Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1) How will the public front end of my web software look?
Professional, contemporary, and classy. Like a website that cost you much more. Choose one of our great looking templates, have us create a custom visual design, or supply your own.
2) How long will it take to set it up after I place my order?
If you have your content ready to go and you choose one of our included templates, your web software could be ready as soon as 24 business hours after we receive your call or email. If you need custom work add a week or more depending on the scope of the customizations (see faq #4).
If you haven't started writing your content, the site's launch will probably be dependent on how long that takes you (see faq #9).
3) Will my website be USPAP and/or HVCC compliant?
USPAP and HVCC don't directly say how a website must be built in order to be compliant. It's how you use the website that determines whether you're in compliance. Valued Websites provides easy to use tools for you to achieve compliance, but you're still going to need to know the rules.
4) What if I need or want a feature that the package doesn't come with?
If the feature is something that another client of ours might find useful, it will be added to our upgrade list to be added to the package at some point in the next several months at no extra cost to you. View complete features list.
But if you need the custom feature ASAP or if it's a unique feature that not too many other folks might want (for example, automated file numbering that matches your personal filing system), then our $75 hourly rate would apply.
How long it takes to do the customizations will depend on the nature of the customization(s). However, you'll be able to use the default website functionality until the customizations are added, so you can get started right away.
More about custom programming.
5) What kind of support does the website come with?
You get unlimited support and training, and a half hour of set-up.
You will have access to help and training documents. You can also ask any question through email or over the phone about how the site works and get a plain English answer. Any problems will be quickly fixed.
You also get a half hour of set-up, which can take the form of content formatting, template changes, and minor functionality (programming) changes. Additional time is charged at a $75/hr rate.
Anything related to custom email addresses count towards setup time.
6) How much will it cost?
ValuedBASIC costs $17/month, ValuedPRO costs $24/month, and ValuedAMC costs $27/month, totally free for the first 15 days if you use one of our visual design templates and don't get any options.
Domain name fees are not included, but generally run $10 a year. You should register your own domain name so that you, not Valued Websites, will own it. We highly recommend moniker.com 
or godaddy.com for domain names -- they're inexpensive and solid. Just don't buy all the stuff they'll try to sell you besides the domain name itself, and possibly privacy services.
How to choose a good domain name. If you don't want to spend money on a domain name, we can just set you up with a bunch of numbers, known as an IP address.
Extras such as content placement, custom visual design, logo, animation, stock photos, third-party fees related to online payment processing, and ongoing website marketing may add to the setup and ongoing price. See options for more details.
7) I already have a website. What do I need to do to transition to your service?
The important thing to remember here is don't cancel your existing service until you or we have transferred everything you want to transfer over. Try to leave at minimum a week and ideally two between the time you place your order with us for a new website and the time you cancel your old website.
Each Valued Website website comes with a half hour of set-up time. That time will be used up on any of the data transfer activities listed below before our $75 hourly rate comes into play.
Every website transition is different depening on how big your website is, how many records it contains, what exactly you need transferred, and who your old website provider is. Contact us to get an estimate on any transfer costs. It's likely we'll need admin access to your old website to give a firm estimate. Without admin access, any estimate will be a rough estimate.
DOMAIN NAME
Hopefully your domain name will already be registered under your name. If not, it can take several days to transfer the domain name to a new registrar under your name. The domain name must be registered under your name in order for you to keep it when you get a new website from us. We can give you guidance, but until you wrest the domain name away from whomever it's registered to now, we can't attach your old domain name to our web software. Assuming your domain isn't protected by some kind of privacy service, you should be able to find out who your it's registered to here .
If your old website provider has registered your domain name in their name, asking them to transfer it into your name will be a tip-off to them that you intend to cancel your service with them. If your old domain name means nothing to you, you can always register a new one.
WEB PAGE CONTENTS
We can copy your page contents (words, pictures, logo) from your old website into your Valued Websites website and format it to look its best.
EMAILS
If you have any custom yourname@yourwebsite.com email addresses and/or forwarders, we can easily recreate those at no extra cost on our servers. If your email was stored on your computer or in Gmail, then that should be that. But if your email was stored on your website's server (webmail) and not on your computer, and you want us to transfer those emails to our web servers, that may take longer.
USER ACCOUNTS
If you want to transfer over appraiser and/or client/lender accounts, your current website provider will hopefully be able to export that information in an Excel-compatible format. If that's not possible, we would have to copy over each account one by one, which would take longer.
REPORT FILES
If you want to transfer any report files that have been saved on your old website's server to your new Valued Websites server, there may be extra file storage fees over our base package fee. Additionally, your old website service must be able to provide access to these files to us, either directly, or through you.
8) Can I use my own hosting?
Sorry, no. Hosting environments are highly variable and one of the reasons our prices are so low is that we are very familiar with our own rock-solid hosting environment and don't have to spend a lot of extra time navigating it. New hosting environments take extra time to navigate and also introduce the possibility of strange errors in the programming that can take hair pulling hours to solve.
9) How do the client billing features work?
The client billing features are very flexible, but the first step is always the client placing an order. Then you set the fee for the order.
From here you can send the client an invoice email. The client gets the email and they click a link to go to your website's payment page. They make the online payment, and then the website notes their payment.
Alternately, when clients login to their client area they'll see which invoices and/or orders require payment and they can pay from there. The ValuedBASIC package has no client area, so in that package clients can only pay for an amount that they specify.
An option also exists so you can set a fixed price for each report type, and the client can be asked to pay at the time they place their order.
You can use either a merchant account or PayPal for online payment processing. Both options are simple and secure for the user. Sign up for a merchant account through Valued Websites and we'll give you a "SSL security certificate and dedicated IP" for free for one year, a $125 value. Read more about online payment options.
10) Will my site get high rankings in search engines?
The short answer is "it depends". Getting high rankings depends on a lot of factors including whether the website's code is optimized (ours is), whether your content is optimized, how many other related sites link to you (we can help with that), and how competitive your geographic market is.
If you're the only appraiser for 100 miles (or at least the only one with a website) it's not going to be hard to get top rankings for appraiser searches targeted to your geographic location. But if like most folks you have a bit more competition, it will take a little more effort. Search engines love text content, so the way to get high rankings in crowded markets is to write lots of stuff! Blogs can be useful here. See the next FAQ.
11) Do you offer any online marketing services?
The website comes with a lead capture form, a "download free white paper" form, social networking badges, and support for Google Analytics.
Our website packages are built from the ground up to be a good "SEO vessel" for your target keyphrases. But for competitive markets, Valued Websites can help you "massage" your content so as to get the best possible rankings.
Search engine optimization work will be applied to your package's included set-up time and then billed at a $75/hr rate. See more information about search engines and online marketing.
12) Do you offer any ready-made website content I can use?
If Google finds your new web page and it has the same content as any other page on the web, your new web page with the duplicate content will not get ranked. For this important reason, Valued Websites strongly encourages you to write your own original and unique content, and we don't provide boilerplate that you can just copy and paste.
Yes, it takes a little extra work, but if you want the search engines to list your site's pages, it's necessary. Don't worry if you're not the best writer -- if you want, we can help clean up spelling, grammar, organization, etc.
We also offer copywriting services at $0.25 per word.
Free legal templates such as terms of use and privacy policies can be found here .
13) Is the web software secure?
There is no yes or no answer to this question because security is all relative, and is a constantly evolving cat-and-mouse game with those who would seek to compromise security. We won't publish most of the ways we implement security as that would give hackers inside knowledge. Here's what we can tell you:
- We implement commonly utilized security protocols within our software.
- Online payment processing, if enabled, is protected with industry standard SSL certificates.
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The server is protected from hackers and DDoS attacks through firewalls.
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The server datacenter is a highly secure facility with restricted access.
- 3rd party scripts, such as blogs, if utilized, are put on a periodic upgrade schedule.
Valued Websites provides plain English, personal service from start to finish. The service fee is protected by a 30-day 100% money-back guarantee. It's a great deal! See reasons to choose Valued Websites.
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"Just want you to know that the site is working great!! And, we greatly appreciate your responsiveness."
Leslie M. - Certified Appraisal Source (defunct)
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