A little about Sunset Hill Web
Sunset Hill is a neighborhood in the Ballard area of Seattle. Much of Sunset Hill overlooks Puget Sound and Golden Gardens beach. Sunset Hill Web was named after this neighborhood, where I grew up, and very near where Sunset Hill Web is based
How I work
This is a side business for me. I have a day job working in the software industry, so the website development work I do is in the evenings and on weekends. My work day starts pretty early, so I am usually done for the day, and home in plenty of time to have conversations with clients well before their work day is over. And as we all know, the work day for a small business is sometimes never over!
I do all website development in WordPress. I certainly can hand code a website for you, if that is something that is important to you, but developing websites in a good CMS adds value in that an excellent website can be developed much more quickly, saving you money!
The Process
When you decide you would like to talk to Sunset Hill Web about a website, here is the process we will use
First, we chat
We get together for coffee, or talk on the phone for a bit, or just communicate in email about your website. We’ll talk about how you would like it to look- even about some specific designs you may have liked; we’ll talk about what you would like to accomplish with your website (or you trying to get leads organically, or is this going to be mostly a website to have on your business card? As part of this discussion I will give you a very general idea of the cost. If you decide you want SHW to build your website, we will formalizer our agreement, and you will be SHW a small deposit to that we can begin work
Then I work on your website
As part of our initial discussion, I will give you a general idea of how long it will take to build your website. Keep in mind, though, that this will be an interacive process! You will be involved from the very start of this project, and we will be depending on you for some content for your website. So if there is specific text content, or images or photos you will want to use or that we agree woudl be good to use, we will depend on your to get us those. But work on your website will begin right away!
Geneally speaking, we will develop at least the following pages:
- Home
- About
- Contact
with a least a couple of the following, depending on what type of business you have, and what you would like:
- Portfolio
- Gallery
- Blog
Your website is deployed!
In the final step, once you are happy with your website, you pay your SHW invoice , then we deploy your website (make it live), test it, and make sure that search engines can see it, and know that you have a brand new website! Following deployment, we will also make a few reasonable tweaks, with additional charges coming only in the rare case there are extensive changes.
Introduction
Hi, my name is Joel Niemeyer, and I am the owner of Sunset Hill Web.
A bad business experience
A couple of years ago, I sat in on a meeting with a small business owner and the owner of a web design company. The business owner was interested in starting a web presence that would have included a minor e-commerce component. The price that was quoted to that small business owner was $12,000. Based on my 25 years of software development management background, the last eight of which were in web based application development, I was surprised by this quote, especially given that it was going to be built using a popular e-commerce Content Management System.
I spent the next couple of weeks diving in, and really doing some deep research on web Content Management Systems and e-commerce sites. I just could not justify how the cost could be so high, even with a fari amount of “customization”, and I was able to put together a reasonable and working website within three weeks of this meeting.
What really bothered me about this experience, though, was the way that the website decveloper approached the meeting and quote. I could not help walk away from the meeting feeling the business owner had been hoodwinked a little, with stories of comlex develoopment happening behind the scenes. It just did not sit well with me at all.
A great looking small business web site can be made and maintained, using modern day tools, for a reasonable price. It is time consuming, but for the vast majority of small business websites, development is straight forward.
SEO as well!
During my time managing the development of a highly ranked real estate Content Management platform, I had also developed a good amount of experience in the world of SEO, and had kept track of all of the latest developments in the areas of content marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing (SEM).
From these experiences, I started Sunset Hill Web with the idea that a business should be able to have an beautiful, and effective website for an affordable price.
My promise to you
Sunset Hill Web will not try to win your business by selling you on how complicated your needs are. We will be honest, candid, and will tell you: exactly how I will go about creating your web site, and what I will expect from you in doing so. I will demonstrate my passion for helping you enhance your business through my actions, and accommodating your needs, small or large.