Welcome aboard! It’s so exciting to be working with you and your business! The goal is for this to be an enjoyable experience for you – one that makes sense for you and one that flows easily from one stage to the next. The process will challenge you – and in that challenge – enable you to grow your company and your business. We will get to know each other very well over the next few months!

It’s been our experience that one of the best practices we can implement is to set the expectations for working together up front. We know this is long, but please bear with it as it lays out the best way for us to work together. Some of these are just housekeeping and some are explanations of process. Let us know if you have any questions!

Office Hours

Our office hours are Monday – Friday 9-5. We may, on occasion, return an email during off hours but for the most part, expect an answer during normal working hours and generally after 11AM. We schedule meetings and work times during working hours just as any other business. Email, texts or Facebook messages will be returned during normal working hours – typically late morning and late afternoon. Work order changes that must be completed outside of these hours will be billed at a premium rate of twice the hourly charge.

We will mutually respect each other’s time. If you find you cannot make a meeting at a place where you can focus and devote the time we need, please advise us so we can reschedule the meeting. The scheduling calendar will send you reminders of our meeting and attached to that reminder is a button to reschedule. Please hold onto that email in case the need arises and rescheduling is necessary. This reminder also has the Zoom link for our meeting.

Mobile Setup

We build on a big screen/laptop and will show you progress for approvals on a big screen.  We do build “mobile first” which means we build with mobile at the top of mind. We do not adjust for mobile until AFTER the website has been beta tested (ready to go live) and until the website is approved to go live. For this reason, until we enter beta testing, we ask website review be completed on a laptop (tablets are considered mobile.) Your scope of work includes mobile responsiveness so don’t worry – it will be! It HAS to be! The reason I do this – it’s the nature of “the beast” to make tweaks and changes. If we’ve set up mobile, then we have to tweak and change it as well – which duplicates efforts. So… mobile set up is at the end when everything is approved.

Content Submission

Website information can only be sent via Content Snare (content and images for the pages) or Box, Evernote or Google Drive (additional images, files, or other information.) We can not accept website content through email, text or FB Messenger. It tends to get “lost” in the email tangle or requires extra steps to retrieve.

Communication and Meetings

1. All meetings and calls must be booked in advance through the calendar booking system. We schedule our time pretty closely and in most cases, we need to allow time to prepare for our call – especially if it relates to questions about your work in progress. Please bookmark the link so you will have access to it. Here is the Scheduling Link. The scheduler will send reminders of our meetings and will automatically add the meeting to your Google or Outlook calendar.

2. It is very hard to answer “call me” texts or messages in a time frame that will work for all of us – please use the calendar. If it’s an emergency, then certainly text or call but for the most part, we will work from the calendar. This also allows us to set up Zoom so we can share screens as needed and talk “face to face.” Generally we schedule client calls Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during normal business hours. Our calendar will reflect open times.

3. All of our meetings will either be via phone or on Zoom – an online meeting system. We use Zoom so that we may record the calls. By working with us, you are giving us permission to record the calls and videos.  This is especially important when training on a finished product. All meetings are online. On site meetings will be charged at the hourly rate including travel time plus travel expenses and are outside of the scope of the website SOW.

4. For progress meetings – all calls must be from a place where you can focus – not a car or standing in the Starbucks line. You MUST ALSO be in front of a laptop or personal computer with a monitor (see #3). We reserve the right to reschedule the call if you are not in front of a monitor and are taking the call from your cell phone. Please respect our time and make sure it’s the object of your focus. (Please do not schedule the call from a coffee house or restaurant either – it makes it very difficult to hear on our end.)

5. All content must be in house before work begins on your website. We will discuss deadlines and time commitments during the kickoff meeting. We will not schedule your project until the content is in house. This is usually what delays the project. We use an online content management system called Content Snare. This system is set up to make it easy to submit your content in a place we can see it and approve it or send it back to you. You can save your work and return to it. The sooner we receive ALL the content, the sooner we can begin!   Content added after the build has started will be considered a change order to the scope of work and will be billed accordingly. *Content is considered any copy/text, images (headshots, branded images, etc.) links to blogs or podcasts, any stock images you may want to use.

6. All documents, content and images will be placed in Content Snare. Photos/images must be in the correct size when they are uploaded. If you need to resize your photos, a free online photo resizer is available called PicResize. This a free app and will take care of size needs for the photos. Sizes are listed on the Content Snare instructions.

7. If you are providing content, please double check your spelling and grammar on the file. We cut and paste content or import content and unless it’s obvious or picked up in spell check (here instead of hear for example) then all pages will need to be double checked before we go live. You are responsible for all grammar checks and spelling on the site. Changes to content are considered a work order and may be done at standard billed rate. We do try to pay attention to the spell check “red lines” as a FYI but typically we do not read the actual content unless you have a content package.

8. If we are using existing content from your existing website, we will also schedule a completion time and will either submit the content to Content Snare or will go ahead and place it on pages on your new website – with no design. This will depend upon whether you are doing any edits to your current content or using it “as is.”  We will have discussed this during the proposal time so we will know what to do with the current content.

9. Prior to going live, we will offer two opportunities for testing the site – Alpha and Beta testing. Alpha is the first phase where we ask you to make sure we have not skipped anything important, the links are linked where you want them to go, the Call to Actions are correct. We will then make any adjustments. The second Beta test assumes the site is now complete and we are doing one final “look over.” After Beta testing, and any final adjustments – we will ask for written “go live” permission.

10. After going live, any changes to content or functionality – i.e. text, images, icons, etc. are not considered part of “warranty” and changes will be billed at the going rate. Maintenance clients may start using maintenance hours for this work.

11. Under warranty is considered replacing links that do not work, images not loading correctly, text that has added spacing, mobile adjustments, etc. This is for a period of 15 days after the site has “gone live.”

Scheduling

At kickoff, we place your website into a project management schedule with realistic timelines and deliverables. We discuss these timelines and both agree to the deadlines. Sometimes life gets in the way with a small business and we understand that – it happens to us too. If you – as the client – go MIA (missing in action) during the site construction, your website will go to the “back of the line” for development.

Please don’t expect further progress to be at the same schedule if we have to wait on you for information past the agreed upon timeline. It could be up to 2 weeks or longer before we can resume work on your site. Stay in touch with us and let us know what is going on and we can work with you on the schedule. Not staying in touch is not good! Even if you don’t have the requested information ready – just let us know that and when you anticipate the information. We can work with that!

Revisions

Ignite Marketing will provide a home page design as the basis of the design for your website. You will be provided with a spreadsheet for any adjustments that may need to be made. You will be allowed one (1) set of revisions to the home page design. Any more revisions than this will be billed at the hourly rate. This spreadsheet will be due back within 3 business days after the home page has been delivered to stay in scope of the time frame of the project. Revisions after this time frame will be considered out of scope of the time frame set and will affect the deliverability of the project.

Notice!! **If you are working with a business or marketing coach or program and they are helping with your content and messaging – make sure you vet your content FIRST before submitting it to me. Once the content is placed on the website, other than typos, the content is considered final and changes will be out of scope and billable.