Common questions
The questions people ask before they hire us.
Including the awkward ones. If your question is not here, ask it in the planner — the initial consultation is free and costs you nothing to find out whether we are a fit.
Cost and payment
What it costs, when you pay, and what happens if the scope changes.
- Do I have to pay upfront?
- The initial consultation is completely free. We do require a 50% deposit before the site is built, with the balance due at launch. Nothing is payable to find out whether we are a fit, and the deposit only comes into it once you have a written scope and a price you have agreed to.
- What does a website cost?
- Launch One-Page is $300 and Launch Five-Page is $500, both one-time, with Managed Hosting & Care from $50 a month after launch. Business Pro, which bundles the five-page site with a CMS and analytics setup, is $1,000. Every price is published on the site along with what it excludes, so there is no quote-only pricing to negotiate.
- Is the first consultation really free?
- Yes, and it includes an honest look at what you already have. If your existing site only needs three fixes rather than a rebuild, we will say so. A consultation that always concludes you need the most expensive option is a sales call, not a consultation.
- Are there any ongoing costs?
- Managed Hosting & Care is $50 a month for a static site or $75 for a CMS site, and it covers hosting, SSL, deployment care and a uptime check plus a small allowance of assistance time. Your domain renews separately, usually $15–25 a year, paid directly by you to your registrar. Everything else — SEO packages, the article plan — is optional and separately priced.
- What happens if I want something outside the agreed scope?
- We quote it separately before doing it, and you decide. Fixed scope is what keeps a $300 project a $300 project; the alternative is the open-ended arrangement where nobody knows what the final invoice will be. Additional pages are $100 each and content entry is $75 an hour, both published rates.
- Do you offer payment plans?
- The standard arrangement is 50% deposit and 50% on launch, which for most projects is a few weeks apart. If a different split would make a project workable, ask during the consultation — it is a conversation, not a policy.
How a project runs
Timelines, what we need from you, and how revisions work.
- How long does it take to build my website?
- Two to four weeks for a one-page or five-page launch, once your content is in hand. The build itself is a matter of days — what sets the calendar is how quickly text and photographs arrive, which is why we send a specific list rather than asking you to 'send content'.
- What do you need from me?
- Your services and prices, the questions customers ask you most often, photos of your actual work, your logo, and access to your domain. If writing is not your thing, a six-minute voice memo answering our questions works better than a document — we transcribe it and write from that.
- Do you write the copy?
- We structure and write the pages from the raw material you supply. What we cannot invent is your prices, your process, your local jobs and what makes you different from the business down the road — those have to come from you, and they are the parts that make copy convincing.
- How many revisions do I get?
- One consolidated revision round on the launch packages, and two on Business Pro. Consolidated means all your feedback in a single pass rather than three rounds of one change each, which is faster for everyone. Further rounds are quoted at the published hourly rate if you want them.
- What if I do not have any photos?
- Start taking them this week on your phone — good light and before-and-after pairs from matching positions beat a professional shoot of the wrong things. We publish a tutorial on exactly how, and we will tell you which five shots your site actually needs.
- Can you rebuild my existing website without losing my Google rankings?
- Yes, and it is the part of a rebuild that matters most. Every old URL with traffic, rankings or inbound links gets mapped to its closest equivalent on the new site and redirected permanently, then tested one by one after launch. Rebuilds that lose traffic almost always lost it here.
After launch
Who maintains it, what you can change, and what happens next.
- Can I update the website myself?
- You can if you want to, and often you should not want to. Most owners need four or five things editable — prices, hours, photos, a promotion banner, articles — rather than the whole application, and a CMS Setup at $350 wires up exactly those fields. If your content genuinely changes a few times a year, paying hourly for changes is cheaper than maintaining an editing layer you rarely open.
- What does Managed Hosting & Care actually include?
- Hosting, SSL, deployment care, a basic uptime check, and up to 15 minutes of minor assistance a month on the static tier or 30 minutes on the CMS tier. Work beyond that is quoted or billed at $75 an hour in 30-minute increments, always approved by you first.
- Am I locked into a contract?
- No. Care is monthly and you own the site, so you can take it elsewhere. The practical constraint is that hosting has to live somewhere — if you leave, you need a new home for the site, and we will hand over what you need to move it.
- What if my website breaks?
- Tell us and we fix it. Uptime monitoring means we usually know before you do. Sites built the way we build them have very little that can break — there is no database to corrupt and no plugin to conflict — which is a large part of why the care fee is what it is.
Ownership and access
Who owns what, and what you can take with you.
- Do I own my website?
- You own the website and content you pay for, and your domain is registered in your own name from day one. Selected CMS access makes specific content fields editable rather than the entire application — the code, layout and accessibility patterns that keep the site fast and reliable stay maintained by us. That is stated up front rather than discovered later.
- Who owns my domain name?
- You do. We register it in your name, in an account you control, with auto-renew on. A domain held in a supplier's account is the single most common way small businesses lose control of their web presence, and there is no good reason for it.
- What happens to my enquiries and customer data?
- They are yours. Enquiries are stored in your own system and are exportable. Analytics and Search Console properties are created under your ownership with us added as a user, so your history stays with you if we part ways.
- What if I want to move to another provider?
- You take your domain, your content, your data and your accounts, and we hand over what is needed to run the site elsewhere. We would rather you left cleanly than stayed because leaving was made difficult.
Local SEO
What we can influence, what we cannot, and how long it takes.
- Can you guarantee I will rank first on Google?
- No, and nobody honestly can. Search visibility depends on competition, location, website quality, reputation, reviews, content and Google's own systems, none of which any provider controls. What we report is the actions taken and the inputs we can measure — profile views, calls, impressions, clicks and positions across your service area.
- How long does local SEO take to work?
- Profile and category fixes often show within two to four weeks; reviews, citations and content compound over three to six months. Month one usually looks like nothing happened, because month one is foundation work that search engines have not recrawled yet. Anyone promising results in a fortnight is describing either a coincidence or a violation.
- What do the SEO packages cost?
- SEO Foundation is $199 setup and $149 a month, Local Visibility is $349 and $299, and Growth Local SEO is $649 and $549. Each one is listed with exactly what it covers, so you can see what the extra buys rather than taking it on trust.
- Do I need SEO if I already have a Google Business Profile?
- The profile is the highest-value thing to get right and most businesses have completed about a third of it. If yours is fully filled in, actively maintained and collecting reviews steadily, you may not need a package at all — you may just need someone to tell you that honestly.
- Can you get me ranking in Windsor or London?
- In the ordinary organic results, yes, with genuinely local pages. In the map pack, honestly, it is much harder from a Chatham base — distance from the searcher is weighted heavily and no page changes where your business is. Providers who promise map placement in distant cities are usually describing fake locations, which eventually costs you the profile.
Is this a fit?
Who we work well with, and who we do not.
- What kind of businesses do you work with?
- Local businesses in Chatham-Kent and Southwestern Ontario that need a professional site without an agency-scale budget — trades, professional services, retail and hospitality. The launch packages suit a business with a clear service and a clear next step for a visitor.
- What do you not do?
- Ecommerce stores, custom web applications, unlimited-revision design projects, logo design, photography and copywriting from nothing. Some of those we can quote separately; the rest are genuinely better served by a specialist, and we will say so rather than take the work.
- Do we have to meet in person?
- Not necessarily, though for local businesses it is often the fastest way to get to the useful part. A phone call or video call works equally well, and everything after the first conversation happens by email and message.
- Why should I use a local provider instead of a website builder?
- For some businesses you should not, and we will tell you when a builder is the right call. Where a local build earns its cost is when the site is a genuine source of customers rather than a formality: speed, structured data, redirect handling and local search work are all things a template does not do for you.
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Websites, managed care and local SEO for Chatham-Kent & Southwestern Ontario. No deposit is due until you have a written scope and a price you have agreed to.