Website Service FAQ's

Why have a pay monthly website?

Buddy Websites is one of the few design agencies that offer a pay monthly website service. What is the benefit to me you might be asking? Here are a few reasons:

Service…

Our plans are really geared to small business owners who are serious about their business. You know that you need a professional internet presence but spending hours of your time designing, building and maintaining a site is not a good use of your time and certainly not what you got into business for in the first place.

By offering a pay monthly service, our job is to provide you with exactly that, a quality, ongoing website service, not just a one off payment and then leave you to it. Our service is about working with you as you develop your business, to make sure your web presence reflects all the hard work you put into your company.

It goes without saying, you will have full admin access to your website but, if and when you need help, or are too busy, Buddy Websites is there for you with no nasty surprises or unexpected costs.

Everything is included in the price…

And talking of fees, a pay monthly plan helps you manage your cash flow. You know every month where you stand, everything is included, from design, build and ongoing maintenance and support, through to hosting and SSL security.

Why use the Buddy Websites Builder?

Developing sites for our customers is job we take very seriously and want to make sure its an enjoyable experience for you too. This includes the Buddy Websites web builder. 

It’s simple to work with. Very user friendly drag and drop functionality that you can access from any computer that has an internet connection, together with powerful tools such as blogs and e-commerce, all in one, it really is one of the fastest and smoothest web builders you can find.

Do you want to try it? Book a call with Mark Baker, let’s have a chat about what you need from a site and if it still sounds good, we can give you access to a demo page to try it out.

Why not just use Wordpress?

There is no denying it, Wordpress has been used for a huge number of sites over the past few years but that doesn’t mean it’s the best.

Yes, it is free, to start, which is another reason for it’s popularity but then what. Wordpress on it’s own was originally designed for blogging but then users wanted more and more functionality. So, while Wordpress has essentially stood still, third party developers have taken over with themes and plugins to cater for the demand.

And this can often be where the fun and games begin. There are of course some amazing themes available that can make your site look fabulous and plug in's that make all kinds of clever things happen. But what if something changes, updates are not made, something new comes along that clashes with older plugins, you may suddenly find your beautiful website turns a bit ugly and you need to find an independent developer to step in and unravel the problems.

Having a site that is not dependent on patches, plug in updates, third party themes or costly maintenance packages, could be a great relief to many business owners.

Will I own my website?

This is a question that comes up from time to time and we need to have a look at how website development has changed over the years to try and explain.

Traditionally sites are built with html and css etc and you as a paying customer own the code plus the content, words and images you supplied etc. You then need to rent some web hosting space to be able to deliver the site to your visitors browsers. Without hosting, you basically have a file of code that is very little use to anyone.

Sites such as WordPress, Magento, and Joomla, are built with a content management system (CMS) platform to manage a website’s content. WordPress is owned by Automattic, the company behind their CMS. You get a license to use their CMS platform. Once again you need to pay for hosting to deliver the resulting code to your visitors.

In both cases above, the HTML/JS/CSS files that you "own" are nothing if you can't do any of the 100's of other things with your site/brand online.

More recently with builders like Buddy Websites and the likes of Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy etc etc, you are effectively renting space on another type of platform. These are the 'all in one' solutions. A site builder, hosting and security. 

As a Buddy Websites customer you DO own your data (contacts, orders etc), your copy, brand, domain, designs, images and everything you upload to the platform. You just CAN'T export your site elsewhere as it is built in a specific way to do with our platform that helps you modify and work with that data.

Our platform makes if easy for you as a customer to deliver your data and information to your customers.

Can I sell my products in an online shop?

Absolutely!… Getting your business online and giving your customers the opportunity to buy your products or services is an essential part of trading these days.

Our Buddy Websites builder makes it very easy to start selling. Choose a plan that caters for the amount of items you want to sell and away you go. We are set up to easily integrate with the majority of payment processors so you can get selling even quicker.

Physical products, Digital Products, Services or even Memberships. Once you know what you are selling, book a call and lets get you started.

Do you have a contract?

No. We want it to be a straightforward as possible for you to get your business online. In return for all our work on your design, build and ongoing support, all we as for is a minimum of a 12 month commitment from you. Hopefully once you have started working with us, you will see the benefit of such a powerful builder and support service, this will just be the start of a long and happy relationship.

What is involved in the websites design process?

With every new website we go through a process that helps us deliver a successful project, and it goes a little like this…

It all starts with a conversation, let’s see if we are right for each other. 

We then direct you to our website planning document that runs through a number of questions to help you focus on the really important elements of your website.

Once we have this information, we can start the design process. We work though some initial home page concepts for you to consider. Once we are happy with the design then off we go with the build.

Once we are all happy with the finished site we connect up your domain name and your site is live.

Can you help with other resources for my website?

Yes. Take a look around our site, you will see we have examples of Logo design and even Explainer Video design. Both are additional services that can really great value to your new website.

Are you looking for more? Image libraries, photographers, copy writers? Just ask. We have an extensive range of contacts within our network that can help you with a perfect online presence.

Email Accounts

The short answer, no, sorry. Being a design led marketing business, we like to utilise our time and energy creating your websites, logos, videos and brochures.

Hosting and administrating email accounts takes us away from our core services. There are lots of providers out there, far better resourced than we are to do this for you. If you need help finding the right one, please just ask. We will happily introduce you to our favourites.