Archive for May, 2010

Hot Internet Network™, Inc. creates unique custom professional business websites that will keep your customers coming back. Our custom designs will distinguish your business online and offline. Our affordable custom professional business website designs are developed for all kinds of small businesses. But before we tell you about our custom designs, we think you should know what to look for in a custom built website design?

What to look for in a custom built professional website?

When it comes down to it, you need a web site that does what you want it to. Talk to several web design firms to see which is the best match for your needs. Compare and see what can or can not be done with your website now and in the future. You want to make sure all of the questions below are addressed.

• does the site take long to load?
• can you tell where to find all the important information?
• does it look appropriate for the type of business?

You want to make sure you get results, not just a flashy design. Remember, flash and certain designer scripts will not work on all browsers and usually detract from a web design.

Why should I turn to a pro to build my custom website?

Turning to the pros for custom web design is usually a smart idea. A lot of people can use Photoshop, many can create very professional looking pictures or artwork, however, this doesn’t mean they should design your new custom web site!

For a website to be successful, your web site design should:

• be easy to understand and navigate
• represent your business well
• be relatively easy to upgrade
• focus on information and action, not splash and sizzle

Achieving all these goals requires experience in designing for the web. Hot Internet Network™, Inc. has just that experience!

Couple Items To Remember…Before Taking the Leap

Creating or redoing a web site can be great for business – but it comes with a lot of challenges, too. There are many components to manage and multiple, sometimes-conflicting priorities to balance.

But remember this, the most important part of your web site is the content and functionality: what it says and what it does.

You should decide what you need out of your site before choosing a web designer. Know what the website will say and what it will do, start with a basic plan.

You certainly don’t have to have every word written or every button planned out.

Here are some of the things you will need to decide.

• What major sections will the site include? What pages in each one?
• Will you sell products through your web site or not?
• Will the site collect information from visitors?
• Do you want to have an email newsletter to go along with your site?
• How are you going to advertise your site?
• Does the site need to connect to any existing databases?
• Do your website need to be social networking capable?
• Is your website upgradable in the future without a total rework?

Finally,let us talk to you about what we consider the most important area in a website project.

Who will maintain it?

Before deciding who’ll build your site, you should consider who is going to maintain it. Whether your site needs updates daily or only a few times a year, an ongoing maintenance plan is important. This is where Hot Internet Network™, Inc. is different than the rest of the design firms out there today!

Remember, once a site is created, it doesn’t take much technical skill to make simple edits to text or images with our custom built websites. Many businesses simply choose someone inside their company to handle this very basic maintenance. If you don’t have someone on staff who can take it on, we have a combined hosting and maintenance package for you. For a small monthly fee, you get a certain amount of edits based upon which package you chose.

More complex edits, such as adding to the navigation tools or changing the design, requires more of an understanding of the workings of the entire website. For those types of changes, we offer an hourly fee based upon complexity and your desired changes.

Finding your price point

Your web site will be the first experience many potential customers have with your business, so it’s worth spending a little extra money to get the best site you can. Don’t let cost be the primary consideration as you compare one provider to another.

Small to mid-sized projects

There are two main types of pricing for web site design work, depending on the size and scope of your project. For small to mid-sized projects, fixed-price package deals are the most common.

A 5 page site with a straightforward design and no ‘extras’ might cost $300 to $400; a 10 page site with a more customized design and some extras like a search engine or streaming video might be $600 to $800. E-commerce sites are more expensive, starting at around $700 but more commonly going for $1,200 or more.

With our package pricing, you’ll scope out the entire project up front. The price will include a set number of updates allowing for the customized look that meets your needs.

Larger projects

For larger or more complex projects, you’re more likely to pay hourly rates. By scoping out the project beforehand, you should be able to get a good idea of how long it’ll take and therefore how much it will cost.

Hourly rates make it easier to adjust the project as it goes along. If integration with your customer database is trickier than expected, or if halfway through you realize there are 10 more pages you should add, it doesn’t throw the whole project off. Changes like that will impact your budget, but at least the project can proceed.

You can expect to pay anywhere from $70 to $100 per hour for web site design and development work in the United States. Basic HTML coding will fall at the lower end, web designers towards the middle, and experienced programmers (for integration or custom database connectivity) are the most expensive.

For a larger project, get a detailed proposal/estimate that breaks down how long the vendor expects each step of the process to take: initial design, reviews, coding, testing, implementation.

For medium-sized sites – 10 to 30 pages, with some advanced features – you can expect to pay $1,500 to $5,000, depending on the technology extras you need and how many rounds of design revisions you go through. Larger sites with more pages and extensive links to other databases can reach $10,000 or more – the more features and functionality you add that requires custom programming, the more you can expect to spend.

Make sure you budget for extras like hosting, too. Hosting may not cost too much — $20 to $50 a month for shared hosting at a data center is fairly common – but if your site gets very heavy traffic, you may want to upgrade to a dedicated server, which can run $100 to $200 per month.

Why is Hot Internet Network™, Inc. your Design Firm Of Choice?

We think this is pretty simple choice when you look at what you are getting. We pride ourselves with ability to provide you with a high quality and advanced website design. We design all of our custom websites with the latest advanced technology. We work with global businesses to develop a better website for your company. Don’t follow what everyone else does, be bold, make a splash with your web site business design.

We offer three packages for your custom web site design. All of our packages are started from scratch, not from a template. All of our packages include the ability to intergrate social networking into your custom business web design. Though not widely utilized today by most businesses, social networking is not a fad and isn’t going away!

The smart businesses today are using it to rank better with search engines, get great exposure among their existing customers, drive new customers to their websites or online promotions, and build a higher online reputation and public exposure.

In addition, all of our professional custom websites are designed to be user friendly with maintaining the web site. Most people want to make a simple change or two every now and then. With all of our packages, we offer you the ability to update the website with a windows based update tool. Change the content in seconds, without the need for understanding Html or any programing involved.

More importantly, we offer you the ability to start with a basic custom website and be able to upgrade to a higher level package with ease. All of our web sites are designed with upgrade ability. We have a strong business relationship with one of only 4,000 Google developers and know what the future holds for internet technology. We use this to drive what we add into our future releases of our web site designs.

Please call us for prices on web development, content syndication, and banner services. Prices are subject to change and will vary slightly depending upon your target market.

Basic Setup includes:

* One hour phone consultation
* Analysis of current ranking on the search engines
* Keyword & keyword phrase research, competition analysis.
* Hand submissions to the top 10 search engines
* Detailed ranking report showing you’re new and greatly improved positioning by e-mail.
* Limited E-mail assistance when needed.

BRONZE PACKAGE – $800 (1-10 pages /$40.00 per additional page)

Optional Monthly Monitoring – $100.00

Monthly Monitoring Includes:

* Position reporting
* Monthly Submission to 5 new engines and targeted directories.

SILVER PACKAGE – $1800 (1-20 pages /$40.00 per additional page)

Basic Setup includes:

* One hour phone consultation
* Analysis of current ranking on the search engines
* Keyword & keyword phrase research, competition analysis.
* Hand submissions to the top 10 search engines
* Detailed ranking report showing you’re new and greatly improved positioning by e-mail.
* Limited E-mail assistance when needed.

Optional Monthly Monitoring – $200.00

Monthly Monitoring Includes:

* Position reporting
* Monthly Submission to 5 new engines and targeted directories.
* Resubmission to the major search engines where deemed necessary.
* Link program – 30 backlinks per month

GOLD PACKAGE – $2,500 (1-30 pages /$35.00 per additional page)

* Two hours phone consultation
* Analysis of current ranking on the search engines
* Keyword & keyword phrase research, competition analysis. (in depth)
* Hand submissions to the top 20 search engines
* Detailed ranking reports showing your new and greatly improved positioning by e-mail.
* E-mail assistance when needed
* Paid inclusion into Inktomi (Inktomi feeds results to MSN, Overture, Iwon, HotBot, looksmart)

Optional Monthly Monitoring – $300.00

Monthly Monitoring Includes:

* Monthly position reporting
* Monthly Submission to 10 new engines and targeted directories.
* Resubmission to search engines and directories where deemed necessary
* Advice and support on reciprocal linking to build link popularity

PLATINUM PACKAGE – $4,500 (1-50 pages /$30.00 per additional page)

* Three hours phone consultation
* Analysis of current ranking on the search engines
* Keyword & keyword phrase research, competition analysis comparison report (very in depth)
* Hand submissions to the top 30 search engines
* Detailed ranking reports showing your new and greatly improved positioning.
* Unlimited e-mail assistance when needed.
* Paid inclusion into Yahoo, Inktomi (Inktomi includes MSN, Overture, Iwon, HotBot, looksmart)

Optional Monthly Monitoring – $400.00

* Bi-Monthly position reporting w/Analysis of gains and losses
* Monthly Submission to 15 new engines and targeted directories.
* Resubmission to search engines and directories where deemed necessary
* Reciprocal linking to build link popularity.
* Monthly strategy document with suggested promotion tactics for the coming month.

Need SEO Training:

If it would be beneficial for your company to have an employee/s trained in the art of search engine optimization we will be happy to do so and instill any and all techniques into them and how to keep abreast of future items that may come to light from many sources. The cost behind this is on an hourly rate and will be quoted as such when requested.

Contact Us For Complete Details.

What is a Mobile QR Code & Why Should I Care?

To answer these questions, let’s me tell you a little history about the QR Code ( “Quick Response”). The QR Code was developed by Toyota back in 1994 as one of a number of bar codes that were used for tracking their auto parts. QR Codes have evolved from the automotive industry to the mobile phone as people desire for a quicker way to receive instant data. Today, a Mobile QR Code is a mobile phone readable barcode that’s been big in Japan since 1998, widely used in Europe the last several years, and is now only getting traction in Australia and the United States .

Using a fancy Marketing Term, QR Codes are in an early adopter stage in the United States and industry experts believe QR codes will be common place within 18 to 24 months!

Why does this matter to you?

It is quite simple, the future of online and offline marketing will be affected by the QR code technology. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you will see the huge potential it offers all marketers both online and offline!

Let’s explain a little more. We will try to spare you all of the techie jargon and keep it pretty simple!

Mobile QR Codes are a cell phone readable bar code that can store phone numbers, web site URL’s, email addresses, contact information and pretty much any other alphanumeric data you would like to store within a QR code.

Think of a QR-code as “print-based hypertext links” and you’ll start to get the idea.

In it’s simplest sense think “print based hypertext link” – simply encode a URL into the QR Code and then point a mobile phone (or other camera-enabled mobile device) at it. If the device has QR code reader software installed on it, it will fire up its browser and go straight to that URL.

But it doesn’t stop there – a QR Code can also contain a phone number, an SMS message, business card data or just plain alphanumeric text, and the mobile scanning device will respond by encoded the data within the QR Code.

It doesn’t matter whether the QR code is upside down or wrapped around a curved surface, the encoded message will still get through.

There is no more need to try and jot down a phone number or try to type in that long URL on your tiny cell phone key board. Just take a picture with your phone!

While there is room for improvement in the mobile phone readers in the United States, the rest of the world is showing the true power of QR Codes.

Let your business say what you want to say, to who you want to say it with a mobile QR code.

Get your QR code Here today!

Hot Internet Network is proud to offer your several monthly special offers for online products and services.  Please check back often as we will be updating this area often with all kinds of special offers.

You can click on the links below for specific detail for all offers.

• HotInternetNetwork.Com

• Featured Offers

Get 10% off our normal web design prices for a limited time only!

You can get the coupon here if you would like to use in person or use the coupon code when checking out.

Hot Internet Network Coupon Code

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If you are in business today, you have to communicate with your customers and prospective customers.  It use to be enough for a business to participate in advertising via email, online advertising and press releases.  Today, an increasing number of customers are turning to social networking tools to find out about businesses they deal with.  Should you be involved in social networking sites?

To help you decide, here is a small guide to social networking sites as they relate to your business.

Twitter

Twitter is the Internets most popular social networking right now (2009).  It allows for a business to send out very short “tweets”  (limited to 140 characters) to keep your name in front of perspective customers.  This is a great tool to keep your name in front of people who have an interest in you or your business.  Your business should be tweeting about things that your customers would find interesting or something amusing.

LinkedIn

Unlike all of the other social networking sites, this is the only social networking site aimed at businesses.  LinkedIn should be used to help you find consultants or contractors that you will need for your business.  Additionally, you should use it to find people in companies that you would like to do business with in the future.  This is a must for any business that is in consulting, headhunting, or sells any kind of business services.

Facebook

Facebook is the heavyweight of all social networking sites in the US today. Facebook is great for staying in touch with people your care about family or friends and finding people you are out of touch with.  It does have a business presence with the ability to create a much smaller business profile than a normal profile. Facebook is a great way to allow your customers to see more personal information about yourself and your business leadership team.  People buy from people they know, they like, and they trust!

MySpace

Once the leading social networking site, MySpace has now become very popular among teenagers.  It is good for building support for certain types of businesses, such as music, bands, and teenage related products.  If your business caters to teenagers, MySpace is a must for your business.

YouTube

All businesses have discovered this is a great way to provide information to prospects and customers.  Why not make a video of products you sell or you describing your services (video testimonials).  It is very easy to upload your videos and once uploaded, you simply direct your customers and prospects to YouTube to check them out.

In closing, there is one that is for sure, social networking is here to stay!  Get connected.  Let the world know about your company and see what it can do for your bottom line!

We will be updating our online blog with many different areas of fresh content including areas from:

• Web Design Tips
• Seo Tips
• Logo Design Tips
• Simple CSS Tips
• WordPress Tips

Plus, we will be adding  much more as we go along.  Our goal with our online blog is to help people with their online web design and developments needs.  If it becomes too much to handle, you can always call in the web design experts.

Please bookmark our site and check back often as we will be updating it quite often.  Oh, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.