Deposits

Before we can undertake your requirements and start working on your website solution we need to ask you for a deposit of at least £100.00 and will vary depending on the nature of the project. We regret that this deposit is non refundable.

 

The remainder of the balance is payable immediately at the stage of completion of the project which will be arranged with you. A rough estimate of when the work will be completed will be issued, and we will try to stick to this as much as we can.

We regret, however, that sometimes projects can overrun their time-scale, but in this instance it is at no additional cost.

 

Providing your content to us

You must make every effort to provide the relevant materials requested by us in order to fulfil and meet your requirements to specification. The information we will request must be provided as soon as possible within a reasonable time frame.  Delays regarding materials must be explained in due course with reasonable estimation of when we can expect the materials in order to complete the website to specification.

 

In the event that you cannot provide all of the requested information within a reasonable or prior agreed time, then we may re-prioritise our workload and give higher priority to other clients. We also reserve the right to amend the existing initial quote to include a surcharge for inconvenience and disruption caused to us as a result of the late or non submission of materials.

 

Please bear in mind that it is also your responsibility to provide enough content (both written and graphical) for inclusion in order to build your website. This is laid out in the 'guidelines for new clients document'. Failure to provide enough content initially will result in us having to re-contact you for the required content, or In some cases we may have to include additional charges for additional copywriting of your page content if we do not have enough page content. We will contact you before we continue with the project to let you know if this happens.

 

Proofing and Finalisation

At various stages of your project we will ask you to proof an initial design that we will send you. The first stage will be an initial template design which is a rough idea of how it will look as a web page. This template will include a banner, a navigation element, a main area where the main content will appear and also a footer with address information and links.

 

We will first ask you to proof this to see if you agree with the design concept. If you are not entirely happy with the design at this stage or there is something you later remembered to include, which will alter the design significantly, you must tell us at this stage before any further work is carried out on the design. If you do not tell us at this stage and you require significant changes to the design during the mid-latter stages of the work, then additional charges may result.

 

Once the website has been completed to the clients agreed specification, a final proof will be supplied in the way of graphical images of pages or even a 'live proof' which will be the actual website itself. At this point, the client should check over the work and make sure they are happy with the arrangement and wording of the content supplied.

 

Any changes to the final proof must be given to us in written form, usually by email within 7 days of the original date the proof was sent. Failure to observe this clause with any unexplained delay will result in the project going over timescale and an additional charge of £100.00 will be made to the clients final bill. Any delays relating to the proofing of the final solution must be explained in writing beforehand.

 

This 7 day period includes the requirement that the client purchase their webspace ready for the final version of the website to be uploaded. Any delays relating to arranging hosting and holding up the finalisation of the project will also incur addtional charges going onto the clients final bill. Please note: After the 7 days any live proofs uploaded temporarily will be taken down.

 

Intellectual property rights and licensing of imagery and program code

Any website, graphics, or programming code developed by us, will remain our sole property until the outstanding balance owed on any project is settled in full. The website, and graphics will only remain your property. Any 'back end' software or supplied programming code will remain the sole property of us and will be released under the condition that it is not to be used for any other purpose than originally intended.

 

In addition, any scripts or programming code written in any software language used to provide functionality to the website, remains our sole property indefinitely, and must not be reverse engineered, reproduced, re-sold without written permission from us. This also relates to program code provided under 'The GNU General Public license'.

 

Estimates and Quotations

There are rare occasions when the the pricing has to be flexible in case additional content and work is added to the project while it is under way. This may or may not translate into additional labour while working on your project. If this situation occurs you will be notified promptly before the final value of the project is calculated. However, we do our utmost to keep costs at a minimum, and stick to our initial estimates.

 

Our baseline quotations do not include a copy-writing service as standard. Please refer to the copy-writing section for more information. We reserve the right during peak periods to sub-contract the copy-writing service without notice to a 3rd party if necessary.

 

Hours of Trading

We are able to see clients and respond to telephone enquiries between the daylight office hours of Monday to Friday from 9am - 5.30 pm. We do not take enquiries after this time except by email. We aim to respond to your e-mail enquiry within 24 to 48 hours of its receipt, but during peak periods this may be subject to delay. We endeavour to get a reply back to you as soon as we can.

 

Hosting & 3rd party service providers

In most cases you will be responsible for your domain name and also your web hosting space and email addresses. We are able to advise and provide help in setting this up. In the event of problems with the hosting provider we cannot be held accountable for any downtime. All further subscriptions and payments regarding domain names, hosting and email are the direct and sole responsibility of the individual and these must be renewed annually with the chosen provider. Prices given for hosting packages only include the first year's subscription for hosting, domain name and email services.

 

Search Engine Optimisation

While we do our best to ensure that your site gets picked out by the search engines adequately, we cannot guarantee you will be the top of the rankings and that all your potential customers will be able to find you once your website has gone live. Website ranking works by intelligent programs called 'crawlers' or 'web bots' which scan the internet for keywords and rank sites based on the keywords and content combinations they find. Sites are also ranked due to visits and customer traffic and not just search keyword criteria so it is often impossible to stay at the top of other sites offering the same thing for too long. Please don't panic if you don't see your site listed straight away as it can take weeks or even months to appear.

 

There are additional ways in which you can pay search engine providers to 'bump' you up the rankings quickly to jump the queue, but if you wish to do this, you will need to explore this avenue yourself and contact the search providers such as Google, Yahoo, and Dogpile directly. We can offer some advice on how to start you off on this but we do not provide full support on this subject. We only provide a basic Search Engine Optimisation service using the 'Organic' method of page indexing.

 

Copywriting Service

All web packages sadly do not offer a copywriting service as standard. If you require the need for copywriting whereby we write the contents of your webpages for you, then additional charges will be applicable. Copywriting is charged at an hourly rate and is more suited to bigger corporate enterprises. Small and medium sized businesses are advised to do some research on the competition and derive the bulk of their own written content in order to keep costs at a minimum.

 

Disclaimer

We are not liable in any way for damages in the event of web site downtime caused by powers beyond our control which could involve server technical problems, lightning strikes, power failures, spikes and surges, or adverse weather conditions. We rely on 3rd party hosting solutions so therefore all services come with no guarantee.

 

In no event shall we be liable for any copyrighted content passed onto us. Any digital media received is taken with the assumption that the original copyright holders are aware of the intended use of the material and that you understand the legal issues surrounding imagery and copyright. In any instance, we reserve the right to refuse to handle any material or information which may be deemed offensive, illegal or controversial.

 

In the instance of e-commerce, dynamic website work or bespoke software developed for a website solution, we will not be liable in any way for any software problems or 'bugs' that may occur with the solution provided. We will not be liable for loss of service, potential loss of earnings, actual loss of earnings, downtime, site unavailability, etc.

 

Although appropriate testing will be done with the software solution, it is impossible to make any software 100% bug free and bugs and problems can still occur. We are not obliged to fix the problems by law and we will not be held accountable or liable in the event of any such problems. Any additional modifications or fixes that stray outside of the original specification or agreement may be subject to additional surcharge.

 

Once work is completed you are obliged by law to settle the outstanding balance in full for services rendered. We may contact you via email, telephone, and post to remind you of payments overdue if not received by the agreed date. If you decide later that you no longer require the website, even though the work has been completed or part-completed and the initial deposit has been paid, you must still settle the outstanding balance in full.

 

Failure to make any overdue payment may result in denial of service which may mean that pages may be removed or disabled without prior notice, and legal action may result.

 

Acceptance of Terms

Your agreement with us:

By having work undertaken by 'Underline Web', you are in full agreeance with these terms and conditions. We reserve the right to make further amendments to these terms and conditions in future without prior notice.