Web Design

Fauna Art Studios approaches the design process as a partnership with you, the client. We feel your new web site should be designed as you envision it and should be affordable as well -- our web design and hosting rates are some of the best in the industry. We involve you in the entire design process so as to come as close as possible to your vision while keeping the costs within your budget.

First, we will interview you to determine your needs and wants. This will take various forms depending on circumstances -- from our no-obligation design to phone calls to email correspondence or even regular mail, and in-person meetings, if feasible. This initial consultation (one hour, but we're usually quite generous here) is free.

After this initial interview, we will present you with an estimate based on our discussion (we may or may not decide to include a contract at this time). This will include a preliminary outline of your site's structure and the pages to be included.

As soon as you accept the estimate, you will receive a formal web design contract. After we receive your signed contract and deposit, we will begin work on a design template for your web site and will send you a mockup for approval. At this point, we also need to receive any materials you have ready in electronic format, such as content and images (product descriptions, graphics, logo, etc.). You will, of course, have the opportunity to approve the design or request changes. At this stage, we will also refine your site's structure.

Usually, changes to your web page template and structure are inevitable, but the closer we can come, from your input, to what you envision, the less your web site will cost in the long run. We are always conscious of our web design clients' budgets, even if that is not a primary consideration!

After the template and structure are approved, the actual web site design proceeds according to your specifications. We will check with you periodically. Your web pages will be posted blindly on our server or wherever you wish until we're ready to go live. If you also host with us, we will design a temporary home page free of charge so that visitors can contact you directly to inquire about your products or services.

What you, the client, should do to prepare.

No one knows your business the way you do. Therefore, you need to be clear about your intentions and goals for your business in general, and your new site in particular. Ideally, you will have a business plan that already addresses your long term and short term goals for your site. We realize that many small businesses never develop such a formal plan; nonetheless, without spending some time detailing your path to success, your business is much more likely to fail, and the best website in the world will probably not change that.

Your plan also should include detailed information about your audience, demographics, and what you want to accomplish with your site.  Are you delivering information, selling products, services, or...? How much interactivity will your site require? Will you need a shopping cart for a few items or a large store?

Particularly if you are budget conscious, you can reduce the cost of your site by providing us with all content and images in electronic, web-ready format (see also our FAQs). It is often less expensive to hire a high school student to type your copy into the computer than to have us do it. For images, web-ready means optimized GIF or JPG images, the only formats presently recognized by all browsers; however, in most cases, we will also accept larger BMP or TIF files we will then resize and optimize specifically for your site. Quite often, this works equally well or better, since most low-end image editing program do not optimize files very well (reduce file size). 

We provide full service for development and editing of content, design or scanning of images, and more, should you require it. Please note that you are fully responsible for complying with all copyright issues of materials you present to us, and we may request proof to that effect.

Please allow plenty of time for the development of your site. Depending on complexity, much behind - the - scenes programming may need to take place before your site can go live, and timely delivery of your materials is essential.

Note: We request that all sites we design be allowed to display our small, linked logo at the bottom of the page. This might be a standard logo or one we developed especially to fit your site's design (at no charge, of course!). Your website will then be included in our *clients* list, providing you with another link to your site. We also reserve the right to edit your content for clarity, grammar, and spelling.