Enthusiastically you registered with the Chamber of Commerce, the company name is a fact and the champagne bottle you’ve toasted with is empty. Now your life as an entrepreneur starts. Besides a logo, you also need a website. Maybe you are one of those people who think they can do it themselves, but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading this article, so you started looking for more information. You asked around in your network if someone might have a tip on who could do this.
Soon you realize that this simple question for a reliable web designer caused a tsunami of ‘web designers’ contacting you.
Help?! The panic is overwhelming when you see all the DMs, messages, and requests. Unsolicited quotes with huge prices, that don’t fit your budget.
Don’t panic!
Often I get emails or phone calls saying ‘Hi, I found you through Google…’ It’s great when people find me. There is already enough hunting in this entrepreneurial rat race these days. When someone calls, I can immediately answer many questions. If an email arrives, I will schedule a free consultation to discuss the project. After the meeting, I offer to send a suitable quote. I always try to make a quotation that fits within the budget.
Yes to the…website
I don’t like sales talk or pushy sales tactics. But still, after every meeting, everybody is convinced they want to work with me.
After the quote is approved, I start with the project almost immediately. I register the domain name with my provider. The domain name always remains with the customer. If you want to move to another provider, the domain name can be transferred without any problems. This may sound logical, but I often heard from customers, previous web designers had put the domain name in their name and the customer could only transfer the domain name after paying an unfair amount of money.
CMS WordPress (and that rhymes!)
Once the domain name is registered, I install WordPress. WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS). Open source means it is free to use. It comes with a free theme that can be used too. I prefer to use my professional theme, which gives me more freedom in design. After the installation is complete, I upload the professional theme and plugins needed for that website. These can be simple plugins like analytics or more complex plugins such as Woocommerce if you also want to start selling on your website.
Sneak peek
While I am building, the website can’t be seen by the public. But with a special login code, you can secretly peek at how the website is progressing. What I often ask the customer is to provide content themselves. No one knows your business as well as you do, so who better to write about it than you? If you’re not such an artist with words, I’ll be happy to help you with writing the content but I do need to know the basics.
Finished!
Depending on the size of a website, and how quickly a website is up and running, a website can be online within a few weeks, from the first meeting to going online. After that, you can continue to update the website yourself with blogs or other information. If you run into a problem, I will still be there for you. You can always send me an email so I will help you quickly through the problem.
Would you like more information or book a free consult after reading this article? Send me a message!