Mission
Our mission is to create high-quality website experiences that not only exceed expectations but also consistently meet the evolving needs of website owners, their clients, and site visitors. Whether creating a new site, revitalizing an old one, or providing consulting services, we emphasize ongoing collaboration with stakeholders as central to successful outcomes. Leveraging stakeholder insights combined with our expertise ensures the site remains relevant, user-friendly, accessible to all and aligned with the latest web standards and trends.
Vision
To become a recognized leader in solving the functional, usability and accessibility challenges that arise in custom website development.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
Will MendoClick guarantee a high search engine ranking?
While we follow best practices for search engine optimization (SEO) to enhance website visibility, we acknowledge that there is more to SEO than the in-page SEO optimization we provide. Search engine rankings are competitive and dynamic, and depend upon factors beyond the website itself, such as high-quality inbound links and business reputation discussed on third-party sites. However, a slow-loading, poorly formatted, poorly written or hard-to-navigate website will certainly downgrade SEO ranking, and such issues of the website itself we do address. In addition, there are techniques within each page itself that we use to improve SEO ranking, including appropriate keyword density, cross-linking to related articles on the same website, proper use of headings and appropriate “alt” tags for images (which help both search engine crawlers and visually-impaired site visitors to utilize images). We are happy to work with dedicated SEO and advertising professionals who will tend to off-website services we do not provide ourselves, such as social media campaigns, getting high-quality links to your website (“inbound links”), and building your business reputation.
What will a website cost–can I get it for under $500?
That depends upon how much of the work you want to do yourself. WordPress is free (if you get the self-hosted version provided by WordPress.org rather than signing up for a managed site at WordPress.com) and so are many themes and plugins. Once you have chosen a web host and a registered your domain through a domain registrar (both of which can be had fairly inexpensively), I can install WordPress for you and any themes or plugins you desire, usually for under $100.
You can also do all of this yourself. Similarly, you can buy or rent mechanic tools and maintain your own automobile, but do you want to spend the time learning how and then doing the work?
When you pay me, it’s not for the website, but for my expertise and skills. As soon as you want anything customized, assuming you do not want to do the work yourself, there will be time involved that you will need to pay for. A custom, dynamic website such as one built in WordPress will typically cost $3,000 to $15,000, depending upon its complexity. If it is an e-commerce or membership site, or if it includes class or events listings and registration, the cost will be higher than for a blog-only site.
To anyone contemplating the do-it-yourself approach or signing up for a Wix, Weebly, Shopify or similar website-builder subscriptions, I recommend you read this article first: “Website builders and me – why I charge over $5,000 for a semi-custom website.”
If you only want a static (unchanging) single-page site that is not WordPress but instead written in HTML, CSS and a tiny bit of JavaScript only (so you will need to know something of those languages to edit it yourself), if the layout is simple – and you have already sketched the layouts for both desktop computers and mobile phones – and you have only a few images, and if you have already chosen those images (which you hold appropriate copyright permissions for), such that I can build it for you in a single day, then yes, I can build you a custom site for under $500. And since the site is static, there is little that hackers can manipulate and no data to steal, so there is very little to worry about or maintain. As far as security, a simple backup copy and a little server-side code to prevent malicious files from being added to the website should suffice.
If, on the other hand, your website has new content added regularly, accepts comments, uses built-in forms or displays content conditionally based on, say, what region a visitor is coming from or whether the person is logged in or not, your site will need not only initial installation and customization, but also ongoing maintenance to keep up with a changing Internet, plugin and theme updates, and new security threats. So the cost of a website will probably continue to grow after the original website is put into production. The cost of not maintaining the site can be even higher–lost customers when the site is broken or links stop working, lost or stolen data, potentially with legal ramifications, and time spent fixing things that would probably not have broken in the first place if the site had been kept current.
In conclusion, you can get a website for a very low initial cost, but getting a website that is more than an online business card will require professional services. Website builder sites such as Wix can get you a website quickly, but a quick website is often not the same as one that meets your business needs and those of your potential clients. If you have the time and inclination to learn website development, go for it! Otherwise, contact me to see how I can help.
A Brief History of Margaret and MendoClick
MendoClick was founded in 2001 by Margaret Blauvelt to provide custom Microsoft Access databases and customization for other Microsoft Office products, especially Word and Excel. The focus shifted to website development after 2015, when Margaret returned from a several-year career in elementary education, a career that actually began in the 1990’s. Though she dearly loves learning and teaching, she discovered that she is not constitutionally suited to crowd control and would rather donate time working with kids while supporting herself doing another thing she loves, solving logical software and design problems to meet people’s needs.
What Margaret Does Now
Margaret, who lives in Cloverdale, California, has worked with clients all over North America. She offers custom website development for WordPress and static websites, retrofits, bug fixes, consulting, site maintenance, and audits for usability and accessibility. She has over five years of WordPress experience with over two decades in static website creation and mission-critical database development.
How to Pronounce “Blauvelt”
Some people seem to be embarrassed when they try to pronounce my last name. The name is Dutch. We, in my family, pronounce “Blauvelt” as “blah’-velt,” accent on that first syllable, “blah” like the Monday morning blah’s and “velt” to rhyme with “felt.” I’m not absolutely sure that they pronounce it the same way in the Netherlands, but the one time I spent a few hours in Brussels, Belgium, where the native languages are both French and Dutch, the English-speaking customs agent pronounced my last name the same way I do.
The name is fairly common around New York City. Many Dutch immigrants settled along the Hudson River, and my father grew up in NYC. There is even a town called Blauvelt, New York, about 30 miles north of the center of New York City.
I was in college before I connected what I had learned in high school with where my father had grown up. So much for the disconnect between was taught in my public school and personal relevance.
Rest assured that I won’t be offended if you pronounce it differently than I do. Perhaps if I lived in New York City, I could expect more, but here on the West Coast, people who pronounce it my way the first time are rare.