Website Setup Process
This is the sequence of steps we go through to build a web site. Some steps need your participation such as the email setup. Also, you may already have some things in place such as a Domain Name or wish to do certain things yourself.
For some services, we ask you to buy through our affiliate links. This does not make the product/service cost any more but helps us keep our prices down.
Keyword Research
Compile a list of popular search terms for your business / product. Condense the list into profitable target phrases to use in the web site.
Create a suggested list of unregistered Domain Names
Register Domain Name
For UK-based hosting you can get a .co.uk name included for free or transfer in your existing Domain Name.
For our US-based hosting we recommend purchasing a Dot Com Domain Name via GoDaddy.com For UK Domain Names we recommend Heart Internet.
Registration should be for 2 years minimum.
There are many good places to register a Domain Name, but these are our personal favourites.
Setup Hosting
Here we create your account with a control panel, web space, email forwarding, file manager and data base.
Change Name Servers of Domain Name
The settings for your Domain Name need to be changed so it points to the web server that is hosting your Website. This is done via your Domain Name control panel.
Configure Email
Our basic hosting includes a catch-all email forwarder and a Web Mail box.
What we recommend is that you set up a Gmail account. This will allow you to send and receive email to and from multiple addresses at your Domain Name.
Your email forwarder will be configured to send all mail to your Gmail address. Then you can easily filter and organise your email and filter spam.
For example, an email sent to sales@yourdomain will arrive in your Gmail InBox and you can tag it automatically with a label such as “Sales“. Then you can reply to this email with sales@yourdomain as the “from†email.
You can do this for as many email aliases as you like.
To capture contact details of visitors to your site we will set up a disguised mailto: button or link on your site. This is a way to reduce spam. The mailto: address is encoded to make it less likely to be harvested by spam bots. Also, a spam bot blocking script will be installed.
This contact method forces people to use their email client such as Outlook to send you email. This is no problem for legitimate enquiries but is off-putting to spammers.
If you want to capture leads and build a large mailing list then we recommend signing up with Aweber. Then we can install a contact form on your site. This will require people to confirm they want you to send them information (double opt in).
With this service you can have multiple mailing lists, send broadcast emails and set up auto responder message sequences.
Install WordPress Script
WordPress is what we recommend for managing your content. It allows you to easily publish content, categorize your content, get visitor interaction and provide feeds for subscribers.
We upload the script and configure the settings. Also, we install some useful plugins to provide visitor statistics, control spam and sell products via PayPal.
Change Default Content
As soon as the script is set up, the default content and links are changed, since your site is now visible on the web.
Design Logo
It’s important to give your site some branding in the form of a logo and add some graphical interest. We design logos using specialist logo design software to quickly create nice looking logos. Alternatively you may want to work with our artist to create graphics for your site.
Design the Template / Theme
The appearance of your site is defined by it’s theme. This is a set of templates and images that are used by the WordPress script to display the web pages.
The theme also effects how search engine friendly your site is by the way the source code appears to search engines.
Our themes are developed with Search Engine Optimization in mind.
There is a huge range of third party WordPress themes that you can choose, but most will not have been optimized for search engines, you will not have your logo on the page and you will need to include credits for the theme designer such as a link to their site in the footer of the template.
Ecommerce Features
We can install a shopping basket script that works with PayPal. The features of this script are as it comes from the author of the script. We don’t provide customization of the functionality of this script. The script allows you to have a catalogue of items for sale and customers add the items to their basket.
Adding PayPal buy buttons is a simple matter of cutting and pasting the PayPal code that they generate for you. We have experience of setting up PayPal products including subscriptions.
We do not provide padlocked secure server pages.
Test the Site
It should just work! But all the external links and emails should be tested for typos. Also any features such as shopping should be walked through with dummy product purchases. For a live test with PayPal you can set the price to 1p.
Add Content
This should be done by the site owner since you need to add your personal touch to what you publish.
The text content is very important for search engine food and of course for your visitors.
Using your themed set of keywords, you can create a selection of content pages.
With WordPress, there are “Static” pages and “Post” pages. Static pages are your “About” page, “Contact” page, Privacy Policy, Terms etc. Post pages are like articles that are time-stamped and may receive visitor comments.
You create and publish content in the password-protected Admin area.
Articles should ideally be 300-500 words long and your site should have at least 10 pages of content.
To make your site look less like a Blog, you can turn comments off and have a Static home page.
Categories help you create navigation links along with links to your Static pages.
The header of the page has your Logo and your tag line, but you may want to put an Ad banner alongside it.
The content area is where your articles and sales pitch shows up.
The side bar is where the navigation links go. This typically also contains Ads, subscribe button and maybe customer testimonials. The template needs to be edited to change this area.
Then we have the footer, where you have the copyright symbol, credit links and links to stuff such as your terms of use. This area is edited in the template.
Directory Submission
To get listed in search engines, you must have at least one link from another web site. This provides a path for search engine robots to spider your site.
We submit your site to a directory to provide a path for a search engine robot to find your website to get it indexed by the search engine.
Marketing
Finally, you need to focus on driving traffic to your site and marketing. This is too big a subject to tackle here.
