Small Business Website Design

What Every Business Owner Needs to Know about Participating in the Process, Working with a Designer and Producing a Site that Works for Your Business

What we’ll cover

Planning the site structure & content

Types of sites Budget Domain names Hosting Finding a

designer/developer Contracts

Design & development process

Pre-launch check Maintenance/

updates Marketing

Planning

The more you have planned ahead of time, the better!

Things you should know: Your business model Who are your customers or Audience? What do you want your customers to do?

• Call to action How will this site solve your customers’

problem?

Who is your Audience?

Site Types

Brochure - Set it and Forget it, (but don’t) Basic static pages, simple form

Informational - Regularly Updated Needs a database and/or blogging capability

E-commerce (Can be used for services, too)

Requires shopping cart (customer, order and product information storage and retrieval)

Planning

Things you should have an idea about: Branding

• visual interface to ‘set tone/expectations’, based on your audience and corporate culture

• Logo, Colors, Look and Feel• Focus on good design, not clutter

Content (Message or ‘Pitch’)• Written copy (Optimized for Search Engines,

has keywords)• Product photos or other images• Video or Audio

Planning

Functionality Forms (registration, mailing

list, contact us) Database of customers Shopping cart or way

for customers to pay you

Content Management System (CMS)

Planning

Structure Flow chart (your

developer can/should assist with this)

• How many pages or ‘screens’

• What links to what• How pages are

categorized (Do you sort by color or style?)

MORE Planning!

Examples Competition What you love (functionality, color, style, etc.) What you hate

What you NEED now, what would be nice later Sites can be built in stages, as long as it’s planned for

Questionnaire is a good place to start Whew! Now that all the planning is done….

How Much Will This Cost?

How much do you project making? 10-20% of what you will make in the first year

is a good baseline

How much can you do yourself? Writing, photography etc. What is your time worth?

It Depends…. Website is an ongoing

investment “Average” small business should

expect low to mid 4 figures.

How Much Will This Cost?

What type of site do you need? Blog (minimal design capability) = Free

(remember your time…) Brochure = $2500-$3500 (Estimated labor

20 to 60 hours) Infomational or E-Commerce = $3500-

$7500++ Maintenance and marketing are key to

success and not included in these estimates!

Domains & Hosting

Domain - $10 year Your site address: www.greatsite.com Leased not owned! If you fail to stay current

on payment, you will LOSE the rights to lease the domain.

Hosting - $120+ year The server where your actual files live Hosting packages normally include a limited

# of email addresses that can be setup YOU MUST PAY YOUR OWN BILL &

KEEP TRACK OF THE LOGIN INFORMATION! Use the spreadsheet

Finding a Designer/Developer

Not all designers know how to code, not all developers know how to design $Designer/developer, small company, freelance $$-$$$Advertising/Design firm

• Designer, developer, writer, photographer, ad placement Ask your friends & family

(If you have a friend actually do the site, do you care about deadlines and quality? Professionals are much more accountable.)

Who developed the sites in your industry that you admire? Look for functionality, not ‘Flash Bang’

Sortfolio.com, LinkedIn, Google

Finding a Designer/Developer

Do they have the skill set you need? Don’t be shy about asking questions

• Be cautious about FLASH Have they made sites that work the way you

want yours to work? ALWAYS –

Check the designers’ site (broken links or ‘coming soon’ pages are a RED FLAG)

Check their clients’ sites and get references Get more than one bid

• (Compare by services offered, not just price. Lowest is often more expensive in long run)

The Proposal & Contract

Don’t leave home without it Protects the owner and designer Defines the scope of work Define WHO is responsible for

WHAT• Who is providing content

Deadlines go both ways Who “owns” what at the end

• Content, artwork, code Payment structure

• Typically 33% or 50% up front Is maintenance covered?

• Negotiate! Can you get out?

The Proposal & Contract

What can raise the cost Revisions, additions,

changes• Remember all that

planning? Scope Creep

The Process Yay! We’re finally creating something!

You’ve planned, now designer does discovery Share all of your

planning Be prepared for more

questions!

Wireframes Structure first, to include

all content and plan layout

The Process

Mock-ups Picture of the home and

possibly additional page May have more than

one choice• Now you can see

which shade of purple works best

Now is the time to change your mind and revise!

The Process

Stay Flexible Not everything that was

planned for can happen exactly

Content and images are never exactly the same

The Process

Remember – Sites aren’t magazines You don’t control how

people see your site. Keep the design flexible

and user friendly Talk about the site being

“responsive” with your designer

The Process

Development The coding that actually creates the site Includes functionality that makes the site ‘go’ and can

include Galleries, Slide Shows, Email forms, Shopping Carts, Blog installations . . .

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"> <title>Designing Your Site, Things Every Business Owner Should Know</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.9.2" /> <!-- leave this for stats please --> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/wp-content/themes/BDD_Su/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/feed/rss/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/feed/atom/" />

<link rel="pingback" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/xmlrpc.php" />

The Process

Each stage needs YOUR approval Layout, design, development, launch Delays in content delivery, approval and

payment schedule all directly affect your deadline

Design changes or added functionality requests during development will be extra $$

Pre-launch Check

Use more than one tester Preferably someone who has not seen the site before

Does every link work? Do the forms work? Does the shopping cart work? Does it pass the Mom test? Test in Major Browsers: Explorer, Firefox,

Chrome, Opera (both on PC and Mac) AND as many devices as you can find

Designer should do, but you should too!

Maintenance & Updates

You planned for this, right? Monthly fee? CMS training? Publishing schedule for blog or events? Updating products or inventory?

You’re NEVER done. Relevant and current content wins in search

Marketing

It’s a live site!! Now, how do you drive traffic to it?

Marketing Social Media (easier for some business types

than others)• Facebook fan page• Your LinkedIn Profile• Twitter

Email marketing• MailChimp• Constant Contact• AWeber• Active Campaign

Printed material• Your Email Address should be you@company.com

NOT gmail, and NOT aol. (Support your domain!)

Marketing

Nothing replaces real face to face networking!

Advertising• Adwords• pay-per-click• Print, radio• TV advertising

Part of the planning Part of the budget

Contact Information

Becky Davis becky@beckydavisdesign.com 773-809-5640

These slides and MORE! http://beckydavisdesign.com/seminar-

schedule/