Take these steps 1-by-1 to get started:

So you want a website? It takes a good amount of planning on the part of the customer too.

 

 

01. Buy a DOMAIN NAME. Dotster or Go Daddy are good companies (registrar) to buy your domain name from. This costs about $15 per year.

 

 

02. Get WEB HOSTING. You need to put that website on the internet and you will need a "server" to do that on. This costs about $50 - $150 per year. There are hundreds of companies out there that offer good hosting plans. Try to find a host that includes email addresses for your website. I offer my own simple hosting at $50/year it includes 1 email address but only for websites that I design and maintain. Another great company is Ace-Host.

 

 

03. Think about the FOCUS OF YOUR WEBSITE. Are you selling or just advertising? Are you making sales online or just directing people to your store or service?

 

 

04. What specific FEATURES do you want in the website? (shopping carts, password protected areas, product pages, mailing list, sign-up, slideshows, animations) Be creative, if you have a tight budget features can be simplified or removed to get your price quote down to what you need. It's best for your web designer to know everything that is on your mind. You can always add more later.

 

 

05. MAP out the website with a good PAGE BREAKDOWN of every section you want on the website. Be creative, if you have a tight budget pages can be removed to get your price quote down to what you need. It's best for your web designer to know everything that is on your mind. You can always add more later. Home, About Us, Photo Gallery, Video Gallery, Specials, Contact, Products, Order Form, Biography, Staff, and Shopping Cart are all types of pages and sub-pages you may find on a website. You can also send a “flow chart” if you prefer.

 

 

06. Find a LAYOUT STYLE / LOOK that meets your website’s and your industry’s requirements. Send your web designer links to the websites you like.

 

 

a. Artist: This would be a totally custom website that only you will have. Your designer takes all creative freedom (based on your color pallet, content, and photos), so look at their portfolio of work because you would be hiring an artist to create something for you. You are permitted 2 major edits to the layout the designer creates for your website before the final approval.

 

b. Template: You can also choose to go with a template based website (activeden.net) these websites can be done quickly and cheaper the a custom design. Template based websites can not be completely customized only certain parts like the logo, color schemes, and fonts can be changed. So when choosing a template... choose wisely. The good thing is that there are thousands to choose from. Your designer maybe able to pick some for you to choose from if you give them some samples of what you like. You will be charged the cost of the template if any. There are no edits to the template layout. What you see is what you get from the preview sample.

 

c. Engineer: This is when you hire a designer to only put together things that you supplied or directed. This gives you the artistic creative freedom of the website. The designer will take artistic creative freedom with any aspects of the website that are not supplied beforehand and no layout edits will be permitted without incurring additional costs. Your directions should be absolutely specific and the designer must have all the content and directions before they start for you to avoid additional costs.

 

* Notes: The larger and more graphics the website has the slower it will load. Flash websites and components do not currently work on iPhones and they are not very Google friendly. Not all computers, internet speeds, and monitors are the same. We have to design a website that will be friendly to the smallest of monitors and the slowest of computers.

 

07. Send your designer all the USERNAMES and PASSWORDS that they may need such as web hosting and domain registrar.

 

 

08. Send your web designer all your GRAPHICS such as photos, logos, graphics, newspaper clippings, color choices, font choices and/or anything that you would like to be used on your website. Jpg, gif, tiff, png are some of the files you may send your website designer. If you do not supply specific graphics the designer will do it automatically. You are permitted 2 minor edits to the graphics.

 

 

09. Write out your website CONTENT. This is all the written text of the website. (biographies, product descriptions, photo captions, company description) If you are unable to write your content there are copyrighting companies and ad agencies that can create your content.

 

a. This must all be sent to you web designer in Word or Text documents via e-mail. Send each page in its own document. (Example - aboutus.doc or into.txt) If you have a 8 page website then you will send 8 documents. Also include your formatting preferences if you have any. If you do not include instructions the designer will assume creative freedom and do it as they see fit then you can only make 3 revisions to the work they did. Formatted Microsoft Word documents with notes included work great.

 

b. Remember ... your website designer is not a dictation service or an ad agency so YOU must supply them with all the proper information to create your website. This is usually what can hold up a website from going "live". I have seen websites delayed for weeks and even years due to the customer not sending in their content (words/text). Your website designer will copy and paste the information you e-mail into your website and then proof read it. It is the web designers responsibly is to design the website and make it work ... and it is your responsibility as the customer to supply the content you want on your website.

 

 

10. When your designer has all of the above that is when they START THE DESIGN and coding process. I design the website on a hidden link that lets you monitor the progress of your website. Evaluate the site as it's being built daily and send any revisions you have at that time. Any structural changes or content revisions/changes that are not the fault of the designer may be billed at an additional per hour rate. So try to ensure that your content is clear when you send it.

 

 

11. FINAL APPROVAL and final payment. Most designers do 50% up front and 50% at the final approval.

 

 

12. The website will GO LIVE when the designer receives the last 50% and final approval is given. At this point any changes will be considered website maintenance and billed separately. (unless it's a mistake on the designers side)

 

 

13. ADVERTISING your new website. Google offers many tools to help your website be seen online. The only way you can be guaranteed a good spot on Google is by paying for ads using Google Adwords. There are a few other search engine ads you can buy, but most people use Google at the moment. I will add keywords, meta tags, and optimize your website which is included for free in all new website design. Click here to read more about search engine optimization.