Q: I am looking for a web design solution. I run a XYZ Products Trading company. I designed a simple web site in-house. I need a more sophisticated design for my new project including: Database, mailing lists, news retrieval, BBS, membership, search engine. What can you offer?

A: I visited your preliminary site to get a feel for what you are aiming for. We can handle all of the above. What do you want to keep in your database? Membership data? Product information? Do you wish to accept orders for products over the Web? What do you mean by 'news retrieval'? For a 'BBS', the terminology these days is 'discussion group' or 'forum'. You can do that either via a local USENET newsgroup or via a web-based discussion group.

Q: I need feedback on the following: How do I begin the process?

A: Our approach is to perform an overall requirements analysis. The analysis would result in a deliverable which included a specific plan for implementing each of the features of your web site and a cost estimate.

Q: Once the goals are set, what is next?

A: Once the requirements analysis is finished and approved by you, we do the job or you decide to use our plan and hire someone else to do the actual work. If you go with us, we would be interacting with you as we go to make refinements to the spec, get your feedback, etc.

Q: What is the cost?

A: Our rate is $120/hour for short term projects (one to a few weeks). For longer term contracts, we will negotiate a rate. The overall cost will depend on the exact scope of what you need (what does your database do, how sophisticated is the discussion group, etc.). The requirements analysis for a site such as yours would take about one week (which cost $4800). The site development would take an amount of time proportional to the complexity of the site. An example site which we developed is: www.Wednights.com . A site like this requires about four weeks of development effort, including the backend database. Of course, there will be follow-up work required to make adjustments, add minor features, etc., which would usually mean an additional week or two. And we would offer a low cost maintenance contract for ongoing maintenance to upgrade software, make minor improvements, etc.

Q: Who determines the size?

A: That is a function of what you want to do and how much you wish to invest. In general, I recommend you keep things simple, two or three levels of web links at the most, with four or five major sections to the site.

Q: Do you provide marketing strategies?

A: We have marketing personnel who can assist with your marketing. This would be an additional effort and budgeted and invoiced as a separate project, although we would, of course, work with marketing people (whether they be yours or ours) to refine the marketing aspects of the site.

Q: How long is the process?

A: As explained above, it depends on the exact scope of your requirements, but my feeling is that your site would be a one to two month effort from beginning of requirements analysis to delivery of an initial live site.