Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1

How is custom software development priced?

Accepted Answer

Pricing depends on scope, integration complexity, and scale. We start with a free discovery call, then provide a phased proposal. Typical SMB projects range from USD 10k to 60k.

Question 2

How long does a project take?

Accepted Answer

MVPs typically launch in 6-12 weeks; full enterprise systems in 3-6 months. We deliver in 2-week iterations so progress is always visible.

Question 3

Do you offer post-launch support?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Maintenance contracts cover bug fixes, incremental feature work, performance monitoring, and security updates.

Question 4

I'm not technical — can we still work together?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely. Discovery is always in business language. We translate architectural decisions into terms that matter to you.

Question 5

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

Accepted Answer

SEO helps your website get found in search engines like Google; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) helps AI search such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity read and cite it. Both share the same foundation — crawlable HTML and clear structured data — and GEO adds open AI crawler access, llms.txt, and Markdown versions of content.

Question 6

Do you offer template websites?

Accepted Answer

No. Noise & Signal builds fully custom websites only — every page and backend feature is designed for your requirements.

Question 7

Can the website be multilingual?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Our own website is bilingual (Traditional Chinese and English), with a separate URL, canonical, and hreflang per language; the website we built for ximu supports English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

Question 8

How are cost and timeline estimated?

Accepted Answer

Quotes are tiered by three factors: page count, whether you need a backend, and whether you need payments; development ships in two-week iterations. For reference prices and timelines per tier, see our article on website development cost in Taiwan, or try the project cost estimator.

Question 9

Where should traditional industries start with digital transformation?

Accepted Answer

Start with the most painful yet visible-win workflows — typically order management, production scheduling, inventory counts, or A/R reconciliation. These consume labor and generate errors daily.

Question 10

Will this disrupt our existing operations?

Accepted Answer

We use phased, pilot-first rollouts to minimize risk. Legacy systems continue running alongside new ones until the new system is validated — no forced cutovers.

Question 11

When can we expect ROI?

Accepted Answer

Process-digitization projects typically pay back in 6-18 months; smart manufacturing investments in 1-3 years. We include cost-benefit projections in the proposal phase.

Question 12

What if our floor staff aren't tech-savvy?

Accepted Answer

Systems are designed floor-first — simple enough for ops to use without retraining — and we bundle employee training, video walkthroughs, and on-site enablement.

Question 13

What business use cases suit AI Agents?

Accepted Answer

Best for repetitive, rule-bound workflows that need language understanding: support, document classification, report generation, internal knowledge retrieval. One-off or highly creative tasks are less suitable.

Question 14

We don't have much AI training data — can we still do this?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most enterprise agents use RAG (retrieval-augmented generation). Your internal docs, FAQs, and manuals are enough — no model training required.

Question 15

How long to integrate an AI Agent?

Accepted Answer

A working PoC typically takes 2-4 weeks. Full production deployment (with integration, monitoring, and compliance) takes 6-12 weeks.

Question 16

How do you handle data security and privacy?

Accepted Answer

We support private cloud / VPC deployment and local models (Llama, Qwen) — sensitive data never leaves your environment. PII can be auto-redacted before reaching the LLM.

Question 17

How is pricing estimated?

Accepted Answer

Pricing depends on the service type, scope, and complexity. We start with a free discovery call, then provide a phased proposal. Typical SMB custom software projects range from USD 10k to 60k; SEO & GEO-ready websites are tiered by page count, backend, and payments, at roughly USD 940-12,500; other services are scoped individually.

Question 18

How long does a project or engagement take?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the service: custom software MVPs take about 6-12 weeks, full systems 3-6 months; AI Agent PoCs take 2-4 weeks, full deployment 6-12 weeks; industrial transformation rolls out in 3-6-12 month phases; a single-page website takes about 1-2 weeks and a multi-page site with backend and payments about 8-14 weeks.

Question 19

Is there support after launch or after the engagement ends?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We provide post-launch maintenance, consulting, and technical support, covering bug fixes, incremental improvements, performance monitoring, and security updates, priced by traffic and SLA.

Question 20

What's the basic architecture of a website AI chatbot?

Accepted Answer

At its core, a backend route receives visitor messages, calls an LLM provider, and streams the reply back to the front end, switching system prompts by mode. Our own site uses the Vercel AI SDK's streaming functions and splits prompts across three modes — quote, clarify, and general.

Question 21

How do you turn chatbot visitors into leads?

Accepted Answer

Beyond letting visitors volunteer contact details, you can also ask for contact info once, only after clear intent is detected, rather than asking upfront. Once contact details are captured, a backend service sends a notification email to the team so no lead gets missed.

Question 22

What abuse do you need to guard a public chatbot endpoint against?

Accepted Answer

At minimum, you need same-origin request checks, rate limiting to stop a burst of automated calls, request-size and message-count caps, and an output-length cap. Together these four layers stop a public endpoint from being used to run up your API bill.

Question 23

How long before a chatbot's usage data is meaningful?

Accepted Answer

On our own site, the 7 days from September 15, 2026 produced tiny volume, and most visitors clicked a preset starter question rather than typing their own. Treat early data honestly as a small, shallow sample rather than drawing conclusions from it too soon.

Question 24

How does Noise & Signal price a website chatbot project?

Accepted Answer

We scope AI Agent integration projects individually rather than publishing a fixed price list. We first clarify which systems to connect and how leads and notifications should flow, then propose a timeline and budget range.

Question 25

Who was this LINE bot built for?

Accepted Answer

It was built for Huoxinren Startup Co., Ltd., a startup with a small team that needed to answer common customer questions around the clock.

Question 26

What does this LINE bot actually do?

Accepted Answer

It's LLM-powered, auto-replies to common questions, routes conversations by detected intent, and hands off to a human when needed — giving a small team 24/7 customer response.

Question 27

What technology does it use?

Accepted Answer

The LINE Messaging API, an LLM, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and automated-reply logic.

Question 28

Is this LINE bot live?

Accepted Answer

Yes — the case study lists it as live at mars-zen.com.

Question 29

What does a typical LINE bot AI agent rollout look like?

Accepted Answer

In general terms, you'd clarify requirements and the scope of common questions, decide on the technology mix (LLM, RAG, intent routing), integrate the LINE Messaging API, design the handoff-to-human logic, then launch and keep tuning. Actual timeline and scope vary by project.

Question 30

What's the fundamental difference between an AI agent and RPA?

Accepted Answer

RPA automates repetitive tasks by mimicking how a human operates an existing interface, following fixed steps. An AI agent is a system that decides for itself how to complete a task using the tools available to it. The real question is whether the task can be handled with hardcoded rules or needs judgment.

Question 31

Are Zapier and Make AI agents?

Accepted Answer

In our view, their core model is "trigger plus a sequence of actions" — closer to RPA logic in that the flow is fixed once configured. Adding an AI step to a fixed flow, such as drafting an email with AI, does not make the whole flow an autonomously planning system.

Question 32

When should I use rule-based automation (RPA/Zapier/Make) instead of an AI agent?

Accepted Answer

When the decision is deterministic (e.g., auto-approve invoices under a set threshold), auditability and compliance matter, rules change often but carry low risk, and business users can adjust those rules themselves through a modeling tool.

Question 33

When should I consider building an AI agent instead?

Accepted Answer

When the task requires natural language understanding, the input is messy or inconsistently formatted, or you need human-like flexible judgment — negotiation or prioritization, for example — an AI agent is usually the better fit than hardcoded rules.

Question 34

How are Zapier and Make priced?

Accepted Answer

Both charge by usage — task or operation counts — across tiers from a free plan up to custom enterprise pricing. Actual cost depends on your volume and tier, so check the official pricing page for current numbers before deciding.

Question 35

Which Taiwan web development companies focus on SEO and GEO?

Accepted Answer

This comparison covers five — AHHA (Tainan), GRNet (Taipei Neihu and Tainan Yongkang), iBest (Taichung), Noise & Signal (Taipei) and OZCHAMP (Taoyuan). When checked on September 27, 2026, all five sites served robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt; they differ mainly in structured-data depth, pricing transparency and track record.

Question 36

Which of these companies publishes the clearest pricing?

Accepted Answer

As of September 27, 2026, AHHA marks a NT$5,000–150,000 price range in its homepage structured data, GRNet lists plans at up to NT$60,000, from NT$100,000 and from NT$200,000, and Noise & Signal publishes a four-tier website price table from NT$30,000 to NT$400,000. iBest quotes on request, and OZCHAMP's homepage says a typical corporate site starts at several tens of thousands of NT dollars.

Question 37

Does having an llms.txt file make a site more likely to be cited by AI?

Accepted Answer

Not necessarily. llms.txt is still a proposal rather than a ratified web standard, and Google's documentation says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Treat it as a bonus, and judge vendors on indexing basics, structured data and content quality first.

Question 38

What should I ask an SEO/GEO website vendor before signing?

Accepted Answer

Ask them to open robots.txt, sitemap.xml and structured data on a live client site, explain how they handle hreflang and automatic language redirects, spell out what the quote includes and who owns the source code, and name the tools they use to measure indexing after launch.

Question 39

Can a Wix site handle SEO basics?

Accepted Answer

Yes, to a basic level. Wix supports per-page title/meta description edits, an auto-added canonical tag, custom JSON-LD, and Wix states its infrastructure is server-side rendered. But Wix's own documentation also states its support staff won't help with custom robots.txt changes — a real limitation if you need fine-grained crawler control.

Question 40

How does WordPress compare to custom development for SEO?

Accepted Answer

WordPress itself is free open-source software, and a plugin like Yoast SEO handles per-page titles, descriptions, canonicals and JSON-LD — close to custom development on capability. The real difference is who maintains plugin updates, security patches, and performance tuning over time.

Question 41

Is 91APP's SEO capability documented anywhere?

Accepted Answer

We could not find any official documentation. 91APP has no public pricing page — its only official channel is a consultation request, not a published price list — and per-page SEO control, JSON-LD, robots.txt editability, SSR, and hreflang support are all unconfirmed by any official 91APP product documentation. Only third-party agency blog posts discuss it in general terms, which shouldn't be treated as confirmed capability.

Question 42

What does SHOPLINE Taiwan actually cost?

Accepted Answer

SHOPLINE Taiwan publishes annual-only pricing for four tiers (網店探索者, 電商戰略家, OMO 大師, 全通路領航員) at NT$40,000, 55,000, 68,000 and 88,000 a year, plus a one-time NT$5,000 setup fee and a monthly fee of 1.5-2% of GMV depending on tier (checked September 2026).

Question 43

When does custom development make more sense than Wix or WordPress?

Accepted Answer

When you need full developer-level control over robots.txt, hreflang, and llms.txt, or when the site is a long-term brand and traffic asset that needs to keep performing and scaling — those are all natively supported in a custom build like Next.js, with no dependence on plugin availability or what a platform chooses to expose.

Question 44

What's the difference between an SEO-friendly website and a brochure website?

Accepted Answer

A brochure website is built to make visitors think the company looks professional. An SEO-friendly website adds a second goal — being readable, indexable and citable by Google and AI search. The differences sit in server-rendered content, per-page metadata, sitemaps and robots.txt, structured data, speed and post-launch measurement, not in visual design.

Question 45

Where does the extra cost of an SEO-friendly website go?

Accepted Answer

Mostly into hours you never see on screen — URL and page planning, metadata and multilingual setup, structured data, AI crawler and llms.txt configuration, performance tuning, and setting up Search Console and monitoring after launch.

Question 46

When is a plain brochure website enough?

Accepted Answer

If nearly all your clients come through existing relationships or referrals, and the site mainly lets them confirm you exist and find your contact details, a brochure site is usually enough. If you want strangers to find you through Google or AI search tools like ChatGPT, an SEO-friendly build is worth the investment.

Question 47

Can Wix or WordPress produce an SEO-friendly website?

Accepted Answer

Partly. According to Wix's own documentation, it supports per-page titles and descriptions and custom JSON-LD, and its sites are server-side rendered; WordPress handles metadata and structured data through plugins such as Yoast SEO. The difference is how deep your control goes, for example over llms.txt or language redirects.

Question 48

How much does website development cost in Taiwan in 2026?

Accepted Answer

Market rates in Taiwan run from about USD 300 to USD 15,600+ depending on vendor and scope. Noise & Signal builds fully custom only, and prices on three factors — single page or multi-page, whether you need a backend, and whether you need payment integration — landing between USD 940 and 12,500.

Question 49

How much does a single-page site cost?

Accepted Answer

A Noise & Signal single-page site runs about USD 940 (NT$30,000), including responsive design and a contact form, delivered in 1-2 weeks. Other Taiwan vendors quote single-page sites from roughly USD 250-1,900.

Question 50

How much more does a backend add?

Accepted Answer

Moving from a multi-page site with no backend (USD 1,560-3,750) to one where you can edit content yourself (USD 3,750-7,800) roughly doubles the price, and the timeline stretches from 3-6 weeks to 6-10 weeks.

Question 51

How much does payment integration add?

Accepted Answer

Adding a shopping cart, payment gateway, logistics integration, and membership system brings the price to USD 6,250-12,500, with a typical timeline of 8-14 weeks. Payment and logistics testing is the main driver of the added cost.

Question 52

Does Noise & Signal offer template websites?

Accepted Answer

No. Noise & Signal builds fully custom only — every page and backend feature is designed for the client's requirements, which is why quotes run higher than template-based competitors.

Question 53

What ongoing costs come after launch?

Accepted Answer

Expect domain renewal (approx. USD 13-38/year), hosting (approx. USD 95-940/year), and a maintenance contract (10-20% of build cost, roughly USD 310-3,750/year).

Question 54

What is GEO?

Accepted Answer

GEO (generative engine optimization) is a set of practices that make website content easier for generative search engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity to understand and cite. The term comes from a paper presented at KDD 2024, which reported that GEO can boost visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%, while noting that results vary by domain.

Question 55

How is GEO different from SEO?

Accepted Answer

Google's documentation says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO, and there are no extra technical requirements to appear in AI Overviews. In practice, GEO builds on SEO with more attention to whether AI crawlers can fetch your pages, whether passages can be quoted on their own, and whether your brand is mentioned off-site.

Question 56

Do I need an llms.txt file for GEO?

Accepted Answer

No. llms.txt is a proposal rather than a ratified web standard, and Google says you don't need AI-specific files to appear in its AI features. We publish one as a guide for AI agents, not as a ranking lever.

Question 57

What results did Noise & Signal get from doing GEO on its own site?

Accepted Answer

In a GEO audit on September 16, 2026, our site scored 56/100 overall, with 86 for technical foundations but only 5 for brand authority, because the company barely existed on off-site platforms such as LinkedIn and Wikidata. We have since added a LinkedIn company page and a Wikidata entry to our sameAs, but as of September 27, 2026 we have no publishable data on AI citations.

Question 58

Why do websites lose rankings after a redesign?

Accepted Answer

Most often because a URL changed without a permanent redirect, the redirect pointed the wrong way, or internal links weren't updated — so Google treats the old and new pages as two separate pages and the accumulated ranking signal resets.

Question 59

Should I use a 301 or a 302 redirect?

Accepted Answer

Permanent URL changes should use a 301 (or a framework's equivalent permanent-redirect setting — we use 308 in Next.js), which tells search engines the move is permanent. 302/307 signal a temporary move — reserve them for genuinely temporary situations.

Question 60

How soon after a redesign should I start watching Search Console?

Accepted Answer

Start the day it goes live — coverage anomalies usually show up within days. We ourselves noticed early on (September 14–19, 2026) that our sitemap listed 114 URLs while Google recognized only 51 pages, and that kind of gap tends to get worse after a redesign if you're not watching for it.

Question 61

Do old URLs always need a redirect, or can they just be taken down?

Accepted Answer

If an old URL still has rankings or external links pointing to it, taking it down without redirecting zeroes out everything it accumulated. Our own approach uses permanent redirects configured in next.config.ts to send retired routes (like /opensource) to their current equivalent, rather than letting them 404.

Question 62

If several pages cover the same topic, do they cannibalize each other's rankings?

Accepted Answer

They can. The usual approach is to pick one primary page and point the rest at it via canonical tags or internal links, rather than letting several pages compete for the same keywords.

Question 63

What SEO checks are essential before a website launch?

Accepted Answer

At minimum, verify indexing (sitemap, robots.txt, canonical), metadata, structured data, AI-crawler readability, performance, and measurement setup. Skipping any one category can leave your site incompletely indexed by Google or AI engines after launch.

Question 64

Why is our GEO audit score still low even though structured data is in place?

Accepted Answer

Having markup is not the same as scoring well. Our own site covers Organization, Article, and FAQPage JSON-LD across many page types, yet our structured-data category still scored only 50/100 in our September 16, 2026 audit — so check every field against Google's documentation, not just the types.

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