Here is a checklist of what to think of for your business website and steps to get there.
What will be the purpose of your website?
What is the message you wish to communicate to your customers, and what products or services are you offering?
Do you have a domain name?
Have you already chosen a domain name for your website, and if so, have you registered it? If not, we can assist you in choosing the best domain name as well as checking availability. Once decided upon, we can help you register that name and continue to the next step. Domain name registration is $15/year/name.
Do you have a hosting for your website?
We can assist you in getting the appropriate hosting account set up for your website through some of our recommend hosting companies. For website with common traffic/bandwidth requirements, hosting cost is around $10-20/month depending on your website requirements.
What website pages do you to need?
Choose the number of pages that you would like your website to have. Most common pages are:
- Home
- About Us
- Products / Services
- Contact Us
- Maps and Directions
Your choices are not limited to these pages only, however these are the standard for most websites and is a good place to start. Typically, additional pages and plug-in features costs start at $100/page and custom forms (w/database integration) are $200-$400. Depending on your business, you might also want to prepare privacy and terms of service legal statements. If you wish to do this yourself, there are some online services available to help (such as):
http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/Online-privacy.html
Do you have a logo or branding?
Your website needs to be properly branded with your company logo. If you do not have a logo, we can assist in developing one at a reasonable investment that fits your needs. If you do have a logo, make sure you have a copy in the appropriate digital format (i.e. high-resolution psd, eps, pdf). In addition, you may want to collect existing marketing collateral (i.e. brochures, business cards) that you already have for us to review. Standard Text graphic logo is included as part of your website. Custom high resolution graphic logos start at $125 per design proposal.
What type of pictures or graphics would I like included on my website?
Do you have professional graphics or images that you would like included in your website? If so, make sure you have them in the appropriate file format. Decided where you would like these images or graphics and label them with the respective page you would like them to appear. If you do not have images or graphics you would like us to use, we can assist you in custom graphic development, photography services on an hourly basis. Another alternative are royalty-free stock images for website usage. These range around $5 – $25 per image. Higher resolution versions cost more but they can also be re-used for printing and advertizing purposes.
Do I have content for my website?
Have you already written content and marketing text ready for your website? If so, put it together in a word document complete with labels identifying the pages you would like it to appear on. If you do not have any content for your website, we can assist you in developing and creating website copy content at an hourly rate. Copywriting services for website pages or blog article starts at $125 per 250 words page includes proofing and publishing to your website. Copy proofing existing text content starts at $15 per 250 word page.
I am ready – now what? Here are the steps…
Step 1
Once the domain name is chosen, the hosting service will be registered, installed and configured with all the software to support your website. The domain name will be registered for you at this point with the registration usually taking around 48 hours to be completed.
Within the first week of starting your website, you will usually have a domain name and a “Coming soon” splash page ready online. You can request for an additional email registration feature to be added to your splash page so that you can begin your email lead gathering effort while the website is under construction.
Step 2
Based on your preferences and requirements, research will be conducted with a couple of suggested theme options for your website. Keep in mind, the themes are for demonstrations only and do not come with any graphics, contents or all of the features shown. Ensure that all of the capabilities and design preferences you would like are available at this stage. Adding additional unplanned changes may not always be possible later and may require additional hourly billing in customized programming.
Once your text and graphic contents have been received, a master word document will be created online showing where the text copy and images will be for the individual pages. This document will be used to help you visualize your contents and for final text proofing and approval. When making any changes to your text, please use this document online so that the updates and latest changes can be tracked.
Step 3
Once the document have been approved and finalized, the software and the content will be merged with your final website online – usually this will require at least one to two weeks. Depending on the complexity of your website, an additional week of final testing of the features, performance and browser support may be required. We are now ready to go live at this point.
A date for your website to go live will be decided on at your convenience. The balance of your invoice will be required prior to publishing your website online. Once received, the website will be published online after the live date. Please note that initially the site might be slow to view the first few time. This is normal as your new website will be propagating around the world over the next 72 hours. If the site fails or goes offline for any reason, don’t worry. We provide a month (30 Days) of free limited support for any failures or emergency technical problems (not including revision updates) with your website and resolve any major issues with your hosting company on your behalf. If you wish to engage with us for ongoing technical support and webmaster functions, feel free to contact us for your maintenance requirements here: http://linktranet.com/maintenance-plans/
Done!
We provide some additional free services:
We will create a professional custom favicon icon for your new website to enhance your business image.
Mention us in your social network and we will submit your site to major search engines (google, yahoo, bing) for faster indexing and improved ranking!
Send us a testimonial and receive a free QR code of your website that you can use for all your brochures, signs and business cards!