FAQ

General Questions

Site Design and Editing/Changing Your Site:

Credit Card and Shopping Cart Questions:

Hosting, ISP and Technical Questions:

General Questions

All of our sites come with exactly the same features. The only difference is how much work you want to do. If you would like to do most of the work then you can get a really low cost website. If you decide you would like us to do most of the work then you are looking at our Small Business Package.
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We set it up for you -- what you see when you view the sample site is exactly what you'll get when you purchase a site. The same pages, colors, pictures, text, everything. The idea is that you simply use our Easy Site Editor to replace the old text with your own, and plug in your logo, pictures, products, artwork, etc.

In order to make the site effective for your business, you'll want to add your own text, logo maybe, pictures if you have them, and info about your company. This is easy to do with our Easy Site Editor - but if you're not comfortable doing it, you can purchase an Add-On to have us do any number of things you might want.

We've priced the sites at rock-bottom for those on a budget who want a great looking site, designed, hosted, ready to use, but who want to save $$ by doing some of it themselves.

We offer Add-Ons for those who love the price, site designs, and all the features, but who want some help, or want us to do it.
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Absolutely! The reason we can offer such incredible sites for such a great price is that we use proprietary backend software that allows us to build and customize faster than other web shops.

Additionally, our pricing model puts you in control - you only pay for what you want.
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Your web site is a marketing tool for your business. Plain and simple, your #1 goal is to get someone looking at your site to make a purchase online, or to phone you or e-mail you so you can make contact and have a chance at closing a sale, no matter what business you're in.

Make sure your web site address (the URL, as in www.YourCompany.com) is printed on your business cards, answering machine, t-shirts, hats, vans, trucks, in newspaper, magazine,. phone book ads, etc. -- anywhere you put your business name, you need to start putting your web site address. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find and use your web site, so it's imperative that you add your web site address to everything that has your company name on it.

Some ways in which the web site will help your business:

• The site gives people a way to 'connect' with your company and learn about your products and services in a way that a phone book or newspaper advertisement never will.
  
  
• Your web site allows them to 'check you out' without pressure from salespeople. People may be interested in learning more about your services or products, but they may not be ready to phone you and talk to a salesperson - they're still just thinking it over.
  
  
• Your web site is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After normal business hours, instead of just an answering machine, a potential customer can get your web site address. They can go online and learn loads about your company, instead of just moving on to the next company in the phone book. Many people don' t get a chance to research new projects and things they're thinking about until after the kids are in bed, and businesses are closed. With a web site, your business is always open.
  
  
• Gather leads from potential customers. Your site allows your clients to submit requests for pricing, questions, etc. You can contact them afterward, knowing that they're good, qualified prospects for whatever you sell.
  
  
• Over 67% of Americans are online now, and this figure is always growing. Without a site, your business won't be available these people.
  
  
• Give your customers a way to connect with other people with similar interests via a web site Message Board. Try to give your customers as many reasons as possible to come back to your site.
  
  
• Try out new products and services quickly by putting them up on your site and seeing what kind of response they get. Your site is a great, very inexpensive way to see how customers react to new product ideas you have.
  
  
• Gather critical feedback from your users. Knowing your clients and what they think is CRITICAL to doing business as best you can. Ask your customers (real, or potential) to give you this important feedback via your web site.

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We set up your site within 1 business day usually, and the average site takes about 2 weeks to completion. Completion also depends on whether you have your product and page info available.

Some clients want very custom work, custom layouts created, more intensive shopping cart and store features, and depending on the complexity, they can take up to several weeks.
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No. You can add, delete, change or move text, images, pages and items in your store just about as easily as using a word processing program. Anyone can learn to do basic functions like changing text or pictures, etc. in about 5 minutes.

You'll save lots of money being able to change or edit your site on your own!
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Absolutely NOT!

We pride ourselves on the way we can get you comfortable with your site and how to edit or change it, even though you may not be very computer savvy. If you can use a word processor to type a letter, you can use our ClientReady ClientCart software to edit your site.
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ALL sites come ready to start. Then we train you over the phone on how to manage and edit your site yourself, anytime you like.

You will need to supply us with info for your pages and pictures if you need them, or we can help you get any of this information or photos as needed.
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You always get what you pay for. That's really true.

There are a few other services that offer competitive pricing (but most others are more expensive - such as the well-known Yahoo! Stores).

We pride ourselves on our FRIENDLY, PLAIN TALK service - please do give us a chance to prove that - we're easy to deal with, attentive, and we really understand how to get your business online and make sure your web site helps you profit.

You can find a site for free, with free hosting, or $15 hosting, etc...but you will not get the features, support, flexibility and power that our sites have. Most sites priced lower than $40 are not intended for ecommerce hosting. It probably won't be as graphically pleasing, you probably won't get the level of service, a secure ecommerce server, it probably will not take into account your businesses individual needs, it probably will not be as flexible when you want to make changes, and you won't have a single Control Panel that allows you to manage your entire site, all in one place.

Be sure to measure apples to apples when comparing costs.

It probably won't have a shopping cart, have email and hosting included, and an easy upgrade path should you want more from your site later on.

You won't have the personal explanation in plain English that's often necessary for small business owners who aren't particularly internet savvy.

In short, you will likely end up with a site that's there, but never becomes an active or important part of your business. A ClientReady site is easy to use, easy to get, easy to get support for, and will work for your business, as long as you put your web site address on all your business cards, vans, t-shirts, brochures, advertisements, etc.
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We can assist you in this. You will be the legal owner of the domain also - not us. That's important.

We'll need to make sure nobody else already has the domain name you want - and we'll help you determine what is still available.

Only one person can own a particular web site address. So if you want to buy Smith.com, it's already taken, you'll have to try something else like SmithandCompany.com or SmithInc.com -- you get the idea.

A web site address is like the address of your home - each one must be unique, or there'd be all kinds of mix ups when the post office tries to figure out which home is yours.
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There are lots of ways to get traffic to your site - some inexpensive, some pricey. The best we can do is clearly explain all the options to you, and help you decide what sounds right within your budget and goals, and then help you execute on those decisions.

Please see our Add-Ons or Business Packages for pricing on search engine and other traffic or marketing related products we offer.
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Sure. We can make the changes for you for a nominal fee - about $50 per hour. Most minor text or picture changes can be done in about 15 minutes or less most times.
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Site Design and Editing/Changing Your Site:

Absolutely! After you buy a site, we talk to you about what colors you want, any layout changes, adding your logo or company visual identity and put that all into the site we deliver to you.

Many aspects of your site's visuals are easy to alter yourself with no progarmming, while some require a person with basic web site or graphics skills.
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If you need us to help get your site the way you want it, use our Add-Ons menu - customizing your sites colors and images and a host of other things can all be done for a very low price.

For those who are at least a little computer savvy, much of it is easy to do yourself with our Easy Site Editor.
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We can move your current site into our easy to use software. Depending on the site and the complexity we have a few different solutions.

Email us here with your request.

We will need to host the site from that point -- the ClientCart platform we use only works if we host it.
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Credit Card and Shopping Cart Questions:

Yes, as long as you have:

• established a merchant account with your bank or a merchant acct. company and use Authorize.Net (http://www.Authorize.Net) as your payment gateway, or
  
• are using PayPal
• we also intergate with many other Merchant Services and Banks

We can help you set it up either way. You will need to go with eCommerce Hosting to process credit cards on our secure server.
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A merchant account is an account with a bank that has an agreement with credit card companies and an internet gateway company to process credit cards.

You can get one through your bank, or we highly recommend going to Authorize.Net (http://www.Authorize.Net) - a gateway company, that has a great list of banks that will set you up with a merchant account and who use Authorize.net as their gateway provider. We use them and have been very happy with their services.

You don't need one if you want to use PayPal or some other 3rd party solution. If you're a serious business, you'll probably want to get your own Merchant Account.
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If you want people to be able to go from page to page and add things to a 'cart', you need a shopping cart (all ClientReady sites come with an excellent, highly-flexible shopping cart).

If you don't care about the 'cart' aspect and just want to sell things one at a time, you don't NEED a cart. But you will still be very happy to have the ClientReady cart, because you can use the cart's database to add, delete and manage your products with great ease.
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Hosting, ISP and Technical Questions:

Yes and no... You KEEP your present ISP in order to connect to the internet - BUT WE are the web site hosting provider. Your ISP may provide both - you keep using them to connect to the net, but for hosting, we are the solution.

Since all ClientReady sites are built on a platform that allows you to do all kind of neat things easily, the hosting cannot technically be separated from the website... we have to provide both.
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You need an Internet Service Provider to hook you up to the internet. Everybody does. If you use AOL, Pacbell, MSN, Compuserve, etc they are all ISPs too.

Think of the ISP like the phone company... you can buy a phone, but you have to get the phone company to hook it up so the wires in your house go out to the rest of the world.
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Yes- the reason is that our enormous package of features is only available through our hosting system, which is a suite of applications that support and manage the sites and the features.
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