Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet. It usually refers to the user experience aspects of website development rather than software development. Web design used to be focused on designing websites for desktop browsers; however, since the mid-2010s, design for mobile and tablet browsers has become ever-increasingly important.

A web designer works on the appearance, layout, and, in some cases, content of a website. Appearance, for instance, relates to the colors, font, and images used. Layout refers to howinformation is structured and categorized. A good web design is easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and suits the user group and brand of the website. Many webpages are designed with a focus on simplicity, so that no extraneous information and functionality that might distract or confuse users appears. As the keystone of a web designer’s output is a site that wins and fosters the trust of the target audience, removing as many potential points of user frustration as possible is a critical consideration.

(Credit: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/web-design)

A domain name is a website address that’s friendly for humans.

Basically, a website sits on a server (a large computer that’s always switched on), & that server has an IP address.

IP addresses aren’t memorable and more than one site can be hosted on one IP address. An example of an IP address is this: 69.171.239.12

A domain name basically acts as a vanity plate to mask this IP address.

For example the above IP address (69.171.239.12) is the real IP address of Facebook’s website. But instead of us tpying in 69.171.239.12 (along with a few more characters) into a browser we use facebook.com because it’s memorable and looks more professional.

A domain can be used for other things like giving you a branded email address like mail@facebook.com

Web hosting is the term used for where your website sits online.

When someone types in your website address (also known as a domain) & hits go your website is then loaded from a server. A server (in the most basic sense) is computer that’s always switched on & connected to the internet.

This always-on computer or server (the constant connection to it) is what constitutes your web hosting.

acerockcola hosts every website on SiteGround that boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

In short – yes, 100%

In a time when the number of web pages viewed on mobile phones outnumbers the number of pages viewed on desktops, it’s vital to have a website that is ‘responsive’ (meaning that the design & content of a site will adapt & rearrange to fit comfortably on mobile phones, tablets, laptops & other handheld devices). All acerockcola websites are responsive for that reason.

The section below will explain what can be expected, however, please note: You are never going to get a website that looks great on a desktop, latest iPad & a 2010 Blackberry phone.

For this reason acerockcola will test your website & guarantee usability on the most common devices & browsers:

Desktop Browsers:

• Google Chrome (including official variants like Canary)
• Microsoft Edge
• Mozilla Firefox (including official variants like Developer)
• Safari
• Opera 

Mobile Devices (using either their native browser or Chrome, Firefox or Opera):

• iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (iOS 10 & above)
• Android phones & tablets (Marshmallow & above)

Not really.

The cookie consent law was designed with good intentions to protect people from websites harvesting their data but the whole system is flawed and seen as a failure.

Even the ICO – the organisation who are spearheading the law in the UK, have removed their original explicit cookie request form from their website.

For more information, see Silktide’s article on the EU Cookie Law

Yes! For £499 One-Pager & £999 Small Business websites the payment term is a simple 50% deposit upfront, then the remaining 50% due once you’re happy with the site and it’s live on its intended domain. For any website or any combination of services (such as SEO, email) that exceed £1,000 then the same 50/50 option is available or alternatively a payment plan of 33% deposit and the remaining 67% spread over three monthly payments once the site is live, is also available.

Absolutely.

There may be some compromises needed for SEO compliance and technical limitations but if you have a design or vision for your site in mind, then your site can absolutely be built in your preferred style.

You can host the website yourself (acerockcola will install it for you too if you want), but in doing so your site will lose some features that acerockcola’s hosting provide.

This includes (but is not limited to)

• Daily website backups
• Uptime monitoring
• Anti-spam/Security monitoring
• Compatibility with new versions of PHP/MySQL or other technologies
• SSL certificate installation & renewal

Additionally, since web hosting is free for all website for the first 12 months, there is no reduction in the quoted price of any website from acerockcola. There will however, be no yearly charge for web hosting after 12 months since you’re hosting it yourself.

You can update your website in several ways:

1) Your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feed can be syndicated (& styled) to match your site – new posts on those platforms can be automatically published to your website without any extra effort from you. This approach also encourages people to interact with your social media profiles providing an additional point of contact

2) A news, blog or updates page can be added to your site which you can update and publish to yourself without any web design skill. These news posts can appear as previews on your homepage in addition to them automatically being cross-posted to social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter

3) If you just want something simple like a phone number getting changed or your opening hours updated then there’s no charge – you would just email mail@acerockcola.com with your changes and the site will be updated that day.

If your changes are something bigger (or you want regular updates posted on behalf of you), then acerockcola can make these changes on either a cost-per-hour tier or on an agreed set-monthly basis plan.

Most web design companies include a chyron in the footer of the websites they make that links back to their site. This is done as a form of advertising and in return, the cost of the website design for the customer is reduced.

acerockcola is proud of the work it creates and relies on a mix of organic search results and brand awareness in order to generate new business and therefore have the ability to reduce promotional and advertising costs through methods like this.

If you do wish to remove the acerockcola logo from the footer of your site, this can be done for a one-off fee of £299

Of course! acerockcola can also help style your existing social media profiles to reflect your brand & new website too.

Depending on how much work is required, this service may come at an additional cost.

Ideally, your logo should be a vector image. Don’t have one or not sure what that means? Don’t worry, acerockcola can re-create your logo in a high-quality format if needed. (You’ll also get it emailed to you to keep so you can use it in the future for other types of branding with third party companies who will likely also require a high-quality vector copy of your logo).

Yes. Whether you’re leaving your existing employer to go solo or if you’re a company wanting to build a new website and don’t want your current web designer to know until you’re ready to go live, absolutely. Your new site can be built on a temporary domain and can also be password protected so no one but you can see it during construction.

Providing that your website is still hosted by acerockcola, then your site can be ‘rewound’ to a previous state from the past 28 days within minutes. Alerts regarding downtime are sent to acerockcola within 5 minutes of the outage so should any downtime happen, it’s likely that work will have already begun to restore your site before you notice.

Yes! All acerockcola hosted websites are monitored with Uptime Robot and send an alert within 5 minutes of any downtime. You’re free to sign up for alerts yourself too at uptimerobot.com (or any other similar website that offers a monitoring service).

Just like how your phone/tablet/PC/other smart devices receive security updates and system upgrades, so does your website. Be it WordPress itself, the plugins, the theme, the PHP version and so on, the back-end of your site requires attention for updates at least once a month.

Additionally, some third-party services that your site may rely on (think Instagram, Facebook, YouTube integrations & so on) change their APIs (the technology used to let those services speak to your site) quite regularly and some need to be refreshed/reauthorised every 28 days or upgraded when the API changes.

While you can in theory ignore these issues, it’s not recommended as you’ll start to notice certain features or aspects of your site start to act up. acerockcola can’t be held responsible for elements on your site that stop working that fall in the category of on-going maintenance.

A maintenance plan from £10 per month to keep on top of all upgrades is a perfect way to keep your site running perfectly.

It’s completely dependent on what type of monthly maintenance that you’d require.

If you’re only needing a monthly refresh of your social media’s API authentication then it can be as low as £10 a month.

If you’re looking for weekly updates, frequent changes to individual pages and you want to combine an SEO plan, then a price would be unique for your situation & something that we can discuss.

Of course, you can keep whatever current email set up you have with your current provider (or not bother with email at all). Whatever you choose, this decision will have no effect on the ability to build you a website.

Yes, instructions (and remote assistance if needed) is included free of charge with any email plan.

Unfortunately, no.

This is because for a site to perform its best and have the most success with search engine rankings then the site really needs to be known inside & out by the company providing SEO.

Reasons for this being a problem with sites not built by the SEO provider include:

• The unfamiliarity with the way the website has been constructed
• Limitations or settings in the theme or plugins that were used to create it
• The page hierarchy
• A lack of full control of the website since it wasn’t built from the ground-up with a specific SEO approach in mind.

Yes, however, the website would have to be hosted on your own hosting plan with a company like GoDaddy or LCN, or on the server of the SEO company doing the work. Once this happens, however, acerockcola won’t be able to provide backups, security or other core services and can’t be held responsible for anything that happens with the website (including its uptime) from that point onward.

Of course, if you already have professional high-quality photos that we can use those by all means.

You can, but if you do, it’s really recommended that you use a DSLR or mirrorless camera to take photos as images captured on mobile phones and standard digital cameras (especially when using digital zoom) don’t have the detail or quality that’s preferred for web publishing.

Absolutely, you’ll also get the redrawn version emailed to you so you can use it yourself or send to other companies (like those who make business cards or car wraps) if needed.

Yes, the logo is yours to keep and to do what you want with, regardless of if you move your website away from acerockcola.

Yes, this can be done for a small additional fee.

The actual name comes from an American radio show called Loveline that ran from 1983 to 2016. The reason for the use of the name is because there are too many companies with uninspiring-sounding names that use initials or keywords. It’s an odd name and the hope was that people would remember it, and it’s worked so far.

Adam Carolla & Dr. Drew from KROQ’s Loveline discussed the origin of it in 2001.

You’ll get a log in for your WordPress site where you can access most features like the blog/news area, the ability to add other users & upload media but for security reasons (& past history) acerockcola can’t allow full admin access.

However, if you decide to host the website yourself, then you’ll have full admin access (& responsibility for anything that goes wrong).

Unfortunately not.

Similar to the above answer – giving customers this level of technical access in the past has tended to bring major headaches and disruption to not only their site, but others hosted on the server.

Again though, like the question before, if you decide to host the website yourself, then you’ll be able to access anything you want (& responsibility for anything that goes wrong).