Guidelines to Building a Website
So you want to build a website. Where do you begin? Here are some helpful guidelines to get you started. Feel free to ask us any questions along the way.
It is great to create a word document with all of your notes about the website you would like built. This helps you put your thoughts to paper and ensures we have the correct content when we are building your website.
1. Browse the web and look at websites that you like. If you think I wish my website looked like this website, take a note of those website addresses in your word document. Just simply write down the web address, http://www...
Also you can check out template websites. We can work within any budget. If money is tight you can get free website templates from places like templatesbox.com and freewebsitetemplates.com. These websites offer a great starting point and they can still be customized with your images and coloring. If you have a little bit of cash to spend on a template I would recommend monstertemplate.com they have great templates. It is great to start with a template because it saves time and money. Templates give you an idea of what the structure of your website will look like and at the same time gives you flexibility to customize your website.
2. Make an outline in your word document of what you would like in your website. Example:
-Overall colors and feel to your website
-Home Page
-About Us
-Products- How many product pages
-Contact Us Page
-Blog
3. Will you need a shopping cart?
4. Will you be supplying the pictures and graphics for your website? We can get royalty free images for a low price from websites like dreamstime.com and istockphoto.com
5. When is the due date for your website to be completed?
6. Once we build a mock-up of your website homepage, you can make your suggestions for changes. We want you to be happy with your website. We will then give you a rough draft. Look at your website and at that point you make all your final suggestions for changes to the website. After that the design for the website is set in stone. It is crucial you make your final decisions in the rough draft round. For example we do not want you to bounce back and forth on what colors you want, fonts, images, etc. down the road towards the completion of your website.
7. Where should you buy your website name? Where should you host your website? -For website hosting I suggest: godaddy.com (they are very reliable and very affordable) Make sure you choose LINUX for the Operating System.
-Once you setup your hosting account we will need the following info:
FTP host:
username:
password:
8. You want your website to be informative for your customers/users. Make sure you have quality paragraphs on most of your website pages that describe your company and what makes you stand out from other companies similar to yours. This will help people on google and other search engines find you.
We can help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When you are creating the text (copy) for your website. Keep in mind the main keywords someone would type in google to find a website like yours. If you want to be ranked high in google it is important that your content on your website is informative and truthful. The next best thing is having other people link to your website. You can have blogs, facebook accounts, friends, family, similar industry websites all link to you. Again it is important that it is honest linking that makes sense, otherwise google will notice you are trying to cheat and they will think you are participating in a "linking scheme". You can find great information about avoiding tricks and building great, informative, honest websites at feedthebot.com.
9. There are free features for tracking who comes to your website. You can use google analytics and we can install this in your website for free.
10. You may wonder who will update my website? We would be happy to maintain your website.
You can download a Microsoft Word version of these guidlines here.
