faq

There are many reasons why you may need a website:

• To help advertise and promote your business.
• To help sell your products.
• To increase customer base.
• To provide better customer service and information to your clients.
• To be able to post thousands of pages on the Internet in full color, and simply direct your customers to it, instead of having very expensive catalogs printed out, and then having to pay to mail them.
• To help direct people to your store or business.
• To inform and teach your employees and customers about new ideas or information about your company.
• To provide free advertising for your business, as many search engines are still free to submit to, or very cheap.
• To stay competitive in today's market place. A website creates a professional image for your company. The web evens out the playing field in business.
• You should get your domain name before it is taken by your Competitors. They are being snatched up as you read this, and when someone else has your name they may keep it.
• With an effective website you can increase sales without increasing employees.
• Whether you are "a one-man show or a 10,000-employee corporate giant; if you don't have a website, you are losing business to other companies that do.
• Many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, your Web site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer.
• It may not be enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional-looking website if you want to be taken seriously.

A Web developer, strictly speaking, builds and maintains websites. However, a lot of people who create a site from start to finish -- designing graphics and web pages, figuring out the site map, then producing the site -- call themselves Web developers, so it's a confusing term. People who conceptualize and plan out the site are actually Web designers. Developers are the people who use some form of HTML to build the actual pages. A Web developer's other responsibilities could include optimizing graphics for the Web and producing rich media such as Flash, streaming media, or online audio.

We create websites for clients who are local as well as out of state. By using the Internet, email and the telephone, it is possible to communicate effectively with clients in any location.

That would depend on the goals of your website. If you run a business website you would include as much information about your products or services that your customers would need to purchase from you.

There are quite a few factors that are going to affect the ultimate cost of your website. These factors include how many pages you are going to have, if you will sell products on your website, the graphic work involved, and how interactive your future website will be. You will also need web hosting and domain name registration.
In a nutshell, you need three things to get a website online: someone to create the website, a domain name (web address like www.mywebsite.com), and hosting (someone to upload your web files on a web server and maintain them).
Our rates are very competitive. We discuss how your website can help you with your business goals. Once we have idea of what you need, we provide you with estimates.
The price of a website varies depending on the size, complexity and bandwidth required.  Propel 15 Media tries to meet the budget of our clients. Fill in our contact form, and we will figure out a rough estimate for you within 24 hours.

The time frame is determined by the size of your website, the complexity of your site design, and our current client design schedule.  Once we have completed your website, we need to resolve your domain name to our servers and upload your files. On an average, this process takes from 48 to 72 hours. If we registered your domain name, then we could have your web site online within 24 hours.

What is a URL?
It stands for "universal resource locator". This is the address typed in to view your web page on the Internet. For example, you would type in http://www.yourwebsite.com to access your home page.

A domain name is the address for a web page. Just like your street address tells people where your house is located, a domain name tells a web browser where your website is located. You need a domain name so people can find your website. Domain names are regulated and overseen by ICANN, the organization that is responsible for certifying companies as domain name registrars. These companies charge a yearly fee for domain name registration.

Web hosting is renting a space on a web server. In order for people to access your website, your web files need to reside on a web server. A web server is a computer that delivers (serves up) web pages. For example, if you enter the URL http://www.yourcompany.com in your browser, this sends a request to the server whose domain name is yourcompany.com. The server then fetches the requested page and sends it to your browser.

If you or someone else has registered your domain name, you will have to change the name servers to point to our web servers. The name servers are the computers that contain the information relating to your domain name, including the address of the web server that contains your web files. There is a primary name server and a secondary name server. Transferring your domain name essentially means supplying the name servers with the address of the web servers that contain your web files so web users will be directed to your web site.

Just fill out our contact form and we will take care of everything. We will transfer your domain name along with all of your existing web sites content.

Yes, of course.

Maintenance is a fee paid monthly to keep your site updated with new content that you provide. Most good web sites have new content updated regularly. Fresh content is what will keep your visitors coming back.

Once your site has been submitted to the top Search Engines they may require several weeks, or even months to actually spider and list your website in their directory. How fast your site is listed depends on each individual Search Engines database update schedule. Watch your server traffic logs for visiting spiders.

When you type keywords into the text box of a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, the search engine combs through its huge databases to find web pages that result in a match. The goal of search engine optimization is to get your key website information into search engine databases so web users can find your web site.
There are hundreds of search engines. Search engines are different and use different procedures to compile their information. For example, Google develops its databases by crawling the web with spiders, which are automated programs that travel from one website to another collecting information to bring back to their gigantic databases. Yahoo, on the other hand, compiles its information by human and computer resources.
Search engines look at certain parts of the source code of your web page to extract its information. By optimization of your source code—placing keywords and phrases in key locations and structuring your website with search engines in mind—you improve your odds at being found.

It is very unlikely that any company can truthfully state that they can guarantee a high position on search engines. This depends on several different factors, some of which are not always under the direct control of the web designer. For example, we can put key words on your site, and use other tricks to get higher positioning, but all search engines have millions of people using the same key words and position techniques. This is not to say that you will not get a high rating. We will use all the tricks of the trade, in order to get your site high on the charts. We are also on your site, as we will have a link to our homepage. Therefore, it is also our goal to get your site listed as high as possible. There are other, more important ways of getting traffic to your site, and these are ways you are probably already using: advertise it. If you have business cards made place your web address on them, use your personalized e-mail with your domain name on it, such as sales@yoursite.com. If you are sending flyers to a customer, place your web address on it. Also, advertise in the paper, and exchange links with fellow web site owners. There are many factors in creating traffic to your web site.

Yes! For example, if your name is George and your domain name is whereisgeorge.com, you can get an email account named George@whereisgeorge.com. We can set up email forwarding or web-based email.

Web-based email is accessed from a website that contains your email messages. Hotmail is an example of web-based email. Web-based email gives you the ability to send and receive email without the need to configure your email client. The benefits of this include the ability to access your email anywhere, on any computer as long as you have web access.

If you have decided you want a website or have any questions, the best way to get started is to call us, email us or fill out our contact form. We'll get started immediately!

We are based just outside of Chicago, Illinois. However, we design and create websites for businesses throughout the country. All of our services can be delivered via the Internet, or mail. If you are not happy with the quality or prices of web services in your area, contact us!