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Frequently-asked questions

We understand that commissioning a new or improved website raises a lot of questions and concerns. Naturally you want to have all the available information at your fingertips.

To help you, we’ve created this Frequently Asked Questions section to cover the major stages in the process. We hope that it will help to illuminate the whole business and put your mind at rest.

But this is just the beginning – we welcome questions and will be happy to discuss your options and help you decide whether our services are right for you. Please do get in touch if there is anything else you want to ask.

  1. What content should I have on my site?
  2. How do I update my site? Is it a lot of work?
  3. What do I need to get my site set up?
  4. What is your background?
  5. What is SEO and what do you do about it?
  6. How will you work with me?
  7. What is WordPress and why do you use it?
  8. But how can it be any good if it’s free?
  9. Who else uses WordPress?
  10. How secure is my site if I can log in over the web?
Question: What content should I have on my site?
Answer: We know the process of gathering content can be daunting, so we’re here to help. We are experienced copywriters and our packages do include content creation in their pricing, whether it’s rewriting existing promotional material and webpages, or coming up with new copy. One of the ways we might do this is to interview you over the phone, make notes and create text from the resulting conversation.
Question: How do I update my site? Is it a lot of work?
Answer: Updating one of our sites is very easy and you should be able to do it yourself with about the level of difficulty involved in common office software such as Open Office or Microsoft Word. We don’t believe you should have to call on expert help or pay an expensive retainer to do this simple task. Most of our packages are based on a content management system that you can log into using any web browser. For three-star packages and above we use WordPress which we believe is the ideal choice for running most websites. We supply all clients with a personalised user guide showing how to perform all common tasks in quick and easy steps.
Question: What do I need to get my site set up?
Answer: Our packages do not include domain names (such as http://www.onlineability.net) or hosting – that’s where you rent space on a server to run your site. The reason for that is that most of our clients already have these services sorted out. Also they are key business assets which are far better under your own control. However we will be happy to advise you on arranging them, including choosing a domain name and suggestions for companies to use that we or our previous clients have found reliable and easy to work with. You will need to budget for these moderate but recurring costs and your web hosting will need to be capable of operating a database-driven website – something we can easily check out for you if you are in any doubt.
Question: What is your background?
Answer: We’re journalists turned web professionals who decided to run our own company. We’ve years of experience designing and running websites and we understand the business inside-out. On this site there’s a lot of information about us and the company’s previous work that you can find by following the ‘who we are and how to find us’ link from the top navigation bar. We offer you a friendly and professional service designed to get you up and running on your own and not constantly reliant on us. We want you to leave us with a website you’re very pleased with and completely confident about using.
Question: What is SEO and what do you do about it?
Answer: SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the art of getting good rankings for web pages in Google and other search engines. We believe the only sound basis for this is to build a well-coded site that is properly presented for search engines to index. We do this, and our sites work even better because we apply the discipline of good information architecture, a step in the development process that some designers and developers leave out altogether. Inside WordPress the common SEO tasks such as adding clear titles, categories and tags, are made very easy to ensure every page is well-optimised. However we do not make promises such as “We will get you on the first page of Google.” We believe these promises are often achieved by unethical methods with a high risk of earning your site penalties and are hard to achieve for any length of time in an ever-changing environment.
Question: How will you work with me?
Answer: We use a project management system called BaseCamp that we have found is very effective for communicating with clients. We will create a secure login allowing you to easily leave us messages and upload any items like pictures, copy or logos that we need to create your site. This is private, it dispenses with the uncertainty of email and it means we both have a record of the process of developing your site. Of course, this doesn’t mean good, old-fashioned things like picking up the phone don’t work as well.
Question: What is WordPress and why do you use it?
Answer: We think that WordPress is the most effective content management system available for the majority of websites. It was developed as a blogging tool, and this is how most people know it, but it is also a powerful system for managing a website. It is a type of software called open-source which means it is free for anyone to use with no strings attached – and we are not allowed to sell you a copy. What we actually sell is our services in setting up and customising WordPress for your needs. This means we are able to offer high-quality work at extremely competitive rates because you won’t be paying for an expensive software package that will then have ongoing costs if it is to be kept licenced and up-to-date.
Question: But how can it be any good if it’s free?
Answer: WordPress is very widely-used and is maintained by a large group of developers who work on it because they believe it is a good and efficient way to make software and to run websites. It has been in use for six years and so is very well-established. Advantages include ongoing free updates as it is continually improved, all of which you can add with a few mouse clicks. Users also have much more input into developing new features than they would with a proprietary software company. Of course, there are pros and cons to everything, and the open-source development process can mean that code is not written as efficiently as in a commercial environment because many different people are collaborating on it. However, in our experience, this is only likely to matter in circumstances that most sites don’t experience. Our best recommendations are that we use WordPress for all our own sites, including this one. And that we have completed a big project for a City of London regulator that sits quite happily on a WordPress platform.
Question: Who else uses WordPress?
Answer: The short answer is, the Prime Minister! The longer answer is that all sorts of people, businesses, and other organisations who want a simple but versatile platform for their website are adopting WordPress. Here are some examples:

And here are some that we have built ourselves:

Oh – and this site runs on it, too. One of most telling reassurances we can give you is that it’s what we use ourselves to run our company website and a number of other online ventures.

Question: How secure is my site if I can log in over the web?
Answer: One of the best features of WordPress is that users receive free ongoing updates that address any security issues that turn up. As long as you keep it updated, which is a very easy process, your site will be very secure – as long as you have taken basic precautions like setting a unique username and difficult-to-guess password. There are also powerful inbuilt measures to address problems like spammers and people who try to reuse your content without asking.