Modern Solution Designs

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

This section is not so much a frequently asked questions as questions that we feel are commonly considered but not as frequently asked by our customers. Please feel free to read the questions and our answers to those questions to get a better idea of who we are and what we can do for for our customers.

I'm going to be opening my own small business. I will be selling some homemade products online. My education in computers is lacking. Please help me figure out what I need to get my business online and how much it will cost.

In order to get a website online here are the things you absolutely need: A website, a host to put your website on and a domain name, which acts like your business' address on the internet. While Modern Solution Designs does not provide business hosting or domain registration services, if you find yourself struggling with the technicalities we would be happy to take care of those for you as well. As far as the costs go, a domain name usually costs around $15-20 per year, hosting services are usually around $70 to $120 per year for the kind of service a typical small business needs. Finally for the website itself, it very much depends on the size and complexity of your website; we would need to get more information from you about the nature of the website you envision before we can give you a proper quote. But ballpark, for a typical small business website, the cost would be anywhere between $700 and $1200 if no unusual work is necessary.

Salutation, my name is [censored for privacy] I have a well established roofing company with over 40 customers already. I employ 3 assistants full time. I have a small website but it doesn't seem to bring in more than 1 or 2 customers a year. Can you help me?

The short answer is "Yes we can". The full answer is that what you are asking for is web marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) work. Web marketing usually involves placing paid advertisements on various websites. The best in our opinion is Google AdWords program which we will happily manage for you. Google gets millions of users every day, and a properly tailored advertisement can get people searching for roofing work seeing and clicking your ad. The other part is SEO, that is a pretty lengthy process, but the results are a lot more enduring. Services like AdWords charge you for every click that sends a user to your website. SEO moves your website's search engine ranking up, hopefully to the first 3 pages which is statistically as far as the average user gets before they change their search query and try again. For more information on Web Marketing and SEO check out our Services Page.

Hi, I'm [censored for privacy] and my club is going to be participating in the upcoming Comic Book Convention. We have made our own line of comics and pooled our money to get 400 copies of each of the first 3 editions printed. We would like to put up a website before the convention so we can give out our website in our pamphlet for people to subscribe to that like our work. If this works out we've decided to form our own company making our own line of comics when we graduate. We have very little money though so what can you tell us about how to do this or how much it takes to put up a website? Can we pay in parts or does it all have to be upfront or can we finance or something? Help please. The convention is only 5 weeks away.

To put up a website you need the website itself, a host to put the website files on and a domain name to point to your website. The domain and host would come up to about $90-100. Also, if you wish, we could come to an arrangement in which we could provide hosting for your site until you are ready to start your company. A website can cost anywhere from as little as $500 for the bare minimum to as much as thousands of dollars depending on the work involved. For your needs you probably won't need anything extravagant quite yet. So it would probably be on the lower end, around $700 - $1200. And while we do not offer any kind of financing, you could perhaps get financing loan from a bank. Also, you could opt for a very simple website to conserve money now and then upgrade it later as funds become available such as after your convention. As long as we know that you plan to upgrade your website soon when we start the design work, we can account for it during the design process and make upgrades quicker and cheaper.

Dear Sir or Madam, I am the owner of [censored for privacy]. We specialize in catering small to medium size special events, parties, receptions and the like. I recently purchased a company van for our services that can hold everything we need for a catering in 1 trip. Now that multiple trips and high gas prices are not such a factor, I wish to expand to the neighboring regions. I will need a website that has the front page of what we are, Menu page of all the regularly offered catering selections. I will supply the meal pictures. I wish to have a page that can act as a Business email for my company with 3 employees currently on the payroll where I can send memo's to my employees instead of calling them and leaving messages. (One of my workers has 2 young children who already forgot to mention messages I left to her causing quite the planning headache). I wish to have an online payment option so I can process credit cards instead of relying on checks in the mail. How much is this going to cost me?

You definitely came to the right place with your concerns. We would be happy to provide you with the kind of website your business needs to expand its area of operations. In response to your questions, in order to receive online payments via credit card you will have to set up a merchant account with a financial institution that will take over processing the payment. Most major banks offer these kinds of services, and may also offer others such as online checks or direct deposit services, though their fees can vary greatly. We would advise you to shop around. There are also many online financial companies that cater to such needs as I am sure you have heard about PayPal which could serve as a cheap alternative if you wish to go that route and we can readily install the client side portion of PayPal on your website if you choose to go that route. To keep in touch with your co-workers I'd honestly recommend that you use E-Mail, if however there is a problem with that, we could install a private message board (also known as forum) on your new website for you to be able to have free and easy communications with your employees or even customers if you wish. Finally, regarding the website itself, it is difficult to estimate the price based on the information you have provided. A menu for a catering company is rarely 1 page (or it would be one very long page where customers would easily get lost), so we would need more information on just how many items will need to be placed into that section of your site before we can give you a proper quote.

Hello, I have a problem I have recently discovered in my company. If I discuss prospective business ideas with my customers I spend far more time on the phone than most of these ideas warrant. This is beginning to impact my productivity in a negative manner. I am a home remodeling consultant and I need for my customers to be able to call me with any little idea they get or they will lose interest in future remodeling, or worse switch to a friendlier service. Is there any way I could get the idea dialogue transferred to the internet on my website where I can discuss the ideas at my convenience and not when I'm in the middle of a layout for an idea that we did agree on and I am being paid for? I've browsed forums before and your services include webmaster. Is there an affordable way I could do a remodeling forum or chat board for perspective jobs as opposed to spending hours on the phone only to make no money because it was a ridiculous idea to start with? I just got off the phone with one customer who thought to do a "Dukes of Hazard" remodeling in the kitchen would be a great present for his wife's birthday. No woman in her right mind wants to work in a kitchen like that day in and day out. This was my last straw. He took me away from a $5,000 remodeling design for almost an hour. I need good relations with my customers. If you have a solution for this I am ready to talk price.

Yes, a message board (also known as forum) would be the best way to go about solving your problem. There are numerous websites out there that offer free forums to anyone who wishes. However, since you're in a creative field, you would probably be better off having your very own forum installed so it could also be a showcase of your creative talents. Modern Solution Designs would happily add a forum to your site and customize its layout and appearance. An additional benefit to having a forum on your website would be that your customers would be able to talk to each other about their ideas and get new ideas or discover that "Dukes of Hazard" may not be the best birthday gift, all that without costing you any working time and potentially inspiring customers through the power of synergy.