Frequently Asked Pricing Questions

• Why should you budget for an experienced brand and logo development firm?
• Why should you budget for qualified site development?

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Why should you budget for an experienced brand and logo development firm?

Our prospective clients often ask this question. Our existing clients already know the answer. Logo design is more than an image you place next to your business name. If done correctly, a well researched and thought out brand identity can:

• Return far more than the initial investment through additional business.
• Attract your ideal target market.
• Attract other professional vendors.
• Make your business appear established and trustworthy.
• Work in a wide range of mediums, such as embroideries, faxes, online and in print.
• Save you $,000s in printing and advertising costs due to simplicity and colour choices.
• Avoid legal and licensing concerns with exclusive and hand-sketched designs.

More than anything else, experienced brand developers can deliver advice that is crucial to your business. We have consulted with some of Australia's leading advertising agencies. This experience in brand management can greatly impact the profitability of your business.

If you still feel that a cheap design would suffice, here is a short summary of why low cost logo providers should be avoided altogether:

• Designs that lack research (and designs that appear cheap) can cost you more in lost business.
• Little to no research is done regarding the direction and audience of your business.
• Low cost designers do not have the experience to deliver branding advice. If they did, they would not be competing on price, but on quality instead.
• No sketching takes place, and images in the public domain are used instead. This is how elaborate and detailed images are delivered in such a short time frame (like 48 hours).
• You are open to licensing issues and litigation by the original illustrator of the artwork (who are typically unaware that their images are being used for branding purposes).
• Cheap logo designers are in the business of quantity, not quality.
• Low cost providers do not have the resources to hire professional and experienced graphic designers.
• Low cost providers use templates and clipart, and some plagiarise from other brands - despite claims of exclusivity and unique artwork.
• You "share" a logo with hundreds of others without knowing.
• You are open to legal action by those trading with the image before you.
• You will NOT be able to obtain a Trademark to protect your identity, despite such claims by the low cost provider.

A two word summary of why you should avoid cheap firms: "short-cuts". Low cost providers use templates with abstract images, and tack on the company name next to an image.

This may seem acceptable, until you need to apply for a Trademark. With hundreds of other individuals who have an identical template based logo, your Trademark application will not be successful and will potentially open you up to legal action by others who are already trading with your logo.

Without the resources to hire experienced graphic designers, this is how low cost design firms operate profitably.

The Design Shed, and other professional design houses employ experienced and artistic graphic designers that are paid well to sketch out ideas, think about styles, branding and image. We research the colours and imagery used by competing businesses to allow you to stand out, without stepping on a legal minefield. Our designs are created from the ground-up. Each design is unique to our client and is created solely for their business.

We ask that you think long term. As your business grows, and the awareness of your brand spreads, it will be re-assuring to know that you OWN your image.

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Why should you budget for qualified site development?

Over the years, low cost and inexperienced web designers have saturated the market. Software like Dreamweaver and FrontPage have paved the way to thousands of so called "web designers" who lack the technical and artistic experience required to create reliable, standards compliant and usable websites. Without the experience to compete on product, these individuals compete on price.

A short list of reasons why you should avoid low cost website designers:

1. Lack of experience and qualification
2. Bait & Switch
3. Lack of communication
4. Absent Without Leave
5. Third-World Outsourcing
6. No Contracts
7. Graphic Designers are NOT Web/Software Developers
8. No Understanding of Search Engines and/or Search Engine Optimization
9. Baseless guarantees of Ranking #1 in Google
10. No Understanding of Usability Guidelines
11. No Understanding of Legal Obligations
12. No Understanding of Browser Compatibility
13. Lack of Testing

1. Lack of experience and qualification

Qualified and experienced software engineers are well paid. The Design Shed, and other professional organisations, pay good money to keep good people. Low cost providers are predominantly freelancing students who are understandably attempting to juggle between a busy study schedule and your website.

2. Bait & Switch

Frequently the initial affordable cost of the website may appeal to you, however this is usually done to draw clients in before hidden charges begin accruing. For example, large development houses often include a warranty period (as with all Design Shed contracts) that allows our clients to benefit from support long after the site has been created. In contrast, low cost providers charge disproportional amounts for fixing small issues (to recoup their finances).

As we have taken over projects from low cost developers, the Design Shed has also witnessed on numerous occasions, the deliberate crippling of site functionality by the low cost designer/developer in an effort to solicit additional maintenance fees. This practise is unethical and diminishes the design industry as a whole.

3. Lack of communication

As low cost providers are usually part time freelancers, you are often limited to part-time communication. Attempting to contact low cost developers during business hours is futile. This may not be an issue during development, however if you need urgent support you may be disappointed.

4. Absent Without Leave

At the Design Shed, we have heard countless stories from our clients of designers and developers "disappearing" midway through a project. Never to be seen or heard from again.

Low cost developers are notorious for burying their head in the sand if something goes wrong. In truth, they are not paid well enough to care.

Low cost developers prioritise website creation as a "side-job". You may find yourself in a boat without a paddle when your project is no longer interesting enough to warrant answering the phone.

5. Third World / Off Shore Outsourcing

In an effort to compete solely on price, low cost providers outsource their design and coding to third world countries. Although this creates some income for the less fortunate, it is also exploitive.

With third world developers working at a rate as little as $6 AUD per hour, the quality of design and development is extremely diminished. Furthermore, the qualification and experience of the developer is entirely unknown.

In contrast, businesses like Design Shed screen, interview and hire local talent. We have training programmes to keep our developers up to date with best practices, and have stringent quality checklists to make sure that all design and software development meets our standards.

Put simply, we charge our clientele more and deliver higher quality services rather than compromise quality for affordability.

6. No Contracts

The words "No Contracts" are sometimes used to advertise developers in a favourable light. However, no contract also means no protection... for you.

Low cost providers do not have Standard Contracts for several reasons:

1. They do not understand their legal obligations
2. They do not employ legal advice to create a Standard Service Agreement (required by Australian IT services)
3. The provider does not want to be "tied-down" if things go wrong
4. The provider wants to introduce charges that were not initially agreed upon.
5. The provider has little control over the scope of a project, and can introduce financial penalties for any changes without discussing them first with the client.
6. The provider has no obligation to contact you, or provide progress updates, or answer his/her phone when things go wrong.
7. The provider does not want to be tied down to a deadline.

The Design Shed employs a Standard Service Agreement with all of our clients. Our contracts specify:

1. Project Scope
2. Deadlines
3. All Costs Up-Front
4. Warranty Periods (after development)
5. Regular Progress Updates
6. Accountability and Adherence to Deadlines
7. Testing and Best Practices

The next time you contact a low cost provider that does not work on a Standard Contract, just remember that the Standard Agreement for Australian IT services exists to protect the client also.

7. Graphic Designers are NOT Web/Software Developers

Although highly skilled graphic designers can create visually stunning designs, there is a huge divide in skill-set between graphic designers and web/software developers.

Freelance graphic designers often provide discounted web-design rates, however the result is usually an all-Flash website (which cannot be indexed by a Search Engine like Google) or made entirely of large images (which lacks usability and frustrates individuals that rely on visual impairment software).

The Design Shed employs Graphic Designers, Software Developers and Web Application Developers. This allows us to create a visually stunning design, which is then passed onto the developers to reconstruct (taking into account Search Engines and Usability Guidelines).

8. No Understanding of Search Engines and/or Search Engine Optimization

A website that ranks highly in the search engines is like a shop-front on a popular street. If the location is bad, then nobody knows about it - no matter how great the store might be.

Many clients assume that the design of a website is the most important element. However, this is not true. The design is irrelevant if your customers cannot find you.

Low cost providers (and some freelance graphic designers) simply do not have the experience or qualification to create websites that are easily indexed by Google, MSN and Yahoo. As a result, their clients suffer from lack of visitors who are searching for particular services in their area.

Some providers even take advantage of the lack of knowledge clients have surrounding Search Engine Optimization. With promises of "high google ranking", these low cost providers usually do no optimization at all and hope that the client does not know any better.

In contrast, Design Shed and other reputable organisations provide detailed reports of exactly what has been done to optimise the website for Search Engines and how. Regardless of whether or not our client is technically savvy, we provide a Search Engine and Usability Optimization report for all of our websites.

Our clients are often surprised to see how much work is done in the background to give their customers the best chance of finding them.

9. Baseless guarantees of Ranking #1 in Google

At the other end of the spectrum of low cost providers, some claim to get you at the very top of Google. This is a dishonest practice, and cannot be guaranteed.

Google ranks websites by relevancy, keywords, inbound links, usability and the length of time that the website has been live. In addition, there are some closely guarded internal workings of Google that only a few people at Google HQ are aware of.

International organisations pay Search Engine Optimization companies millions of dollars each month in an effort to move one or two spots above a competitor. No reputable Search Engine Optimization business would guarantee #1 placement - as no such thing exists.

If a low cost website developer is capable of ranking your website in position #1 in Google, then they should be ranked #1 for the term "Web Developer".

This is a gimmick promise used to lure hopeful small businesses.

Ultimately, when the site is live and nowhere near the top ranking in Google, the low cost developer simply uses the reasoning: "It's going to take some time, but you will be at the top. Just be patient."

10. No Understanding of Usability Guidelines

Cheap site developers create websites as quickly as they can to best make use of their hourly rate. As a result, cheap websites suffer from the following issues:

1. No research into usability
2. No research into target audience
3. Images lack description (for blind software readers)
4. Flash based navigation (hinders blind software readers and search engines)
5. Text is embedded in the images (unable to select, copy or paste content)
6. Individual pages cannot be bookmarked as the whole website is one big animation.
7. Moving components onscreen that distract the reader's eye
8. Inadequate contrast between text colour and background colour
9. Contrasting colours are used without knowledge of colour blindness.

As a result of these types of issues, search engines like Google can punish the ranking of your website, as it is deemed less accessible than another website offering the same content.

11. No Understanding of Legal Obligations

Low cost developers take shortcuts. As a result:

1. Pirated software is used to create the images and code for your website
2. Images are copied from other websites without permission.
3. Templates are used without understanding the legal boundaries of the template creator's licenses.
4. Photos of models and products are used without permission from both the subject and the photographer.
5. Underlying frameworks and other people's work are not referenced in the code.
6. Purchase of domain names that may be a part of a Registered Trademark.

All of these issues can lead to a legal recourse. In an attempt to save money in the short term, you may end up with legal concerns that create a much larger financial penalty.

12. No Understanding of Browser Compatibility

Most low cost providers design for a single Web Browser: Internet Explorer.

Yet, there are dozens of popular browsers currently used by potential visitors to your website, including: AOL Explorer, Camino, Flock, Galeon, iCab, Internet Explorer for Mac, Konqueror, Mosaic, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, OmniWeb, SeaMonkey, Safari and Opera.

What most clients do not know is that their website looks broken in every other web-browser. As the Design Shed has taken over designs from low cost developers, we often get the response "I had no idea that it looked like that!" when we show our clients their existing website in other popular browsers.

The Design Shed runs extensive cross browser testing (as part of our Usability Testing process). We provide screenshots to our clients that present their website in a variety of web browsers running on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Consistency is important. If your website looks broken, it portrays the image of carelessness to your customers.

13. Lack of Testing

Professional testing teams cost around $800 AUD per day. The Design Shed utilises the TestBench team for:

1. Functional Testing
2. User Acceptance Testing
3. Load Testing, and
4. Performance Testing

This thorough level of testing is included in our pricing. The aim is to find these defects before your customers do.

On the other hand, low cost providers do little (if any) testing. Put simply, if the income derived from the development of your website is less than the cost of a professional testing team, the low cost provider is not going to bother with testing. As a result, you will receive numerous emails from customers that encounter one problem after another.

If your aim is to sell your services, or a product online, a disfunctional website will undo any trust you have built in your branding.