Why Choose FORM & FUNCTION?
If you want your website to be attractive, functional and affordable, then you’ve come to the right place. If you want it to be hand-crafted by a person who takes pride in doing a great job, who will do everything in their power to make sure you love your new website and had a fantastic experience co-creating it, then you’ve already found your ideal web developer.
There’s good reason our clients consistently refer us to their friends and family — because we’re a boutique web firm, we provide unparalleled personal service and quality. We take the time to consult you about your needs, consider your goals and craft something completely unique and custom tailored to you. That’s why no two works of FORM & FUNCTION are the same; we don’t outsource your job to some third-world country, charge you an arm and a leg to jam your content into some cookie-cutter template and then nickel and dime you for changes like so many other WordPress development companies do. Our work is art, our medium is the web. We treat each and every website as if it were our own, and savor in the joy and satisfaction of every client we work with.
Design Process
4 Steps
The first step of the process getting in touch! You can contact Kaitlin via email, phone or fill out a quote submission to get the wheels turning. You’ll hear back within a couple of days and the dialogue about your project will begin. Once Kaitlin has a good idea of your needs and goals are, she’ll provide a quote.
Basic information necessary to quote your project:
- What features you need (online sales or booking, galleries, etc.)
- What you want your website to look like
- The general scope of your site in terms of pages and products
- Any additional services (Google Apps or Analytics, mailing lists, etc.)
- When you want to begin building
- What your desired launch date is
- If you already own your domain or need to purchase one
- If you have hosting arranged
A design can be developed based on your needs and specifications or you can supply a mockup that you want turned into a website. If the design is up to FORM & FUNCTION, Kaitlin will take your input and work it into a beta website in the ‘playground’. Developing this way allows for greater creativity and collaboration between yourself and your designer, as you get to experience the site as a living web entity rather than a static image. You can request whatever changes you want throughout the process, and they’ll be integrated into the design. There’s no set limit to the number of change requests you can make (most designers limit you to two rounds of changes, for instance).
Please Note:
The production phase involves two elements: design and content, and bringing them together on the website. It is the client’s responsibility to supply all of their own text and images for use on their site. Writing/ revising text and editing images are extra services billed at an hourly rate. Uploading content is also billed hourly after the first three hours, which are gratis. Most websites are small enough that the client never pays anything for content uploading- this policy only affects larger websites with lots of pages or products to upload.
Once you’re happy with your website, it’s time to launch…
If your new website is replacing an existing one, no doubt the beta site was built on a different domain (probably in the FORM & FUNCTION playground). When we’re ready for launch, the site will be put in its rightful place, ready to be shown to the world. If your project is for a new domain, chances are the beta site was built on it in the first place.
Once you announce your new website publicly, it is considered launched and the final invoice, which includes the second half of the project price and any hourly billings, are due. Kaitlin will add your new website to the FORM & FUNCTION portfolio and present it to her networks to give it some extra traffic and attention. At this point, any testimonial that you’d like to submit about your experience working with Kaitlin or your new website is welcome and appreciated!
Now we enter the Maintenance Phase…
FORM & FUNCTION websites are powered by WordPress, a user-friendly platform designed to make updating easy. You’ll be given instructions for how to perform basic maintenance on your own site (such as upgrading your software, taking backups and posting new content), though you don’t have to do these things yourself if you want to focus on other aspects of your business or leave the web stuff to the professionals. Kaitlin offers ongoing maintenance retainers, and is also available for further development if you wish to add new features or expand your website at any time.
Read more about what it means to power your site with WordPress below…
More About WordPress Websites
Most of the websites we develop are powered by WordPress, the most popular and user-friendly CMS (content management system) available. What started out as blogging software has become capable of handling any kind of site imaginable, from online stores to slick business websites, in a user-friendly and ever-adaptable way.
Benefits of Building your Website with WordPress:
- It’s inexpensive to develop because the platform is free
- It’s inexpensive or free to maintain because there’s no ongoing cost for the platform
- You can update your own website with little to no understanding of code
- It’s based online, so you can update your site from anywhere with an internet connection
- It makes search engine optimization (SEO) easy
- It’s constantly being updated against security threats and getting new features
- Virtually every online service (social media, newsletter services, etc.) integrates directly with WordPress
- You can add features and re-design your website without changing platforms of moving your content