How much does a website cost?
Since we design and develop custom websites, every website is different and costs can vary widely - from a thousand dollars to tens of thousands. Building a website is much like building a home: "square footage" (in this case the size of the website) and "upgrades" (features such as interactivity and shopping carts) can greatly increase costs. The only way we can give you a fair estimate is by communicating with you to determine your needs and desires.

How can I help myself save money on a custom website?
Any preparatory work you can do for the site will help us to save time, and therefore save you money. For example, providing us with text that we can copy & paste; photos - either ready to use or ready for us to optimize; your company logo in digital form, etc.

Do you recommend having a site built completely in Flash?
While Flash can make websites interesting and visually appealing, we don't recommend building your entire site in Flash - or using it extensively in your site, for that matter.  A few of the reasons are:  85% of Americans are still on dial-up and the large size of a typical Flash site will usually result in a dial-up visitor leaving the site before it loads; Flash content isn't accessible by iPhones and other cell phones with internet access, resulting in visitors seeing a blank page; and a Flash document is set to be a specific size, so all pages on the site have to fit that size and many will require scrolling from within the page - a turnoff to visitors.

How can I register a domain name?
Visit www.networksolutions.com to determine if the name you want is available. If it is, you can register it yourself at that time, or we can register it on your behalf.

Where can I host my website?
Glerin works closely with several hosting companies and you can host with us or with any other company that you wish. It is easier for us to take care of technical details if you host with one of the companies that we frequently work with, simply because we're familiar with their hosting arrangements, we know their servers meet our requirements, and it eliminates having to deal with other parties; having said that, we also work with clients who host through other companies. We will need to verify that the servers meet our technical requirements, and will need the account login information in order to be able to upload files to your space.  If you want special features on your site that will require programming languages other than html (for example, shopping carts, databases, forms, etc.) you will need to make sure that any hosting company you sign up with has the required software installed on their servers.

Can you guarantee me a first-page ranking in Google?
No, and even Google doesn't make such guarantees for participants in it's Google AdWords program.  Having said that, it's much better to have a high ranking for a very specific search term than for a broad search term, because matching a specific search term means you're more likely to meet the needs of the visitor than if they had searched for a broad term.  For example, searching for the word gardening returns 65,600,000 matches; searching for flower gardening returns 13,100,000 matches, searching for heirloom rose gardening returns 146,000 matches, and searching for hardy heirloom rose gardening returns 20,200 matches.  The visitor who reaches your site after the most specific search is much more likely to actually be looking for the content you're providing than the visitor who reaches it using a broad search; in this case, gardening could apply to anything from vegetable gardening, to organic gardening, herb gardening, etc.  Strive for high rankings in specific search areas and your traffic will be "prequalified" for what your site has to offer.

I want to sell online but don't know where to begin; can you help?
We have developed many online stores, and can not only build your store but also provide consulting as to setting up your merchant services account, managing fulfillment, sales tax issues, etc.

What about newsletter systems?
There are many hosted newsletter services available, but clients who are on our content management system can have a newsletter system installed within the content management system - giving your newsletters a whole new level of functionality.  For example, you could set up a "smart newsletter" to send once per week, and to automatically include the most recent articles in your News section; you can also have your newsletters automatically published on your website, so visitors are able to read back issues - which will often result in their subscribing, if they like what they read.