Getting Started

Hello and Welcome!

Before we begin to build your website, we’d like to get to know your needs first and how we can best fit your business. Feel free to browse around and consider your options. Whom ever is making the decisions should also browse the site for their input. You can refer back to this site at any time.

This site is also mobile friendly! Go ahead and take your browser window and shrink it and observe how the site takes a new shape!

How this works

We’ll conduct what’s called a ‘vision call’ and talk about your website. We can discuss any concerns you may have and what you want to get out of your website. While there looks like a lot of options, we can help narrow down what may fit.

Before that, it would be a good idea to look over this site and see what options catch your eye. Keep in mind, we can mix and match from different sections!

What are you looking to get out of your website? If you had an option to flood your website with thousands of visitors, what would you want them to do or get out of the experience? Are you looking for more walk-in traffic? More patrons?

Have something in mind? Let’s focus that.

Reality

The best way a website can be described is an interactive poster for your business. It’s nothing more or less. For most companies, the website isn’t the business directly, it’s an extension.

That said, you can still use it to do great things, but people will look at it and make up their own decisions. Like the billboards you see outside, it’s not the first time you see it, it’s the 20th time. The first impression isn’t as important as someone who has returned or the person who spent an hour combing through your staff photos. These people are the ones who call in and become a patron.

With generalities out of the way, each need is going to be greatly different. Hopefully you know your target audience well enough to tailor their website experience to meet expectations.

Traffic

There are generally 4 ways to get people to your website. One is to directly tell people to your site with a link. This is in person or on printed media or even an email. This is the most effective method in getting new traffic.

The next best method is through social media. If you know how to use Facebook, Twitter or others properly, you can get a lot of targeted traffic to your pages.

SEO

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Is a long term method to generate website traffic. Or fancy talk for getting to the front page of Google.

This isn’t an easy task, as you’re competing with tens of millions of other sites similar to yours. What’s going to make yours stand out? SEO is easily the most costly of these options. It can also take years to get the rank up to where you want it.

Now for the good news. Most sites on the web are terribly designed to be picked up by search engines like Google. For a brick and mortar business, that is one with a physical address to visit, Google will give you special treatment. You can list your business locally, and you’ll only have to compete on a local search scale.

Now for the best part, Google WANTS to give you the best content. If you are one that provides that, you’ll see more natural traffic.

This is a topic best discussed over the phone, there are a lot of misconceptions on what it is and isn’t. Besides that, the industry that tailors to SEO is 90% fraudulent.

PPC

PPC or Pay Per Click is a direct-money to traffic option. It’s a good option for people who want to see an immediate pay-off and is the only marketing option you can 100% track on how effective it is. This, however, isn’t recommended for all websites. It’s only effective if you have a way to get money directly out of your website, like an online store.

While it’s great for instant traffic, it dries as quickly as the payments stop. SEO is more long term, PPC is short term. It’s also HIGHLY recommended that you have an expert do PPC. Most businesses don’t have millions to spend to figure out how to make the most out of PPC.

What’s with the foreign language?

Lorem Ipsum (Latin) is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been used since 45 BC and made the industry’s standard dummy text in 1500 AD, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularized in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software.

Own your domain

Your domain is the address people can find your website at. A lot of companies ‘to make things easier’ will purchase the domain for you on their own account. While this seems like a good idea, migrating a domain is a cumbersome task for the average person, include another company and this becomes very difficult.

Save yourself a lot of trouble, and save the info for your domain somewhere safe.

Keep in Scope

Often people don’t put themselves in the role of the visitor. Using technical and industry terms, only they would understand, and tailor the site to their taste. A good website will keep their clients in mind, help them see the big picture and let them understand how it can benefit them.

Example: If you’re a health care professional, don’t show pictures of surgery, show the big picture, the result.

Call to Action

When people come to you, how do they approach your company? Do they write out a letter and mail it to you? Do they walk in your door with questions or do they use a phone?

I don’t know anyone who has written a letter to inquire about a company in this day in age, even walk in traffic is rare as time is valuable. The Phone is king. Your number should be easily accessible without looking for it.

A quick note on contact forms. Most people avoid them entirely. It’s nice to have as an option, but very few people will use that first. Contact forms are specifically used if you wish to only use email to communicate.