At SiteBuilder Now we feel that a website is a five piece puzzle waiting to be solved and the pieces are:
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Before you hire us to develop your website we ask you to hire us as your consultant so that we can make sure you understand and are prepared for each piece of the puzzle. If, after meeting with us as your consultant, you decide to hire us as your web developer we will credit your consulting fees toward the proposed website development plan. We take this approach because planning is the most important part of a successful website!
Step 1: Planning
Before you even think about the shape your website might take you need to do some planning and soul searching…
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What are your goals and objectives?
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Advertising your products or services?
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Selling products or services?
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Providing online customer support?
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Providing information?
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Creating and establishing company identity or brand awareness?
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- Who is your target market?
- People in a certain age group?
- People in a certain field?
- People that participate in certain activities?
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People from a certain geographical location?
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What will make them want to come to your site?
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You will send them there?
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Their friends will tell them about it?
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They’ll find you when doing a search?
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Who will be in charge of your website?
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Who will maintain your website?
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Who will manage the day-to-day customer service requests?
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Who will process transactions?
Step 2: Preparation
You know who you want to reach and what you want to get across to them. Now we start to develop some elements that will go into the next step…
- “Look and Feel”. Like other forms of advertising, although well written content is a major part of a successful web marketing campaign, great content won’t matter if your visitors don’t stop to read it. We don’t recommend high end technology or gimmicks for our customer’s home page – unless you want to appeal to a market segment that will respond to just such an approach.
- What resources do you already have to pull from?
- Brochures or other advertising collateral?
- Corporate Identity or Logo?
- What kind of a first impression do you want to make?
- What are the major colors you would like to use?
- Content. During this process it’s good to start thinking about what the meat of your website will be. What are the three major key words people you want to visit your website might use? List a total of 20 but pick just three that are your MAJOR key words. We will help you develop content that will assure the best results when you’re ready to promote your website.
- Graphics, images, branding artwork. We will help you analyze what you have and what you need and the best resources to get it.</p>
- Create a “story board”. In this step we work with our clients to create something like a flow chart that will show your pages and how they relate from the Home Page down. During this process we refer back to your planning and other preparation work to develop the basic form your site will take and where you will plug the different content and graphic elements in.
Step 3. Implementation
Now that you have a good picture of how you want your site to look, who you want it to appeal to, and what your existing resources are we will help you determine your best approach to turning this information into a working WEBSITE.
At SiteBuilder Now our foundation was built on finding solutions that allow clients with even the smallest budget to get a professional looking website.
Upon consulting with us you may decide that a “do-it-yourself” template-based approach is your best solution. Or maybe you want to hire us to do all of the implementation for you. Or maybe a combination. We will review your planning and preparation and give you guidelines to help you determine for yourself which approach is best.
Step 4. Promotion
If your goals and objectives require successful search engine results, we can help. We understand what it takes to meet the evasive requirements of search engines like Google and MSN. We will help you prepare your site to meet these requirements and recommend resources to help you let these companies know your site is ready to be searched.
Step 5. Maintenance
Depending on the goals and objectives you have for your website, we will help you determine what it will take to keep it functioning to your expectations. If your site requires a lot of content management we may recommend choosing a solution that allows you to log in and edit content from any web browser. If your site doesn’t need a lot of changes it may be wiser to hire us to do the occasional updates. Whatever is right for you, we have the solutions to support your needs.