At the initial consultation, we’ll discuss what you want on your website:

  • Information about your business, products, and services, contact methods.
  • Do you need an online shop?
  • Do you want a blog?
  • Would a site search tool be useful?
  • Are any bespoke website features needed?

After that, assuming we decide to go ahead with the project, both parties will have a list of tasks to do, typically something like:

Our Responsibilities

  • Decide which pages the site needs
  • Choose a colour palette
  • Choose fonts
  • Decide on a page layout
  • Design a logo if needed

Your Responsibilities

  • Write text for the site
  • Provide photos of products and services
  • Give feedback on designer’s decisions and designs
  • Setting up accounts with a payment gateway, if starting an online store

While we’re able to help out to a limited extent with writing and editing text for the site and providing stock images, you are the one who knows what information you want to present to the world, so it is expected that it will be you who will be providing the majority of the text and images for the site.

Once everything above has been accomplished, we will set up hosting for the site, install all the necessary software on the server, and begin building the site for you. Because so much has already been done, and so many decisions have already been made, you’ll probably find this part progresses very quickly — typically only two to three days.

Soon you’ll be able to see the site and can let me know about any tweaks and corrections that need doing before the site goes “live”.

Payments

I accept payment either by bank transfer in the UK or via Paypal. For smaller projects, I prefer payment up front. For larger ones, I am happy to discuss payment in stages.

Maintaining the Site

We do charge an ongoing maintenance fee which covers server hosting costs, keeping the software on the server up-to-date and secure, and up to an hour per month of any tweaks, new content, and new features you want for your site. (To keep things simple, this hour doesn’t “roll over” to the next month if you don’t use it.)

You are also welcome to edit pages yourself. Most of the sites we develop for businesses use WordPress, which has a reputation for being pretty easy for non-experts to use. Adding blog posts, editing the simpler pages (ones that are mostly text and a few images, like this one!), and adding new images to galleries is all perfectly achievable by someone without a degree in advanced rocket science!

Editing pages with a more complex design does involve more extensive knowledge, so it may be better to rely on us to do that as part of the maintenance agreement.

Promoting Your Site

Starting a website doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get a lot of visitors on it, just like opening a shop, even on a busy street, doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a lot of customers.

A good start in promoting your website is to include a link on business cards, letterheads, emails, and your other business correspondence.

We can also advise on how to advertise your website online, promote it via Google Maps, Yell.com, etc.