Frequently Asked Questions
Questions You Need To Ask. Answers You Need To Know!
Whether or not you are going to do business with CherryBomb Design Studio, we feel it is important for you to know what to look for and what questions to ask when you are searching for the right website design company to work with. Below you will some find pertinent and helpful information you can use as a starting point to help you along the way towards finding the right website development company for you.
Questions To Ask And Red Flag Answers
If the company starts talking about costs with you before they even know what kind of website you need...
If the company wants to register your domain name for you it's time to hang up the phone.
The main reason why a client should maintain control of their own domain name is because it is your business name, your brand, and how people remember you. You cannot, and we can't emphasize this enough, afford to lose your domain name! If you do lose your domain name it essentially means having to start your business all over again. Additionally, having control of your domain name means having control of your website, which is actually quite important. Keep in mind that the person who has control of the domain name can do whatever they want with it, which in some cases is a really bad thing. The person who has control of the domain is also, by default in most cases, the legal owner of the domain name. That means they can cancel it, sell it, keep it... you get the idea.
We've talked with hundreds of people that have entrusted their domain names to somebody else, and when you need them that person can't be reached, that person refuses to transfer control, or worse, they've dropped of the face of the Earth. We've even talked with people who's web designers wanted hundreds (even thousands!) of dollars to transfer control of the domain name back to the original owner. Don't let this happen to you!
CherryBomb Design Studio is not in the practice of managing domain names for it's clients and will never ask you to let us register your domain name for you. However, should you need it, we will gladly offer any advice or answer any question regarding your domain name.
If the company wants to transfer your domain name to them (yes, we'll say it again) it's time to hang up the phone.
For your answer to this question please see the answer to the question above. Unless you are selling your domain name or giving it to someone else, please do not ever transfer your domain name into anyone else's possession. You will only be asking for trouble if you do!
CherryBomb Design Studio is not in the practice of managing domain names for it's clients and will never ask you to transfer your domain name to us. However, should you need it, we will gladly offer any advice or answer any question regarding your domain name.
If the company wants you to use only their website hosting services you may want to do a little thinking before complying with their request.
Like our recommendation to purchase your own domain name, we always recommend that our clients purchase their own website hosting service. This is important for many of the same reasons that you need to have control of your own domain name. Your website is likely to be an expensive yet necessary investment potentially costing a few thousand dollars. Do you really want to place that kind of investment in someone else's hands? Just like a domain name can be held hostage, so can a website. Having to rebuild a website and pay for it all over again is not going to be a pleasant situation. Please make sure to get your own website hosting!
If you would like us to make a recommendation we will gladly do so based on your website requirements. And to be fair and up front we will always first recommend using our partner SitePro Domains because of their awesome value, great service, and 24/7 dependability. Other than that, who you choose to use is strictly up to your preference.
With that said, there really isn't a "perfect" website hosting service that we have seen, but we do have our favorites, and have certainly come across many bad ones. All website hosting services offer different options and functionality with their website hosting plans, and this can make a difference depending on the type of website you need. Most web servers are either Linux type or Windows type. And no, just because you have a Windows PC does not mean you need a Windows server! While Windows web servers have their use, we only work with Linux servers because of their greater flexibility and widespread use. Please do not purchase any website hosting unless we have discussed whether what you are considering is suitable for your website.
CherryBomb Design Studio is not in the practice of hosting websites for it's clients and will never ask you to only use our partner. However, should you need it, we will gladly offer any advice or answer any question regarding your choice for a website hosting service.
If the company is going to be using a template based WYSIWYG website builder...
WYSIWYG website builders are fine for beginners or for website developers that want to create a website quickly and don't want to fiddle around with HTML code. However, if you plan to present yourself online in a professional and credible manner you are going to want your website designed and developed by a professional that doesn't use a WYSIWYG website builder. There are distinct disadvantages to going with a website development company that will build your website with a WYSIWYG website builder. But for now we will only focus on the glaring disadvantages.
The first and probably biggest disadvantage is you are "stuck" with the website you have. "Well duh, I want the website I have!" you say. Our point exactly! What if you find a different website development company you want to work with? Guess what. You can't take your website with you to let them work on it! Your website is stuck where it's at because its a WYSIWYG website. Big ouch right there since you will need to pay for another website all over again if you want to switch to a different website development company.
The second biggest disadvantage, speaking of paying for websites, is that you will need to keep paying for your website (on a monthly or yearly basis) to keep it going. The reason for this is because WYSIWYG website builders are a proprietary service. You don't just pay for it once and the website is yours. You have to keep paying, and paying, and paying... you get the idea.
The third disadvantage is you will end up with a cookie cutter website that looks just like all the other websites that used the same WYSIWYG website builder service and template. Nothing could be worse than looking just like a thousand other websites out there. There's no individuality in a WYSIWYG website, and that means your business and brand doesn't get to shine through the way it deserves to!
CherryBomb Design Studio is not in the practice using template based WYSIWYG website builders to craft our awesome websites. Each and every website we build is 100% HTML5/CCS3 hand coded and designed to fit your unique individuality, style, and needs!
If the company only builds websites using one of the aforementioned Content Management Systems...
If the company you are talking with has any kind of contracts obligating you to pay a monthly fee...
Technical Aspects
Your domain name is going to be the very most important of the three required elements to having an online presence and building your brand. It's the equivalent of the street address to your house. Hopefully, if you got lucky, it is your business name. Yes, competition for good domain names is very fierce. So, be flexible, but use good sense when choosing a domain. Try to keep it original, short, and memorable. If your “.com” address is already taken, resist the urge to add a hyphen or numbers, or to go with the “.net” or other version. In the end, you will lose visitors with these options, so take a little extra time to get creative and find the perfect “.com”. You can register a “.com” domain name for less than $10 dollars per year with our partner www.SiteProDomains.com. We recommend registering your domain name for at least 5 to 10 years. It signals to Google that you are serious about your online business, and helps you with better search engine rankings.
If the company wants to register your domain name for you it's time to hang up the phone.
Website hosting is another one of the required elements to having an online presence. It's the equivalent of having the land to build a house on. What many beginners fail to realize is that registering a domain name is just the first piece of getting their online presence started. Without web site hosting, a domain name will never do anything. Having a web hosting account is necessary to store, or "host", the actual files of your website. The most commonly used type of website hosting is Linux based. Sometimes Windows based is necessary, but for the most part you should not purchase Windows based website hosting unless your website requires it. Your best bet is to stick with Linux website hosting. You can purchase website hosting at a great price with our partner www.SiteProDomains.com. We also recommend that you purchase an SSL certificate for your website. It adds security to your website by encrypting data exchanges, and also helps you with better search engine rankings.
Your website is the third of the required elements to having an online presence. It's the equivalent of the house (your website) that is built on the land (your website hosting) to which you have a street address (your domain name) so that people can find you and come visit you. It's important to consider that these days about 60% of all online traffic comes from mobile devices. What that means to you is that having a responsive website, built with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 standards, that works on any mobile device is critical to your business success. If your customers can't navigate your website easily on their mobile device, or your website simply looks like a miniaturized version of your desktop website, chances are your customer is going to leave your website (called a bounce - a bad thing for your search engine rankings). Additionally, it's very important to have a website that is aesthetically appealing to your target demographic audience. People don't like poorly designed websites, and that's bad for your business and image. Luckily you're at the right place to get exactly the website you need. Solution to problem - found!
Web Development
In current times when the border between desktop and mobile is rapidly fading away, users expect to get to information anywhere, anytime and expect it to be fast. Meeting all those expectations and providing users with what they want is the single best way to keep clients focused on your product, service or website.
HTML5 is the latest iteration of HTML addressing modern needs and expectations of websites. It deals with things like semantic markup, providing information about content it describes, it is becoming new standard for all good web developers and browser vendors love it as it does its magic on, I'm going to say it once more, desktop and mobile devices alike. Here are 5 reasons why HTML5 matters:
- HTML5 is the new standard
- HTML5 is faster and cheaper
- HTML5 is modern
- HTML5 lets you do things previously impossible
- HTML5 supports mobile devices
If the company wants to register your domain name for you it's time to hang up the phone.
The new CSS3 specification adds a suite of powerful visual design elements into modern websites. For example, drop shadows, rounded corners, semi-transparency, and gradient backgrounds can now be done purely with CSS3, when previously we had to rely on background images, and in most cases, multiple images to achieve these effects. Eliminating the need for background images not only makes life easier for Web developers, it also dramatically reduces the amount of disk space needed on the hosting server and in your browser cache, and makes for a much faster-loading page. A background image might not be a picture worth a thousand words, but they can be worth quite a few kilobytes each, which slows down your website. Not that anybody is still using dial-up, of course, but more and more people are browsing the web on mobile devices, so lightweight, fast-downloading website pages are de rigueur these days.
Search optimization, at first glance, doesn't have much to do with CSS3. However, as you might know, Google takes into account a number of different metrics when deciding how high in search results to rank a given webpage. Some of those metrics relate to CSS3 in a fundamental way. Most of the SEO benefits of CSS3 arise from the fact that it requires less code from the website server to implement, making things faster and simpler.
JavaScript (JS) is a dynamic computer programming language. It is most commonly used as part of web browsers, whose implementations allow client-side scripts to interact with the user, control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter the document content that is displayed. So basically, JavaScript is the programming language that you use to add behavior to your web pages — it can be used to validate the data you enter into a form (tell you if it is in the right format or not, prevent spamming, etc.), provide drag and drop functionality, change styles on the fly, animate page elements such as menus, handle button functionality, and a thousand other things. Most modern JavaScript works by finding a target HTML element, and then doing something to it, just like CSS3, but the way it operates, the syntax etc. is a bit more complicated than HTML or CSS. JavaScript is the most popular programming language in the world. It is the language for HTML, for the Web, for computers, servers, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and more.
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