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Website Creation

 

We always take a marketing approach to building websites, creating one that supports your overall business objectives and marketing strategies. Once we understand the purpose, we help you determine the right approach and put together the appropriate tools and team to get the site built. We'll provide a proposal once we understand your requirements and how much of the project we'll be taking on.

Websites may be created from scratch or built on a templated-platform, sometimes called a content management system or CMS. A custom website is necessary when the site requires unique functionality, but can take a lot of time and money. If you want to go the custom route, you'll need to hire designers, developers, coders, etc., which can be a challenge if you're not familiar with the process. In many cases, you'll need to keep hiring them if you want to make changes over time. And this is typical if you're a startup and are evolving your business model.

For startups requiring little specialized design or functionality, we recommend the templated solution which often includes hosting, the CMS and a variety of other tools. You'll get your site built quickly without the need to know too much about the technology behind it. Tools like Squarespace and Wordpress are template-based, but can be customized visually with colors, fonts, headers, images and more. Plus, once you learn how to use them (some are more complicated than others, but offer more customization), you'll be able to make most of the simple changes yourself. That means they'll get done faster and for a lot less money. See our list of website builders, and give some of them a try. Many offer free trials before you need to sign up.

Hosted Tools

In most cases, we recommend building your site on inexpensive hosted platforms like Wordpress or Squarespace, unless you're looking for unique functionality. There are many benefits to using a hosted website builder rather than creating a site from scratch. It's easier to update and maintain -- you won't have to go back to your developer every time you want to change something. You can just do it yourself. This is very important as your business evolves, because it's difficult to anticipate everything you need from the start. It's also a lot cheaper and faster to construct (what goes on the pages is a different story -- see below).

Deliverables

Whether we help you create your site from scratch or we use a templated solution, we can help you determine if a hosted builder will work or if you need something more involved. In any case, we can provide the following:

  • Planning: personas, architecture, flow and design
  • Initial setup
  • Customization*
  • Content creation (copywriting/images)
  • Ongoing updates and maintenance
  • Training on whatever system is chosen

*For Squarespace, initial setup includes choosing a template, adding your existing logo and setting up the basic architecture. You may choose a customized design to enhance the template. This could include:

  • Custom header design
  • CSS (colors, fonts, etc.) setup
  • Custom footer and pagination graphics
  • Image galleries

The following tools may also be added:

  • Email widget for collecting addresses for narrowcast mailings
  • Google Analytics for tracking website visitors
  • Facebook, Twitter and other appropriate social links

Concerning the creation of content, you can do some of it yourself or at least provide us with an outline, and we can take it from there (the more your do yourself, the less expensive it is):

  • Copywriting: we can provide writing, editing and placement of the material on your site.
  • Images: we can source and place the images on your site, but it's a lot less expensive to do the image research yourself. Here are some low-cost image resources

Tips

Many people new to websites think you must host your site where you register your domain name. For example, if you register at Go Daddy, you don't need to host your website there. So find the web builder you like and point your domain to the new host. Typically, your host can help you set that up.

You'll also want to set up email addresses with your domain name. Usually, the host you choose to use for your website will provide them. However, if they don't, you can sign up for Google Apps Standard Gmail.

Once you set up your site, be sure to track your visitors (which will help you see how well you're doing with your marketing) by signing up for the host's analytics tool. You might also add Google Analytics or another tool listed below under Track Your Stats.

To learn more about this topic, take a class designed for the non-technical business person