Meadowbrook Creations

Most redesign projects can be done in small distinct tasks, or sub-projects, spreading costs over a period of time.

These types of projects typically involve

• New "look & feel"; maybe your site looks dated or less professional than you would like
• Better performance; slow access can mean lost business
• Maintain-It-Yourself™; tired of paying monthly maintenance fees or waiting for your changes to be done
• Expansion; new pages you hadn't thought of initially or didn't need before

If your business only requires a straight-forward informational web site this may be the solution for you.

Using a software product called Adobe Contribute you can now quickly and easily update text and images, add new pages, and publish content to your own web site as easily as browsing to a web page or typing a letter. Step-by-step instructions guide you through the process.

Many web design firms charge by the hour for web site maintenance. These costs typically range from $50.00 to $110.00 per hour. Some firms also offer web site maintenance service contracts where you pay a little less than the typical hourly rate but you will pay whether or not you use the service each month. It's fair to say that most web design firms today will collect at least $600 per year, just for web site maintenance, from the vast majority of their clients.

When you Maintain-It-Yourself™ these ongoing, month after month, year after year maintenance costs go away. That could be a minimum savings of $3,000 in the first five years.

And this isn't restricted to only changing web pages that already exist. You can also create new professional looking web pages yourself that match the look and feel of the rest of your site. So here is another cost savings. You don't have to pay for as many professionally built pages. You can have the first few professionally built and then use those pages as templates, or models, for new ones that you create yourself. This alone can save you additional hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

This software, Adobe Contribute, only costs $169.00 per license.

Best of all, it's easy to learn. The tutorials and interactive product tour will have you making changes in just a few minutes. There's even a task panel, where you'll find step-by-step instructions for common tasks at your fingertips.

Not every one has the time or the desire to Maintain-It-Yourself™.

Our full service menu is offered ala carte, and may contain any or all of the following items, which are over and above our basic maintain-it-yourself web service.

• Advanced web graphics; logo creation
• Advanced navigation; perhaps pull down or slide out menus, etc.
• Advanced photo work; resizing, color correction, creation, scanning, stock image research
• Animation; revolving site banners
• Advanced page coding; JavaScripts, SHTML, DHTML, XHTML, ASP, etc.
• Detailed site map
• Forms; Contact Us or Feedback Forms
• eCommerce
• Web site maintenence

Many of the above services are also affected by the service level of your web site host provider

We offer two primary levels of eCommerce web sites; eCommerce-on-a-Budget and an Expanded Store level.

eCommerce-on-a-Budget

For this budget minded store-front, we use PayPal exclusively. You may be asking, "What is PayPal?" Well, you've probably heard about PayPal if you've ever bought or sold an auction item on eBay. PayPal enables merchants and individuals to accept credit card, debit card, and bank transfer payments online. In short, PayPal is a web services company, a payment processing company, and a security company all rolled into one. And you can feel comfortable with this decision; over 100 million PayPal members currently shop at over 42,000 websites now accepting PayPal.

This represents some significant savings for the small business. First of all, PayPal signup is free. You don't need a merchant account, and there are no monthly fees. You pay a transaction fee when a purchase occurs, as low as 1.9% + $.30 per transaction. Check the PayPal site for current fee schedule. PayPal currently supports sending and receiving payments in five currencies: U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, and Yen.

Secondly, with this option you do not need a database or a more expensive eCommerce web site hosting account. All this can be done on a standard "no bells or whistles" account.

The PayPal Shopping Cart is great for small merchants who have multiple items for sale. Customers click on Add-to-Cart buttons to put an item in their shopping cart, and then click on a View Cart button to review items in their cart before checking out. When they're done, they can checkout and pay with any major credit card, or bank transfer payment. The Shopping Cart style can be seen here at NHwoodworking.com.

This can also be set up as a Maintain-It-Yourself™ web site.

Expanded Store level

This is the eCommerce solution for the larger retail business. This can not be set up as a Maintain-It-Yourself™ web site. In addition to the above capabilities the following are also offered.

This is, as you might expect, a combination of services.

It's for the small business that wants the advantages of a Maintain-It-Yourself ™ web site but doesn't always have the staff or the time.

It's also for the web site that may have a function or two that doesn't lend itself to self maintenance.

We can work out an arrangement where you can Maintain-It-Yourself™ when appropriate and use us to maintain it for you whenever you need us to.