Onboarding | Simply Amusing Designs

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Your Project

Everything you need to know is on this page

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We are excited about the possibility of working together to create something beautiful for you. Below, you’ll find some helpful information about how we can best work together, including:

What some of our clients have to say about working with us
An overview of our design and development process
Pricing & Timelines
Payment Information

Once you’ve reviewed the information below, please send us a quick email with any questions you may have, or click here to begin.

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Praise from Our Clients

My sister and I have been working on a new product called Bunny Eyez for about a year. We decided to launch a new Shopify website and knew we wanted Simply Amusing Designs to handle the project, based on our previous experiences working with them. Karen was easy to work with, knowledgeable, responsive, thorough and extremely helpful. With an e-commerce business, the look, layout and feel of our website was critical. We wanted it to be visually appealing to our customers, but very easy to use and navigate. It had to showcase our Bunny Eyez readers in the right way, yet be enticing enough to turn visitors into buyers. Karen took the time to listen to us about our business and our goals for the website, which helped to make sure we were giving our customers the best experience while shopping. She worked closely with our New York team to ensure that everything functioned perfectly for our launch on the back end as well. Our soft launch exceeded our wildest expectations and we know the care taken with our website was a huge part of that. The end result was a beautiful, clean website that looks amazing, has excellent functionality and gives our customers that experience we wanted them to have while shopping with us. We highly recommend Simply Amusing Designs.

Jenny Hutt & Stacy Fritz

Founders & Inventors / Bunny Eyez

Karen is a thoughtful, creative and highly capable designer who really knows her field. She is able to take an idea and bring it to life. Her web site designs are beautiful and so well executed. She is able to help out with all web site building related issues - from analytics to newsletter implementation. Her coding is top notch and she is always ready and able to make a change, revise or improve what she's doing for the client. I very highly recommend Karen. She is also reliable, she works hard but carefully and is very easy to work with. I've actually hired her to design four web sites and I'll definitely be working with her again.

Holly Fink

Brand Strategist/Social Entrepreneur/Marketing Director / The Culture Mom

My blog has been named by Forbes as one of the Best Websites for Women twice, and I attribute this not only to the content and material I provide, but the aesthetics of the blog. It was a pleasure working with Karen on the design and execution of my blog, both previous and current. We have worked together on the original design, and then the updated version. Each time I have found Karen to be extremely knowledgeable, helpful, informative and responsive. I highly recommend Karen for blog quality and maintenance.

Diane Gottsman

Modern Manners Expert and Author / Protocol School of Texas

Karen Lewis (Simply Amusing Designs), created an amazing web site for my new business. I had no idea how to go about any of it. She created everything from the actual site to the social media sites and she taught me how to use all of them. All of the work is very beautiful and professional. Her guidance and advice were invaluable and it continues to be invaluable. She always makes herself available to help you when you need it. Thank you, Karen. You are simply amazing!

Tracy Stein

Business Protocol Expert / Protocol Advisors of Palm Beach

I want to thank you so very much for the awesome design of our website. Our web traffic continues to increase each month and our business has taken off quickly. I receive such positive feedback about our website and the professionalism that it projects to our clients. We have been contacted by national newspapers for our perspective on all things manners and etiquette as well as an overwhelming response to our children's programs. I love your creativity and design as well as your flexibility in working with us and all our questions!

Wendy Mencel

Etiquette & Protocol Expert / Canadian School of Protocol & Etiquette

I have worked with Karen Lewis on several social media projects. At one point we co-hosted a weekly Blog Talk Radio show called Behind the Blog. Most recently I've worked with Karen at Simply Amusing Designs. I enjoy working with Karen and look for ways we can partner because Karen is reliable and professional. She is clear about expectations, deliverables, and follow-up. I regularly refer clients to her for design services because I know she will interview them thoroughly, then transform their vision into a design that suits them. I'm always impressed with her final product! I have no hesitation recommending Karen for your next project. I enjoy working with Karen and I know you will too

Melanie Nelson

Author & Director / Blogging Basics 101

Karen Lewis was an invaluable part of launching my blog, She Takes on the World. Her blog designs are affordable and functional, perfect for personal blogs and small business blogs alike. Karen is truly a pleasure to work with and I highly recommend her.

Natalie MacNeil

Emmy Award-Winning Media Producer, #1 Amazon Bestselling Author, CEO / at She Takes on the World Inc.

Our Step-by-Step Process

We follow the same design process with virtually every project:

Step 1: New Project Quote Form – This intake form allows us to gather the necessary information needed to budget and plan for a your website design and development. You are required to complete this form in order for your project to start.

Step 2: Free Consult – Once you’ve read all the info on this page, as well as our terms found here, and completed your quote form in the next step, we’ll contact you via email to schedule a quick call to discuss the details of your project.

Step 3: Pay Your Retainer Fee – After our initial call, if we are in agreement to move forward, we’ll send you an email with highlights of our call and summary of your project that includes the cost. At that point, you’ll need to pay a 50% retainer fee to secure your place in our queue. The remaining 50% of your project balance will be divided into 1 or 2 equal payments, dependent on the timeline and cost, with the final balance due upon project completion.

Step 4: Sign our Agreement – We’ll send you a detailed agreement that includes the scope of the project, listing of our services, and the milestones necessary to complete the work for you. This agreement will be a legally binding contract to protect all of us as we work together.

Step 5: Project Management – We will invite you to our project management tool where we’ll set up milestones for the project, as well as deadlines for your “homework”, tasks that will help us all to stay on track. We will also work with you to create a site map for your website and organize the content for each page.

Step 6: Homework – We will be giving you a list of questions to help guide you in the design of your website. It is important to consider your users when designing your site (not only your personal preferences), and we may have input on this as well, based on your target demographic. We highly recommend creating a Pinterest board to use as a “guide” of your likes for your designer. If you’d rather email that information, that’s okay too! Our Project Management tool has a place for uploads – a Pinterest board is just more “visual” and easy to see at a glance.

Step 7: Follow up Consultation – About a week before the design and development portions of your project begin, we’ll schedule a quick consultation call to review the milestones and identify anything missing from the “homework”. This will be the perfect time to ask any last-minute questions or make any necessary changes to the project scope before we begin.

Step 8: Logo design – If a logo has been purchased or included with with your design, we’ll utilize the information you provided in your homework and show you 2-3 ideas for your main logo. Once you choose the one you like best, we’ll refine it over 1-2 more rounds of revisions. When your main logo is complete, we’ll move on to the rest of your design.*

Step 9: Social media branding – If social media branding is included in your package, we’ll use your colors, fonts, and new logo to create a cohesive and seamless look across your social media platforms, creating cover images for Facebook, Google Plus, Youtube, and Twitter.*

Step 10: Website design – We’ll create layout mockups for 2-3 key pages of your website based on the design style we’ve determined and the site map outlined. You will have two rounds of revisions to the page mockups before the design is finalized.

Step 11: Website development – When you’ve approved the design and layout of your website, we’ll get to work on turning the mockups into your live WordPress website. At this point, we’ll build in any additional website features specific to your project. After one round of minor revisions, we’ll be ready to make your new site live.

Step 12: Final payment – After final website approval, we’ll email for the balance on your project. When payment is received, we’ll turn over all pertinent website logins and ensure you have access to all design and logo files. We’ll also publish your website to “go live”.

Lucky Step 13: Website wrap-up – Once the website is live and final payment is processed, we will send a wrap-up email with detailed instructions for using your new online home. We may also install a premium tutorial plugin to provide hours of WordPress training, if necessary.

*Please note: Some of these steps will not apply to all projects, and are determined by the complexity of your website or project. Also note that the timeframe given does not include any wait time necessary to complete the projects already in our work queue.

Payments

After our initial call, if we both decide to move forward with the project, we’ll send you an email with a recap of our call and summary of your project. At that point, you’ll need to pay a 50% deposit to secure your place in our queue. The remaining 50% of your project balance will be divided into 1-2 equal payments, dependent on the timeline, with the final balance due upon project completion.

All invoices are handled through FreeAgent, and payment can be remitted via PayPal or credit card.

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