Frequently Asked Questions

Since the 1990s, the Internet has offered a large variety of opportunities for increasing business efficiency. To not use these opportunities nowadays means to miss competitive advantage and wide market possibilities. The main advantages of having a website are:

• Building a website is a one-time expense. Even with monthly maintenance costs and website refurbishment, it is much cheaper than hiring an employee to do the same job.
• Websites help lower costs to the company/brand/group by saving on advertisement expenses, saving time for employees as well as reducing administrative tasks. Expenses for website support in the Internet aren’t comparable to advertising costs in offline mass media.
• Your website is working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Carrying out the functions of a skilled employee, the website doesn’t require a salary, days off or vacations.
• The online audience is global, immense and is constantly increasing. Having a website gives you unlimited access to international clients.
• Recent trends show that consumers prefer to look up information online rather than phone or visit in person. A website gives consumers the ability to read about goods and services promptly and completely.
• You can do business while you sleep. Websites have the capability to sell products from your website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Websites do not have any geographic limitations. As long as there is access to the internet, everything is possible! The magic of websites is that someone online in one part of the world can read about businesses anywhere in the world. This increases potential markets for all businesses.

Website hosting refers to the system used by which your website is available to your potential visitors for viewing. Your website is stored on a remote computer, called a server, with a direct connection to the internet. It is set up to deliver web pages when anyone attempts to link to your site via any computer connected to the internet world wide.

Although you can host your own website it’s often too expensive to do so effectively. It is usually more economical to pay a hosting company a nominal monthly fee. A good hosting company will have technicians available 24/7 that can quickly fix any problems that may arise thus mitigating costly down time.

A domain name is your identity on the internet. This is what someone types in to access your website. It is similar to a phone number however it can be more meaningful as it can be comprised of words. A domain name is a necessity and we can help you choose an effective name that will help you succeed on the internet.

At 4 Rivers Web Design, we pride ourselves in getting our customers the most bang for their buck. Contact us today for a quote!

This depends on the purpose of your website, what you want to convey and what your competition is doing. If you plan to sell products online, you have to inspire a level of trust to your visitors before they feel comfortable to share their credit card information on your website.

A large number of small businesses wish to convey a sense that they are established and no different from their competitors who are already established and trusted. The lower levels are suitable for situations where conveying trust is not as important.

You should also consider at what level is your competition. Some industries are known for having a very low level of appeal on their websites, if this is the case you only need to match them to be on par or slightly exceed their level to give you a competitive edge.

These are the words you expect a person to enter in a search to find your site. When a web “surfer” uses a search engine, they type “key words” into a form, and the search engine returns a list of web pages that match those keywords. A string of keyword is referred to as a “Key Phrase”.

Keyword analysis is the process of analyzing search engine data to find the best balance between the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your website and the best potential competitive niche.

No. Search Engine rankings change constantly as new sites become indexed, old sites are removed and existing sites work to improve their position. The Search Engines frequently change their ranking procedures which can also have a major impact on how they rank. Maintaining and improving rankings can only be achieved through continuous, long-term, search engine optimization activity. This is why it is not always easy to determine whether guaranteed listings or search engine optimization will produce a better return on investment