LEARN
While I don’t need to be an expert in your particular field, it is helpful for me to understand you, your business, your art, your MO, and what your level of understanding is in terms of the web, WordPress, social media, content, marketing, security, etc.. I take this knowledge to the drawing board in the following steps.
INTEGRATE
After fully grasping your needs and how you plan to operate after publishing, I will create, develop, and populate all of the visual and functional elements that are necessary to make your website a simple and beautiful mobile-responsive sum of individual parts that will be “friendly” to view and maintain.
EMPOWER
Every website is unique, and not all of its parts need constant attention. In addition, some of its pieces are more complicated than others. Each website that I design and develop comes accompanied by a step-by-step PDF that will help you to login, maintain, and update your new website for years to come.
THE PROCESS
It usually starts by perusing Google for other websites in your field of interest, business acumen, or other category. (If you provide me with any samples, I take a look at these, too, of course.) I take note of the meta tags, the keywords used to find these websites, the navigation outline, and the overall layout of elements.
I follow up my research with a pen-to-paper sketch that encompasses all of the parts needed to make your website “tick”, focusing first and primarily on the landing page, which heavily informs the design and layout of much of the additional pages.
The build is longest part of the process, and is the most critical to the overall function of what will become your physical website. This may include setting up hosting, e-mails, SSL, installing and securing your database, and adding plugins that will ultimately be the behind the scenes magic that makes your website work.
Then each page is uniquely constructed from top to bottom with elements and content, taking great care to ensure that all functions and visuals remain within our central design theme.
This step ends up occurring in a few phases. There’s the initial click-thru where we determine if pieces or elements are missing — if things needed to be taken away or added — and testing the functionality of things like links, forms, maps, social media integration, and other plugins.
Then we test across multiple platforms to make sure that your new website is truly and fully device-responsive. I test on multiple browsers, including Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox, as well as on an iMac, an iPhone, an iPad, and a PC laptop. If anything needs to be adjusted, it does delay the process slightly, but obviously makes for a much better result when we get to the next step.
It’s go time!
If we’ve been building on your domain name, whether in a subfolder or in the root folder, it’s little more than the click of a button to send your website live. If we’ve been building on an alternate server for any reason, there are some additional steps that can delay the publish by a couple of hours, but when you say “go”, I’m ready. Now, you can send the link to everyone you know by any method you please! Cheers to your success.
The average page visit lasts less than a minute.
MODEL FOR SUCCESS
RELEVANCE
Is your content relevant to NOW?
Is it relevant to YOU, who you are, what you do?
More importantly, is it relevant to THEM, your visitor?
Pretty pictures are nice, but pictures speak a thousand words; they should also be communicating a confirmative, congruent message.
RENEWAL
A static website is a dead website. You have to provide new information as you receive it to give people a reason to come back. Just like a restaurant – add new items to your menu. Just like a store – add new products. Just like a tradesman – add new skills to your tool belt. People like “new” things, and showing growth and a willingness to adapt/change is one way to do it. This is also a fail-safe way of reactivating those Google robots that crawl the web looking for a new flavor to taste and promote.
CONTENT IS CURRENCY
Even if you aren’t looking to monetize your website through on-page advertising or e-commerce, clicks are critical to your website’s success. If you own a brick and mortar business, you want people to find you using SEO or high ranking in search engines, social media accounts like Yelp and Facebook. How do you get clicks? RELEVANT, MINIMAL, ROTATING CONTENT.
Minimize content; Maximize results
The more you say, the less people will read.
Finding clear and unique ways to speak to your visitors does more for your website than an entire thesis on why someone should hire you/patronize your establishment/buy your product or ever come back and see what more you have to say. Let your work speak for itself by using pictures in lieu of text. Use calls to action; smart pop-ups; vibrant colors; icons and infographics; moving parts like charts, graphs, and sliders; CAPITAL letters when appropriate; underline certain words; and highlight others.
FINAL
THOU
GHTS:
I have friends and family members whose local and regional reputations are enough for their businesses. By no means would I ever attempt to convince them or anyone who doesn’t need a website that they should have one built. In some ways it’s like having children; if you aren’t going to take the time to raise them, feed them, care for them, do everyone a favor and don’t have them. Also like children, a website is an additional expense that requires time and commitment, and is ultimately nobody’s responsibility but your own.
Building and maintaining a brand can be very rewarding, but it is not without hard work. When you hire a web designer who is a developer, who understands SEO, copy, marketing, and onward trends in the industry or how to find the answers and resources for them, you’re already winning.