Iris Web Designs
Creative Solutions for Business Results

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

I am not in GTA or in Canada, can I still get my website designed by you?

Of course, we have designed numerous websites for customers that are not within the vicinity. We can make all necessary communication through the e-mail or phone calls. For the payment, all you need is a credit card or a PayPal account. Feel free to contact us anytime, if you have any questions.

What if I'm not happy with the design?

In case you do not like the first draft of the design suggested by our designers we would discuss it in detail before coming up with another version of the suggested design in your web area which you can view. We would make all the necessary changes and modifications till the time you are completely happy with the design. Your satisfaction is of utmost importance to us.

How long will it take to complete my project?

We put all our effort in delivering the designs as per your schedule and would request you to specify the deadline you have in your mind. Most of the time the delay happens because of non-availability of the content - both text and graphics, that are generally given by the clients.

Do we need to meet to discuss the details of my project?

We can develop the website designs without a face-to-face meeting as email and telephone communications are sufficient for developing the designs. Once we have completed the designs, we upload it on the Internet in a location where you can explore it. After that we discuss with you for carrying out changes, if needed, and for adding or modifying the functionalities you are looking for in your website.

In what format should I provide text and photographs for my new website?

It would be extremely helpful for us if you provide the content in electronic format. For example, you can give us image files captured through digital camera and the text in MS Word or some word processing format. Otherwise, we can help you in transferring the content in a format suitable for our use as well.

Will my website design be "Search Engine" friendly?

We develop all the websites keeping in view of the SEO or search engine optimization aspects and our designs comply with the set rules of all the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It is also important to update the website periodically as the search engines change their rules as well as algorithm for page ranking from time to time. It is therefore important to keep your website updated so that it is prominently featured in the first pages of the search engines.

Do you redesign existing websites?


We also take up website redesigning assignments. We can redesign your website partially keeping the corporate style or can redesign it completely to give it a new look and feel. Please feel free to contact us for a free evaluation of your website so that we can redesign it employing latest technologies and styles.

Can I get e-mail with my website?

Yes. We can set up individual email addresses and other necessary emails that you may need for your business like sales@yoursite.com, info@yoursite.com, lara.smith@yoursite.com.

How do I get more traffic from search engines?

Optimizing your website for the search engine is a long-term process and you cannot think of the desired page rank within short span. You must focus on the right kind of keywords and phrases for your search engine marketing efforts to be effective. The fastest possible strategy to increase the web traffic to your website, however, will be taking help of Google AdWords or similar paid advertisement options. There are certain steps that you must follow to make your strategy fully effective. These are:

  • First, try to figure out the keywords that your clients would use to find out about products or services you offer. You can use Pixelfast Overture Tool to find out the most effective keywords in your niche. Here, you can see a screen divide in two sections. On the left panel you will see the keyword bid amount and on the right-hand side you will find the keyword suggestions. Your aim should be to find out a keyword that is searched quite often yet not high on the bid price. Try out more than one keyword to see how they are placed in the search engines. Try the keywords in Google to see how your competition is optimizing his/her website for that particular keyword. For example, if you search for NYC Boutique hotels and find that first 10 results thrown have that exact phrase in their title you would know that the phrase is over optimized. But if you see that the phrase is appearing in the text you have a good chance with it, provided you know that your clients would search with the phrase. But don't lose heart if you cannot find a suitable keyword for your niche that are searched frequently but still not over optimized. Start optimizing your website with some good and obvious ones and work hard to attain the page rank.
  • Create individual pages for each particular keyword or phrase. For example, if one of your keywords is NYC Boutique hotels create a page for this keyword and place the word 2 to 3 times in the page. But, restrict yourself from stuffing the page with the keyword. You should create pages like this for each of your targeted keywords. Also, in those pages place the keyword in the title tag and in the H1 tag so that they are crawled by the search engine browsers.
  • Incoming links with the targeted keywords are very important for your website. The simplest way to attain this is through link exchange. You can request other website owners to link your website with the keywords as link text and can place their links in your website in exchange. For example, for your NYC Boutique hotels keyword you can ask some website that publish hotel reviews to place your website's link as clickable hyperlink in their page and you may put their website link as useful resources. Another wise step would be to submit your links to NYC hotel directories with the option of link-backs, if needed. You can also submit your link to paid directories for a fee. Each link that comes to your page is considered as a vote for your website. You earn more points when the links coming to your page contains the keywords in your website. Search engines then consider your website to be authoritative in your niche. Google, for example, confers the PageRank depending on the number of votes or good links in your webpage and subsequently gives it a higher page rank than your competitions. Also, don't forget to link other pages of your website through this page so that the users as well as the search engine robots can explore your entire site.
  • Now, wait and watch, and modify, if need be. Search engine positioning may take time. In the meanwhile, continue researching on optimizing your website with other means and for this exploring Webmaster World can be a good option.

How do I accept online payments or donations?

You have quite a few options for accepting online payments.

  1. The first and most popular is PayPal. If you do not have a merchant account this is probable the most cost effective and fast option to receive payments. Here, your clients can pay you either through credit card or through eCheck from their checking account. PayPal offers shopping cart and some other free services that are just great for start-up businesses. They do not have any initial fees but charge 2.9% of the transaction amount and $.30 per transaction. The disadvantages are the options offered by PayPal are not very customized and it may give a feel of start-up to your clients. However, nowadays, as more and more mainstream businesses are opting for PayPal methods this perception is also changing. You will find PayPal to be inexpensive because you need not to pay any additional charges for setting up the merchant account or payment gateway, and, it is quite fast to integrate their shopping cart in your website saving time of development.
  2. If you run a non-profit website you can use the services of Network for Good for accepting credit card donations on your website. You will have to pay 3% of the transaction amount.
  3. Mal's E-commerce is another free and inexpensive solution. It is a remotely-hosted shopping cart system. It offers a free version through which through which you can accept PayPal and other common offline payment options like checks or credit cards if you have some way to charge your client. The shopping cart will save the numbers for you that you can run offline. They charge a monthly fee of $6 and you can upgrade the cart in order to integrate quite a few well-accepted payment gateways like Authorize.net. However, you will have to pay some other fees for the payment gateways and merchant accounts. Explore this site PayPal vs. Mal's to compare features of Mal's and PayPal.
  4. Finally, you can always develop a full-fledged e-commerce solution. There are some steps that you need to follow. These are:
    • Setting up a merchant account through some bank,
    • Contacting a payment gateway service for accepting payments from your website to your merchant account (this can come default with some merchant-account),
    • developing a payment script or shopping cart for integrating your website with your payment gateway
    • Obtaining a static IP and an SSL certificate for generating the safe server environment.

Some shopping carts these days like Magento come with pre-packaged scripts. You can customize them for your website or business. Otherwise, you can develop a customized payment script using the platform that would exactly match your requirements. However, developing full-fledged e-commerce solution is quite expensive an. But if you are looking for fully customized and seamless payment options for your website this is the only option available. You save money as well when your volume of sale goes up in the future.