About Us

FAQs

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If you can’t find the answer to the question you’re looking for below, reach out and we’ll be happy to help.

General

Of course! Once we gather key information over email, we always set up a Zoom/Google Meet call to ensure it feels like a good fit.

Since 2011. Check out our fun anniversary timeline from 2022 here

We require a signed agreement, a 50% deposit, and any initial content you may have already (if applicable).

We’re in the Fishtown Neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA. If that’s not local to you, don’t worry. We work with clients all over North America. For more information, check out our Contact Page.

We do, but selectively and only with existing clients. All rush projects incur additional fees.

The amount of time needed varies depending on the project type (e.g., a small icon set, an identity system, a large website overhaul, etc). We provide estimated timelines along with all our estimates and proposals.

Our studio is open 9 AM-6 PM EST, Monday through Friday. Our studio recognizes the following holidays and will be closed: MLK Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (2 days), Christmas (2 days), New Years (2 days). Out of respect for our employees and their families, our studio does not respond to any form of communication outside of our business hours. Feel free to send emails at any time, we will happily respond in the next business day.

Communication

Absolutely. You are an integral part of the process. You will see upcoming tasks and deadlines on Basecamp which is our project management software. Our process is built on open communication. We track our progress and keep you in the loop so you always know where we are in the schedule and budget.

Basecamp is a project management software for collaborative communication on projects. Due to the duration and complexity of our projects, we consolidate all related communication into a single project on Basecamp where all team members and client stakeholders are added.

This consolidation of communication will allow the client to see a single project calendar, progress on tasks, changes, and overall project status, and ensures nothing is lost sitting in someone’s inbox.

All communication regarding the day-to-day of a project will be in Basecamp. We supplement this communication with phone and video conference meetings (Google Meet/Zoom). We will present our work via screen share or in person and will follow up with a Basecamp post that includes links to files, PDFs, and prototypes for markups and review.

We enjoy spending time with our clients. If we can meet safely, we think in-person meetings are not only fun, but are also very productive, especially at project kick-off, wireframe or concept reviews, and for site visits and graphic installations.

We prefer to schedule in-person meetings in advance with travel expenses and itineraries in mind, with sensitivity to budget since this type of meeting can tend to inflate a project budget. Unplanned in-person meetings that require our team to travel off-site will be billed hourly for time spent at the meeting and travel.

Our process is structured so creativity and collaboration flourish. To serve you best, we will set clear expectations for what we need from you in our proposal and again when we set up our project plan during kick-off. If we all stick to the plan, communicate clearly, and trust the process, the best work emerges on time and on budget. This is the “win-win” mindset we bring to our collaborative client relationships.

Website Projects

WordPress is open source content management software and currently powers around 28% of all websites on the Internet and is constantly growing and improving. WordPress allows us to develop flexible and customizable websites to modern standards and observes web development best practices. Furthermore the community of web developers that use WordPress reaches far and wide and allows us to tap into this collective intelligence and bring that wealth of experience to your project.

Information architecture is the relationship of how all the different pages of a website are related to each other. This is communicated visually through a sitemap and wireframes.

We complete the information architecture set by developing a “blueprint” of the site using wireframes. Wireframes are similar to an outline, they are devoid of design (color, typography, design elements) but document the placement of content (photography, text) and interactivity.

While nearly any web hosting can support WordPress installs, we have our favorites that we like to suggest for our clients, which bring the power and speed of cloud hosting to an accessible control panel. If you prefer to use a different host, we’d recommend that they offer complementary SSL, and have WordPress oriented tiers.

Once your website is live, we will provide 30 days of support to make sure any bugs have been ironed out and that you are confident using your new website.

After 30 days, you will need to subscribe to one of our ongoing website care plans to make sure your website is looked after and maintained. These website care plans include updating your software, regular backups, security checks and making sure your website is online.

The first step in identifying an issue with your site is to call the hosting service to see if they are experiencing downtime or if there are any security issues that need to be addressed. 95% of the time, our client’s websites go down due to an expired credit card on record with their host. A quick fix that the client is better suited to resolve than our team. We recommend that our client take this first step before engaging our team since in general, the hosting service can alleviate most general errors.

If, upon calling the hosting service, it is determined that there is an issue that needs a designer or developer to resolve, our team will be happy to assist with fixing the issue on an hourly, as-needed basis.

As part of every website project, we provide our clients with a user manual and a training session to help our clients make almost every essential site update.

At times our clients want to do something more complex or something goes wrong. Our team is always happy to help on an hourly, as-needed basis to make your life easier and to put out any fires.

At times our clients want to do something more complex than what we’ve covered in the user manual and training session or something goes wrong when they are making an update. Our team is always happy to help on an hourly, as-needed basis to make your life easier and to put out any fires. For any website update, improvement, or fix requests, please click here.

Google’s algorithm favors two primary things: determining which site is the most appropriate expert on the search topic, and coding best practices (semantic markup, page load speeds, etc.)

The time it takes for your website to appear on page 1 of Google depends on a number of factors. It depends on the search phrase people are using to find your website and the number of other websites that are also available for those search phrases. No one can truly say how long it will take for your website to appear at the top of search engine results pages (including people who actually work for Google), however there are a number of factors that can improve your chances.

• Building your website on WordPress is a good start as WordPress has some great Search Engine Optimization best practices baked in.

• Creating unique and interesting content on a regular basis for your website is also critical to increase your visibility amongst search engines.

• Regularly maintenance and content updates including blog posts will prevent your site to get lost amongst the noise.

We are happy to talk more about your search engine strategy if we haven’t already.

We will install Google Analytics software on your new website and can show you how to log into your Google Analytics account where you can see a wide range of statistics about your website including number of visits, pageviews than the amount of time people are spending on your website.

While this happens from time to time, we’ve really honed our content-first approach to design to help prevent this from happening. In addition, our first goal is to deliver the agreed upon scope within the approved timeframe and budget.
If the new feature will better achieve the project objectives and is within the project scope, then we will always be flexible. If it is outside of the original objectives and scope, we will provide an estimate and a timeline for the new feature after launch.

Our team guarantees our work for 30-days post launch and will fix any bugs that may pop up within those 30-days. Any new requests to design or interactivity with a launched website will be assessed and provided as a new estimate and scope.

A bug is a coding or display error that was due to our team missing a certain scenario in testing. For example: on a mobile device, the logo is getting cut off, or the header is displaying the incorrect time-zone.

We aim to fix all bugs during the pre-launch and 30-days following the site’s live date. Any bugs that arise after 30-days will require engaging with our team on an hourly basis to fix the issue. For any website update, improvement, or fix requests, please click here.

Additional scope can take several forms such as:

• Adding new functionality after the discovery phase.
• Adding pages to the approved sitemap after development starts
• Revisiting already complete and approved project phases
• Changing the layout of any pages after development starts
• Providing content after the project has moved into development
 
If any of the above occur, we will notify you of the budget and schedule implications and can either provide an additional scope estimate or convert the project to an hourly engagement through completion.
While we provide the tools to empower our clients to update their sites themselves, there are times when a skilled professional can assist in a more timely manner or without jeopardizing the health of the site.
This ranges from updates to security, plug-ins, and core WordPress versions, to content updates on pages. We have a few plans depending on your needs.
 
In general, the internet changes on a daily basis, and we recommend quarterly updates to assure that your site is secure and functioning up to its potential.

A project recalibration is a meeting that compares the project estimate to the project roadmap to assure that all elements are in scope and the implications of the team’s decisions are discussed and considered before moving further along in the process.

This allows our team to check on the project budget, project requirements, and technological details and how they impact the overall goals of the project.

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