We’ve arrived at the final stage. This is where a web design agency would come in. I do not recommend doing this yourself unless you’ve got a pretty decent background in design, IT and human psychology.
What I would suggest you do is contact a web design agency and see if they offer a free consultation. Nobody knows the company you’re hoping to create better than you and it’s important that you express your thoughts to the agency so that, before a single line of code is written, the vision is shared.
Most businesses will require a simple 3 to 5 or so page website to get started. This might be a lot less than you thought, but start with the basics and then add if you feel it’s necessary. So, what do you really need…
- A great homepage where people can see what you offer.
- A contact page where people can reach out to you.
- An about us page which describes the business and the mission statement.
- A services or product page which describes the different services on-offer.
Obviously this may not cover all your needs – for example realtors may require a full-on property search page, mortgage calculators, and more. If you’re selling lots of products you’ll need an e-commerce site but a good starter website should include some of the above.
Mike and Michelle contact BlitzBack. They share their vision with me and we produce a no-cost plumbing website for them to review. They like it, ask for a few tweaks and opt to have just a homepage, contact page, about us page and a services page. The website is designed for them and goes live 2 weeks later.
TIP : More isn’t always better. Having a dozen web pages isn’t necessarily better than having 3 or 4. You’re asking people to click multiple times to find the information they are looking for vs having that information on a single compact page. Don’t over-complicate your website, make the experience simple and intuitive.
Your web design agency will need to know who you bought the domain name from and the username/password to your account (there’s some technical stuff they need to do here). Don’t be alarmed by this. They will also need access to your hosting company (again, perfectly normal). They will attach your name to your hosting company so when someone types in www.mycompany.ca, the internet knows to direct the request to your hosting company and your space on their server.
The agency may build out your site on their own servers and then transfer it once you’re happy or they may build it directly on your space (but hidden, so nobody can see it). You can also ask them to put up a “coming soon” page on the site until it goes live.
That’s it. That’s your journey’s end. When the process is over you’ll have a website for your small business and you’re ready to roll…or is it. We’ve got one last thing to consider…(Part 5).