the site to include new information . As your webmaster I will assure that your site is kept current and updates are done in a timely manner.

Yes, with all of the websites that we design and host you receive company email (example: your name@yourcompany.com). We will set up these email accounts for you as well as add auto-responders or customize several different kinds of e-mail accounts if needed.

Yes, while most of our clients find it easier and prefer to have us make any needed changes, we do have webdesign packages which include content management systems that will allow you to make changes to the content of your site without our assistance.

Yes, we can build forms for almost any type of information that you want to collect including contact forms, applications, and eCommerce forms.

Yes we submit all new website's to the major search engines as part of your web design package. Where applicable we also submit to “Google Local” which will list your website in your areas “Google Local Directory”.

We can build either an album style page or go with a slide show off to the side of your text area.