Frequently Asked Questions
Being on the same page is very important to us, so we've tried to predict every possible scenario!
Start-up
All you have to do is register! After you fill out the form, you'll be contacted within 24-hours to arrange a start-up meeting. Our start-up meeting is always done via Skype or at the very least, through a phone call.
Separate quotes are needed for:
- Additional pages (beyond 5).
- Extra images.
- Complex or technical jobs, for example: Specialized forms, user account registration & eCommerce solutions.
- Specialized websites / completely custom websites (not based off a template).
Please check out our services page for a full list of what is included in your website. For very detailed information, you can check out our terms of service.
Information is easily misinterpreted through email. The start-up meeting is a chance for us to talk things through so we are all on the same page.
Communication is usually the problem when it comes failed website development projects. There are a lot of moving parts in the website development process and it is very important that we all have the same understanding.
Skype is the preferred method of communication for the start-up meeting, but a phone call will also suffice. This is a mandatory meeting!
One of the biggest topics of our conversation is the content that you want on the site. The content of your website includes your services and any key messages that you want to get across. Your content also includes your branding and how you would like your audience to see you.
Clinic Roots can't write your content and if we did, it would likely fall short of expectations. You understand your services better than anyone and are best suited for writing the specific website content.
If you're ready to go, Clinic Roots requires a non-refundable 50% payment prior to beginning work. The 50% is calculated with the price of your final quote. Read more under the payments section for more details.
After you complete the payment, we will send you a very thorough questionnaire to complete. The questionnaire covers the specific details, that there is no way of knowing without your direct input.
Development Process
Before the website goes live we create two draft websites.
The first draft is your full website, created to the best of our ability. We piece together our conversations and the questionnaire and put it together. There will be adjustments to make and your job is to tell us what we missed.
Website content is discussed thoroughly in our start-up meeting. The short answer to this question is, no. But depending on the topic, we may be able to provide some generic content.
You are the expert and the website is your voice. In places where you want to explain your services, your 'moto' or anything specific, we depend on you to write it. Our questionnaire cover most of this stuff! But this is also why we have the drafting process.
Great! Send them to us and we will include them on your website.
You certainly can. If you aren't happy with the images we used, we will send you a link to the stock image library that we use and you can pick out your own.
There is no generic answer to this question. We will discuss timelines at the start-up meeting and keep you updated throughout the development process.
In general, 2-3 weeks is the quickest we can get the site "live." It all comes down to how much customization we have to do, and how smooth the drafting process goes.
As long as it is a job that is part of your quote, you certainly can. We only run into a roadblock if you're asking for modifications that weren't initially discussed and aren't included as part of the package. You can read the FAQ above about "what types of work require separate quotes" for more details.
Once the final draft is published, website updates are limited to the services included in your 1-hour per month of website updates. If what you want falls outside the scope of this plan, we can perform the work on a quote-by-quote basis.
We try our hardest to avoid this scenario altogether. Here is how:
- Examples of websites are used along the way, so help us understand what you're looking for.
- The start-up meeting and questionnaires are also in place to avoid this scenario. We grill you as much as we can to figure out what you want! We are a team in this process and communication is vital.
- The drafting process makes it so there are no surprises at the end. By the time we get to the final product, you pretty much already know what it is.
Clinic Roots will try to modify your website until satisfaction, but please keep in mind that there are limitations to this. For example, if you agree to a first draft design and then want to completely redo the website further into the drafting process (changing the design, colours, layout, etc), this requires a lot of work! A compromise may have to be reached, which may include additional fees or aborting the process altogether.
If we've tried it all and we still can't reach satisfaction, you have two options:
- We take down the site and you lose your first 50% payment.
- You make your second payment and then site is yours and you can have someone else work on it for you.
Please read our terms of service (specifically sections 10 and 11 for more details.
*If you pick option 2, keep in mind that the site is likely on the Clinic Roots server. You will have access to editing your website but will not have access to our server. Please read the FAQ section regarding "Hosting & Email" for more information.
Subscription
Behind the scenes, we are regularly updating the software and after any change to your site we are keeping site backups for you. Your website also takes up space on the server that Clinic Roots uses, and uses licences for various software applications that Clinic Roots pays for. Your subscription covers these applications and services.
Your monthly subscription is a very nominal price given all of the software and hardware your website uses!
Six times per year we will provide up to one hour of our time to update your website content. Website content includes:
- Blog posts;
- Updates to your services and descriptions;
- Changes to your clinic staff and bios.
Essentially, we can go in and change the "writing" on your website. The content budget does not cover any changes to your design or additional pages. We also don't draft site content for you.
This is what will happen:
- All website software will lose their licenses, so they can no longer be updated to the latest versions.
- You will no longer receive a content update budget.
- Your website will no longer receive backups.
- You will need to transfer your website to a new server, within 30-days.*
*We will no longer host your website on our server if you stop paying the subscription fee. You are able to transfer it to a new server if you'd like, and we can help you out with that. Otherwise, 30-days after the subscription has ended we will stop hosting your website and domain.
Payments
Clinic Roots provides you a quote for anything that isn't included in the base price.
Quotes are always a maximum that you will spend, even if the task is harder and takes longer than we anticipated. In many cases, you may pay less than the quoted value.
We invoice 50% of the total, which includes the starting price, plus any additional quotes involved with your project.
If the project goes under the quoted value, the final payment will be simply whatever has not been paid.
For example:
Total including quotes: $1000
First payment: $500
Final price (project went under quoted value): $950
Final payment: $450
Clinic Roots used an electronic payment system that allows you to pay through various, popular payment systems.
Your invoices will be sent directly to your email along with a link for payment.
The yearly subscription fee is billed automatically, 1-year after you may your first payment.
The yearly subscription fee is mandatory. You pre-authorize payments for the subscription at the time of your first payment.
There are no refunds on the initial development fee of your website, even if you decide to never use the website.
We can provide a pro-rated refund, not a problem!
Hosting
Your website's files and database need to be stored somewhere where they can be accessed on the world wide web. "Hosting" is simply the place where your website is stored and accessed from.
Clinic Roots can host your website on the server that it uses. Clinic Roots pays for a server from a third-party and uses this server to host its websites off of.
Web servers are typically outsourced to a third-party who manage all intricacies.
This isn't a problem and we can develop the website on your server. You may want to cancel it before your subscription renews because hosting is expensive and it is likely more cost effective to let us host the website for you.
It actually creates more work for us to use your server but there are no additional fees.
Absolutely not. Giving anyone access to our hosting plan is a major security risk to everyone.
We can do it for you. Just tell us what you need and we can make the changes. In many cases we can do this for free.
For example, many people work with online marketing agencies that require tweaks to "DNS Zones" for their analytics to work properly. All you have to do is tell us what settings you need added or changed and we can do this for you.
Another example is setting up GSuite (Google) email. This also requires some modifications on the server-side but we can do this for you, for free.
We can do this for you for a fee. There are also many programs out there that can help you do this.
We hate to see you go! When your yearly subscription is over, you will no longer be able to keep your site on the server that we use. The site (files and database) are yours to keep, but you will need to transfer them to a new server. Let us know if you need a hand!
All of our email plans allow for unlimited emails using your own domain name (@yourname.com) and they start with 15 GB of total email storage. You can read more about it here.
These are very powerful email services but they come at a cost. While they have a ton of storage and features, you have to pay per user. This adds up quite quickly when you start paying for multiple people.
Most healthcare providers don't even come close to using the full potential of these email plans.
There is definitely a time and place for them, but you will have to ask us directly!
We will setup all of the initial emails and assign at least one user as the "admin." After the initial setup, if you need to add/delete/change any email accounts, it can be done from the admin account.
Stuck? Don't worry, we're still here to help -- the admin email just makes things much quicker for you if you feel comfortable doing it on your own.
We will assign at least one user as the "admin" and this user can add/delete/change all of the email accounts for your clinic. We are still here to help if you need it!
Have more questions? Get in touch with us.