Is that a trick question? Guess not! Well, yes. Let’s get one thing out of the way first. We do not work with free templates. What‘s bespoke about that? We craft our own templates from scratch. Savvy? We have our reasons, and they‘re solid, just hear us out okay.
For one, free templates make the internet a homogenous place. What the heck does that mean? It means that you see one website and then you see another that looks exactly like the first (except for the site name and logo). Our desire is to help make your business, project, personality or brand stand out from the online crowd. Shall we then go behind your back (or under your nose) and pick a ruddy free template? Bleh! That‘s feels like a shot in our foot.
For two, most free templates are rife with poorly written code which introduce vulnerabilities that are often a migraine to troubleshoot. Go and ask. In our line of duty, no developer looks forward to the day they‘ll de-rat debug another developers code. Did you read the part yet where we said we aim at making your website so fast it will score above 90% on Google PageSpeed site performance test? To make a free template do that, you‘d have to upheave and upend the whole code base and start relatively afresh. Sorry but any developer who know his trade onions will confirm this: it’s not phat fun.
For three, free templates are rarely maintained. A good number of them are probably one-off projects intended to impress lesson instructors, self-achieving selves, pals or gals until some smart dude went “Wow! That could sell!” and then got it listed somehow in a free template directory. If you want a website that will boost your brand and prestige, perform optimally for your users over the long run with frequently updated code that leave no backdoor for black-hat and malicious hacking and cyber expliotations attempts, then a free templates surely is not your best buy.
For four, (hmm…that sounded weird).
For more, I think we’d jolly just do an article on “Disadvantages of Using Free Templates”. (Updating to-do list…).
Here’s how we roll? After we understand your project, we thoroughly consider all the modules that will work together to deliver your project goals. If you’re tech savvy, it is at this point that we would take your technical specifications for the website. If you’re not, we would use our discretion and experience to craft a template that meets your requirements. We’ll show you this template to suggest major adjustments and edits. We then go and implement those edits of yours and proceed with the development. When we’re done, we’ll launch your website and you get to view it, this time, live with your changes. You get to make one last set of minor edits which we’ll implement before the testing phase.
However, if you insist on going the free template route for the reason perhaps that it is perfect for your needs, we have a Website Builder plan that can allow you to DIY (Do-It-Yourself). Once you purchase the plan, everything you’ll need to get up and running will be available out-of-the-box and we’ll support you in every friendly way we possibly can to help you build and launch your website all by yourself.
Definitely. Every website built in these recent years should be responsive and mobile-friendly. We, like you, happen to know that around 70% of internet users browse the web on their mobile devices. So responsive and mobile-friendly is the way to go.
We should say “No problemo!”, right? But truth is, we are not supposed to know your business more than you. “So brace yourself like a man [or woman]; I will question you and you shall answer me.” †
We would correspond with you throughout the content creation process via one or more of the following media channels including:
- Telephone
- Text messaging
- Support tickets
- Twitter Direct Messaging
- WhatsApp chat
- Facebook chat
- Skype chat and calls
- Evernote Work Chat, or
- Snail mail (some kid said sending letters by post is retarded: we think he’s right). ‡
Basically, we’ll use whatever media channel works for you as long as we can communicate with you in a manner that will enable us gather relevant information about your business. Your responses will be the ingredients we will use to make a delicious content soup that will get your customers or website users finger-licking good.
† Job 38:3 (in case you’re wondering).
‡ If you choose to communicate with us via snail mail, we don’t need to remind you that your project delivery date will go up by several weeks, right? Cool!
That would be Philips, our Lead Developer & Content Strategist. He’s smart and fun. He writes code and does PR. He likes to “hear from the horse’s mouth”. Don’t worry how you’ll reach him. He’ll reach you and that’s a given.
It depends on the type of website. Some types of websites take much longer than others. E-commerce and corporate websites could take longer than blogs or portfolio websites because, for example, they require more templates to communicate the various types of content that would be put on them. Portfolio websites and simple blogs might require about 2-4 templates while bigger blogs can sometimes require even more templates than some e-commerce websites.
Another factor that can affect how soon your website can be completed is whether you want a bespoke website (like we like to roll with) or whether you just want to use a free template. By default, we’ll craft custom templates for your website. If however you want a free template, you have to ask us nicely or we might talk you out of it. If you turn out to be the more persuasive one, we might just sheepishly grab a ruddy template and whip up a quick one for you but bear in mind that we WILL NOT do any speed optimizations to guarantee you our trademark 90% or above Google PageSpeed test score. Seriously, try as you may but you won’t persuade us otherwise on this one.
A third thing to note is that your website might actually go live before we’re done. Yes, long after your website has gone live, we continue to implement your final reviewed changes and run all sorts of geeky tests on it to optimize it for performance, functionality, and of course, aesthetics. That’s when we spot and fix rebellious glitches and bugs. A little typo here, a wee snag there. This could be easier fun to do when we’re the ones who wrote the code we’re spiffing up for you, but heaven help us if it is another ruddy free template we’re hung up with. So you see why we prefer not to lose valuable time and risk brain damage, even if paid for it, on adapting free templates.
So, in all, assuming you have already provisioned us with all the assets we require to build your website and are not constituting a delay yourself, we might require 1 month to finish your website, give or take a week or two.
Holy cow! Of course it’s you. Now we think we know just why you asked that question.
Yes, for several reasons, some developers may try to keep ownership of your website credentials after building your website for you. Some would see your website as their babies —their projects. Some fear you might just contract out “their” job to another developer who will swarm like a SWAT team and evacuate their code while installing a different source code entirely, laying waste to their efforts. Some sinister ones even want to ensure that they’ve “got you” for keeps. Whatever their reasons, it should not put you in a disadvantage.
In our case, while you own your website, we keep your credentials until you request them. We only keep them for security reasons and for your convenience.
For security reasons because the average internet user sucks (no offence meant) when it comes to things like password security, one-account-one-password policy, vigilant and regular anti-virus updates, use of secure internet connections only and loads of other security measures to protect themselves online. People just don’t seem able to take out time to update themselves on knowledge on how to keep their online data and websites safe from theft or hijack. Also, if someone were attempting to steal information from your database or website, no matter how long and hard they looked in your emails, they should find “nathing”. We have sophisticated systems via which we ensure that all our client data are unique and impregnable, because believe it or not, if you are sloppy with your website credentials and your website gets compromised or hacked and your business loses credibility or customers or money, who would you turn to for help? Poor us, right?
For convenience because you don’t have to bother you pretty head about securing your website. You rather spend your time and creative juice on running your business and staying profitable while we do the security heavy-lifting for you.
However, that said, if you need your credentials at any time, be it cPanel, database, website backend, public keys, whatever. All you need to do is ask (you don’t even need to ask nicely). Tell us what you want and you’ll get it, but we will not be sending them via emails or print outs —still on that security issue. We have quick and far safer ways to send confidential data such as website credentials to you and we can’t wait to enlighten you!
How much for a house? Building a website is much like building a house. The costs depend on a lot of variables like the goal(s) of the website and what actions the users of the website would have to carry out. The cost of a corporate website which accepts online donations cannot be the same as the cost of another corporate website which publishes informational material about in-house activity.
All you need to do is to describe the functions and/or goal(s) of your website in as much detail as you can comprehend and we’ll estimate the cost and send to you usually with 24hrs or less. To tell us about your website project, use our Creative Brief form.
We accept 60% upfront for jobs over ₦100,000 and 100% upfront for jobs less than ₦100,000.
Here’s a true fact, nobody can give you the services we give you for just ₦15,000. The only thing good in our opinion about ₦15,000 websites is the domain name, if it is a good one. ₦15,000 websites are done by learners and hobbyists. No professional who knows the trade will do a website for just ₦15,000, except the work is a pro bono work or a “to fulfil all righteousness” of having a website kind of work.
If you are looking to:
- Impact the internet with your business,
- Build an indelible online presence,
- Reach more prospective customers,
- Engage users,
- Boost your brand,
- Load your website lightning fast on mobile devices,
- Save users’ bandwidth costs,
- Gather demographic information about your users,
- Rank on search engines,
- Appear on Google Maps when people search for your product or service,
- Give users a memorable and wanna-come-back experience,
- and lots more;
Basically, if the success of your business, brand, project, or personality is worth more than ₦15,000 to you, then a worthwhile investment in that cause is in order. A ₦15,000 website is therefore not in your league because it cannot achieve the above features which require years of expertise and time to implement. The old saying “Time is money” still holds true.
So, for that professional touch to your aspiring or prestigious online outfit, we have good news: you’ve found the right guys for the job. Let’s get started.
Yes. All the websites we develop are built with scalability and flexibility in mind. If you want to update the design or content yourself, we’ll provide you with every support you’ll need from us. Whether you want to use the services of another developer, or you want us to update the designs for you, we’ll work with you all the way.
If you want us to do it for you, we’ll charge you a discounted redesign fee and get it done.
If you’ve hired another developer to do it, we’ll provide you (not the developer) with all the information the developer will require to implement your redesigned changes for you. Bear in mind however under this arrangement that this would mean that we have yielded any functions, updates and other maintenance tasks we might be carrying out regularly on your website over to a third party and would void any further design and content updates you might require from us. We will not continue to offer you website support services (except hosting related support) once a third-party developer implements any updates to your website. We have this policy in place to avoid unneccesary friction as two captains clearly cannot steer same ship.
Of course! What else do we care about besides helping you out? We must warn you though, this kind of arrangement can sometimes be tricky. Which is why we may ask you lots of questions first like:
- What happened to the other developer?
- Did he die?
- Did she quit the industry for acting?
- Is she on a 3-month honeymoon?
- Is the developer or webmaster still actively involved in maintaining your website?
Questions like these could help us better understand your relationship with the developer and tread softly when we come in to help you.
There are also other scenarios to consider such as:
- What if the developer refuses to give up your website credentials which will enable us update or manage your website for you?
- What if you pissed them off?
- What if they pissed you off?
- What intellectual property contracts did you sign with them?
- What if you breached the contract?
- What if they breached the contract?
- What if…? Whatever! Bottom line is you want out of that relationship for some reason. Breaks ups can be messy and we’ll try our best to salvage your heart in one piece without getting physical for your sake. Ehem!
This can go either of two ways. To save time and money, we’d rather move your website over to our own servers, where we can keep a closer eye on your data in a more secure environment where we have total control. On the other hand, if you’re still attached to your former partner, developer well, we may still be able to manage your website for you but that will be totally dependent on how much credentials † you already were able to collect from your developer, or how much they’re willing to let up. So you see, tricky init?
† By credentials we mean usernames, passwords, and other unique identifiers like EPP codes (*eye roll*) that will enable us gain access to your account and manage it for you.
