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So you want to build a website?

July 28, 2011 By Todd Leave a Comment

You have a business. Maybe your business is brand new or maybe it has never had a website, but now, you think it’s time to build a website for your business. You ask around and get a lot of different recommendations for designers and some tips from colleagues, etc.

Before you sit down with a designer, there are some things you need to know about the business of building your website. I want to share with you some essentials, and then add some for good measure, a bonus if you will.

A website has to have a domain and hosting

To those of us in the field, these seems like a “no brainer.” Not everyone knows this. First, you have to have your domain which is called your domain name. An example is www.toddejones.net. That is my domain. Actually, I have several. It is the identifier of your website’s location. Look at your domain name like a street address. Second, you have to have a plot of land, or in the digital world, it is called hosting. You lease your hosting from a hosting provider such as Bluehost.com. Both the hosting and the domain cost money. Each year, you pay for your hosting plan and your domain.

A website design does not include hosting and domain

With a rare exception, your designer will not include the price of hosting and domain in the cost of building your website. He or she may have a solution that they may provide for you, but it is, mostly, not included in the design cost. Some companies will do some kind of all-in-one type of plan, but you usually do not get the personal attention and customization that a freelance designer or a web development firm will offer. Keep in mind that most of the time, the cost of your design does not include domain and hosting.

Website content has to come from somewhere

Website content refers to the content of each page as well as pictures and graphics such as your logo. The designer may use pictures and graphics as a part of the design elements, but he or she will need pictures of things like your place of business, your staff and any other business related item as well as your company’s logo. If you expect your designer to create this content, you should also expect to pay extra for doing so. You will also need to consider the copy writing of your website. Do you hire a professional copywriter? Do you write the copy yourself? Or, do you pay to have the website designer provide the copy? This will be your decision, but it is one that needs to be made.

A well built website costs more than a few hundred dollars

That is not to say that you can’t have a website built for a few hundred dollars, but it will not be the best product you can get. A thorough designer will take plenty of time to make sure the website is built, works properly and is optimized for its best use. This time costs money. Simply put, a premium website comes at a premium price.

Bonus Points

A Content Management System is essential.

This helps you easily update your website and it is necessary for non-profits and small businesses. It will save you lots of money in updates. There are plenty of good ones available under open source software such as Joomla, Drupal and my favorite, WordPress.

Measure Results

Google Analytics is free. Have it installed by your designer and check your statistics. You need to know who is coming and from where.

Integrate Social Media

Integrate your social media on your website. Let visitors know where else they can find you on the web, and always have your social media profiles leading people back to your website. This gives customers several different ways to engage you and your company.

Marketing

You website is part of your overall marketing plan. Include a strategy for your website in your overall plan and follow up. Don’t build a website and let it sit stagnate on the web for years without knowing what it is or is not doing for your company! Also, just to be clear, you will have to promote your website to get people to come. Promote it offline as well as online. Consult with your designer or hire an internet marketer. At the very least, make sure your customers know about your website!

Search Engines

Finally, all of the “big three” search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) have free registration tools to have your website indexed in their system. Use them and don’t pay a website to submit to 249 search engines. The only ones you really have to worry about are the “big three.” Submissions to directories might be worth considering, but make sure you index your website in one of the “big three.”

If you have any more questions about getting started, pleas don’t hesitate to contact me!

Filed Under: websites Tagged With: build a website, domain, hosting, website, website design

Thumbtack business directory

August 4, 2010 By Todd 2 Comments

Business directories can be very important tools for helping your website receive more exposure. I have found thumbtack.com and it seems to be a good business directory, especially for small businesses in the local market. I encourage you to check it out and consider adding a listing. The website is very interactive and fairly easy to use.

By the way, check out my Freelance Website Design service at Thumbtack!

Filed Under: websites Tagged With: business directory, website

Three Indispensable Goals for your Website

July 7, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

Website design and having a website has come a long way from the early years about 15 years ago. Back then, there weren’t as many people with websites as there is today. There are an estimated 206 Million websites according to the Web Server Survey by Netcraft.

by bull3t from Flickr

In the light of the number of websites that are online today, simply having a website presence is not nearly enough.

So, what should a person or a business do about the mass of websites. Many owners have seen little or no benefit from having a website, and it’s no wonder with over 206 Million websites for consumers to choose from. This leaves us to reason that a business who decides to have a website needs to have some sort of strategy.

A strategy, or a plan, is of the utmost importance when deciding to set up shop online. Besides, you are going to pay somebody good money to design and set it up for you. You have to make sure you get the most “bang for your buck.” That, in business terms, is called Return on Investment (ROI).

A website strategy has to be comprehensive, and there are, I think, three indispensable goals for your website strategy.

1. Quality Design

There is a whole school of thought on web standards. Learn more here and here. Standards keep your designer at the forefront of quality design. It is best if they have adopted an active approach to using, or at least learning, web standards. If a designer is trying to design with tables are something from the 1990′s, run and run fast the other way! Standards also help ensure that your designer will design you a website that will be “search engine friendly.”

talkephotography from Flickr

2. Traffic

In the movie, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character was told, “If you build it, they will come.” While that philosophy was inspirational in the movie, it doesn’t work in the world of websites. With over 206 Million websites on the web (see above), visitors have more options than they can possible choose. Skilled webmasters and designers have to work on the website in an ongoing attempt to bring traffic to their website through the use of skills such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is only part of the solution. Many website owners are turning to social media to help draw visitors to their sites. Further, good old fashion marketing has its place as well.

3. Conversion

Once you have visitors coming to your website, then what? Conversion is the art of converting visitors in to consumers. Every business has to do this. When I worked in a book store, we recommended books and other items to the customer in which we thought would be of interest to them. Without sales, businesses go away, and conversion is the process of “closing the sale.” Much of the conversion process is accomplished different ways, but copy writing is very important. Coppyblogger is one of the best blogs that helps writers with their conversion skills.

In the backdrop of these three goals is communication. Communication is at the heart of a website, and communication is the basis for building a community–a community which can become customers.

In today’s online world, running a website is a full time job, although most small to medium size companies can’t or don’t hire someone to manage and run their website. However, given the right person, the benefits can more than pay for the position. If you are a small business owner and you have a website, you can and should learn what you can to make your website successful.

What will you do to improve your website? Do you have a plan or a strategy?

Filed Under: websites Tagged With: goals, strategy, website, website design

Ten Reasons to Build Your Website with WordPress

May 28, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

People are looking at websites more with function in mind than before. Previously, companies wanted a good looking, dynamic site with pizazz. Those things are good to have, but if no one can find you in the search engines, then you have just wasted your money. While WordPress is not considered a Content Management System (CMS), it easily doubles as both a blogging platform and a CMS.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanpol/

The power and flexibility is enormous, and i have become a believer in it as a product.

Therefore, I am listing ten reasons to build your website on WordPress.

10. Syndication

If you are an online publisher, you know that getting your content in front of as many eyeballs as possible is the name of the game. One of the best ways to do this is through syndication. WordPress has RSS feeds built in to its framework. It automatically parses your content in a raw RSS feed. This makes it easier for other readers to find and import your content in to their favorite reader.

9. Theme Customization

If you are concerned about having a bland-looking website that looks like 250,000 others, you shouldn’t have to. There are tons of amazing designers who can customize a theme, or build a new one from the ground up just for your company. So, you don’t have to share your look with thousands of others on the world wide web.

8. Categories

The posts you publish have a unique URL, but you can use the power of categories to make them easily accessible for your visitors. Categories can be customized as a gateway to that particular content, and your visitors may not know the difference between them and a regular static page. You categorize posts chronologically, or by subject.

7. Community

WordPress builds a comments template in to each post (each page if you want to) allowing visitors and readers a chance to “comment” on a post and making them feel like they are a part of the community. Inherently, it is one of the best community building platforms since the message board, and I, for one, like the comments better than the message boards.

6. User-friendly Publishing

If you can use a word processor, you can use WordPress. In fact, most blogging platforms are built this way. If you are a writer, the easiest way to publish online is with a blogging platform, and the most powerful of the blogging platforms is WordPress. The learning curve is not very hard.

5. Blogging Website

A website that shows up in the search engines well is one that has activity. A blogging website allows publishing to happen quickly and often giving a website built around it all the activity it needs to be “seen and heard” by the search engines. Build your website as (see @Shama The Zen of Social Media Marketing) a blog and you will be “found” easily by Google and the other guys. WordPress is uniquely made to do this well.

4. Large Support Community

Most folks who are regular users of WordPress are very helpful. You will find the support you need, particularly from WordPress.org. People are always writing tutorials and their are WordPress groups across the country. Linkedin even has a WordPress group. There is no shortage of help.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamperegrino/

3. SEO Friendly/Standards Compliant

The themes are usually written on the latest website design standards. This, along with activity I mentioned above, makes WordPress very Search Engine Optimization friendly. It kind of helps with the search engine thing.

2. User Friendly CMS

WordPress, as I mentioned before, is very user friendly for publishing online. This makes it a very easy-to-use CMS as well. It allows writers to do what writers do best, write and publish.

1. Free/Open Source

WordPress, the software is free to use under open source! Everything about designing a website costs money from the domain registration, to the hosting, to the designer’s fees, so why would you want to add to the expense by paying thousands of dollars for the CMS software?

These are ten reasons I came up. You can find a full list of features here.

Filed Under: websites, WordPress Tagged With: blogging, Ten Reasons, website, WordPress

How I impoved the rankings of a local photographer

May 22, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

In February of 2010, I was contracted to help improve the rankings of Amy Jones Design, a photography business in Conway, AR. Amy had a good website hosted and ran by Photobiz.com. She wasn’t getting much traffic and her ranking was buried on the third page for the keywords “photographer, Conway, AR. “ I was also interested in the keywords “photography, Conway, AR.”

My job was to help improve her search engine rankings. My goal was to get her on the first page in one or both of the keyword phrases I mentioned above. I set out to accomplish this by taking a look at what improvements could be made to the SEO of her site as well as other “tasks” which we might implement.

Google Ranking for Amy Jones Design, May 22, 2010

I want to mention three of the tasks we implemented which are easy for anyone to implement.

1. Set up a Facebook fan page--This might have been the single biggest task. I set up a Facebook fan page and Amy took the task to heart and grew her fans to over 800. Amy came up with the idea in which she would give away a package for her “funniest kid picture” contest. To vote, a person had to “like” her page (Facebook changed from “fan” to “like” during the middle of the contest).

2. Set up a blog--Unfortunately, we were unable to put a blog on her domain with Photobiz, so we set up a blog on WordPress. Nevertheless, I coached Amy to post at least once a week, and she began to create some posts which had a strong link to her website and her Facebook page.

3. Tweak keywords–We tweaked the keywords on her website making sure that they were present on every page. Amy’s site at Photobiz is flash based, but they provide an html mirror making this a very important task. As I said, the keywords I targeted were “photographer, Conway, AR” and “photography, Conway, AR.”

There were some other tasks we implemented as well, but these were the three main strategies, and they worked! I checked the keywords on Google today and her website is on the first page for “photographer, Conway, AR.” We are on the second page for the other keyword phrase. It took a little less than three months.

We also have great placement in Google for some other keywords.

Just having a website is not always enough. Having one that ranks well can lead to more traffic, more sales!

Filed Under: Case Studies Tagged With: Facebook, photography, rankings, search engines, website

Connecting Story to Your Mission

April 11, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

Chris Brogan has challenged his readers. Therefore, I accept the challenge. We are supposed to write a post about story. Here is my post about story and from my perspective.

We all have a story. My story, much like yours, contains comedy, romance and tragedy. I have experienced them all in the past couple of years.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jstephenconn/

In fact, folks resonate with us when we share our story. However, I want to take it to a different level. What if we connected our story to our mission–not just as a business person or writer–but our mission in life? What if we share our story for a different purpose? What if we share our stories in a way that transcends what we do to make a living?

For me, the most powerful story is Jesus. Now, that story is engaged in my story. God engaging in history–my history. I haven’t always liked my history, but I have always respected one who would throw off the cloak or royalty and become a simple peasant to give his life for a ragamuffin like me.

Because of God’s great love, I have decided to do this. I believe that all churches should have an online presence. There may be a rare example of one that doesn’t need one, but most do. I am willing to help churches have an online presence by offering my services for 50% off what I would normally charge. Further, if a church simply can’t pay that, we can make a different arrangement. This will undoubtedly benefit small and start-up churches, and those are who I am looking at when I offer this. Because of my time, I can only participate in a limited number projects at a time. It makes no difference what denomination you are as long as you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

I do not want a church to use being small or money as a reason to not have an online presence. I will help you get a site up and running and train a volunteer and staff member to use the website. If you desire, I will also set up a social media presence for you as well to integrate with your website. I will then offer tech support for you and your website for six months. All my services for a church or faith-based non profit will be 50% off plus the cost of hosting and domain registration.

Now, Chris, that is connecting my story, and God’s story, to my mission. What do you think?

Filed Under: Story Tagged With: Chris Brogan, online, Social Media, Story, website