The Process

These are the simple steps that we will take to get your site up and running

1 – Initial Meeting

During our first contact, we can set up an initial meeting. This can take place at your home/business preferred cafe, my place or anywhere you choose. The meeting will generally cover:

what you aim to achieve from your website

who your target audience is

what you budget is

what features you would like in your site

what other websites you like the look and feel of and why

history, thoughts and feelings about your business

The meeting will not be timed or rushed. It will finish when you are happy that I know enough about how you visualize the site working and looking. At this point it is critical that you convey to me all the information you want in order for me to fully understand your businesses goals and identity.

2 – Site Map

This is where you will email me a list of all the sections you would like in your website. Sections are pages, menus and features. For example, you would write down a list of all the pages you want (Home/About Us/Services/Photo Gallery/Contact Us .. etc). This helps when I show you designs of how the site will look, because I can also show you how the menu will look based on your Site Map. The Site Map will change slightly over the design phase, so it is good to try and start refining it here.

3 – Design Phase

In this phase, I will show you a couple of different design ideas I think will work based on our initial meeting and you get to say what you do and don’t like about each element. You may love the menu but not like the color scheme. You may like the logo and header area but not like the footer. I will keep making these refinements until you are happy with the design.

4 – Hosting

At this time we setup your hosting. I am assuming by this point that you are happy to continue working with me to get the site up and running, so we buy you some:

Hosting Space with Bluehost – (Additional, ongoing cost) The space you must buy to store your website files on the internet

Domain Name with Bluehost – (Cost is already included in my pricing) You must have a website URL or Domain Name such as www.yourbusiness.com

Bluehost is the web hosting company that I use for all my clients. They are easy, cheap but very professional. They also let me talk to them 24/7 in realtime if I have any queries or concerns. For the pricing of Hosting Space and Domain Names, please see my pricing section on this site.

5 – Development

This is the time frame that it takes me to develop the site. I will turn the designs into a fully working website and upload it to your Hosting Space. Generally the time it takes to develop a site changes dramatically between projects. The amount of features, the complexity of those features, the intricacy of the design style vary the development cycle duration. Other influences on the development time are changes to the design, logo, theme and any other forms of change. If the design and feature list don’t change during development, the time it takes to construct the site is dramatically reduced. On average, the development phase should take 1-2 weeks for a basic website and up to 3-4 weeks for a full website.

6 – Testing and Training

After development is complete, I will test the website in all web browsers that people are likely to view it on. I will test it in Internet Explorer and Firefox on PC and Safari and Firefox on MAC. I will iron out any problems I find so that you don’t have to discover them after it has gone live. There will always be something small that rears its ugly head so please be aware or this and patient while I solve it. Computers and the internet are difficult and problematic at the best of times as I am sure you already know.

If you are having a full website built, I will show you how to add/edit and delete content via the Wordpress Admin page using a password that you choose. This is always a light and fun part of the project where we can be happy that it is almost finished and we will have a bit of fun putting test content on the site and editing it.

7 – SEO Search Engine Optimization

I will ask you for some keywords and a description that describes your website and business. Then our jobs are done and now it is up to me to submit your site to all the search engines on the internet in an attempt to rank it highly in the result of someone searching for your site. For example, if someone types in keywords that descibe your website into Google, we hope that your website appears on the first page of results. Keep in mind that it takes up to 3 weeks for the search engines such as Google to index your site so that people can search for it.

8 – Your website goes LIVE

We Hi-5 and have a drink because now your website is on the internet. Most clients of mine make back the money they spent on getting their website built in the first month that it is live which I like to hear because we all win. This is based on them telling their own potential clients to view there site by either giving them the web address (www.yourbusiness.com) or by telling them the name of the business to search for in Google. You will be amazed at how many clients you will pick up by having an online business presence.