Website Startup
Website Startup Process Explained
After some preliminary conversation to determine if we are the right company for you the process of taking your site from “Ok I am ready” to “Wow! Is that really my website?” is pretty straight forward.
Here is a rough outline of how it typically happens so you know what to expect and can prepare the required information.
01 Choose a domain name.
In most cases your company name is good choice. You may also want to consider ease of remembering, ease of typing, and keywords for search engines in the domain name you choose.
Provide a atleast three in order of preference incase your choices are not available.
We will confirm the availability of the domains
02 Provide the domain owner contact information.
This reflects the name, address and contact information of the party you want listed as the domain owner.
Once we have your information as you want it to appear in the domain registration we will register your domain.
03 Choose How You Want to Be Billed.
- Billing name and address information if paying by invoice.
- If you prefer to pay by card the following information is required
- Name on Card
- Full billing address associated with the card
- Card Number
- Expiration Date
- CVN number from the back of your card
04 Domain Registration and Account Activation
As soon as your domain is registered and your account is activated we will put up a “Coming Soon” page which gives some general information and provides your contact information. This will stay active while we proceed through the design process. Typically your domain will be reachable and your “coming soon” page available within hours.
05 Deciding How You Want Your Site to Look
Designing your site is accomplished through a simple back and forth dialogue that starts with you finding a couple of sites that seem to represent what you would like to have.
- Send us a few examples of sites that have a look or feel that you like. They don’t have to be in the same industry as you.
- Provide any comments on each about what elements you like.
- Provide instruction on what you want your site to look like and be capable to doing.
06 Your Artwork, Logos or Images
Any Artwork, Logos or Images you have are an important part of the overall design process. You want your website to work with and reflect the color or feel of other elements of your business.
Send any photos, artwork or images you have in your possession that you would like part of your site. You may even wish a gallery of photos of various areas of your establishment. Even if you don’t need or want a gallery good design use can be made of any artwork you have so they should be sent to webmaster@sitecompany.com.
07 Designing your Site
Once in possession of your design preferences and your artwork we will begin to the process of designing your site. Once we have a concept together we will send you a “mockup” of your site for approval. A mockup is simply a still image presentation of the overall design show colors, pictures and your logo amongst the text, links and other elements of the site you request.
08 Approving the Design
The mockup is sent to you for approval and in most cases is sent back a forth a few times as adjustment are made to suit your tastes.
09 Creating The Site
Once the mockup is approved we set to work on creating the design as a webpage and populating the design with your various content pages. While it many cases it helps to have the actual copy the content pages can be create without it.
10 Adding your Content
So we have carefully considered our look, carved it up into some lovely pages it looks great; however, we behold it’s magnificence with some skepticism. There is nothing to actually read or see! Now it’s time to start putting in the content.
At any point in the process you can prepare some copy for your site. We aren’t too strict on the volume of page you can have so if you want seperate page for each service you provide that is typically fine. Or you can list all your services on one page.
Bare minimum page requirement for most sites are typically.
- Homepage
- About Us
- Services / Products
- Contact Us (we typically include both your contact information and a custom webform for this page)
To this you may add whatever specific pages you like.
What to expect after your site is up.
Our company is structured as a managment company to manage your site for you. Your monthly fee covers your hosting on our premium private webservers, annual domain regsitration costs and up to two hours of individual one on one time which you can use for updates, page changes, asking questions, enhancements etc. More time is available if needed for a modest hourly or project quoted fee.
We can provide as much or as little access as you like. Some people want to make all their own content changes and use their time for development while others enjoy the simplicity of not be bothered with updates and such and just send us an email whenever they want to change anything.
Its entirely up to you how you choose to approach your site. We have the systems, skill and familiarity to provide you with what suits you best.
After you site has been in operation for a while you may decided you want features that are beyond what your monthly managment time will allow. In such cases we can quote you a project cost for specific program or feature development or you can request we proceed with changes at a modest hourly fee.
If you anticipate on the outset requiring more than two hours of one on one service each month we can negotiate a more appropriate service contract for you.
If cost is your focal point we can train you or your staff to make changes so you can use your time with us to address more technical concerns
Whatever your needs we are flexible and able to adjust to fit your business rather than forcing you to fit ours