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Our Guide

Starting a new website can be daunting with lots to consider. Our 5 minute guide is designed to take you through the process with ease.

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As a starting point you should consider your answers to the following questions as these will be critical when it comes to starting a website project:

1 Have you considered your audience? Consider things like demographics, where they can be found, who would be your ideal visitor?
2 What does the website need to achieve? There are generally 4 types of websites:
Ecommerce, selling items.
Lead Generating - Needs to give visitors decisions
Informational - Needs to provide information and answer questions
Professional presence - Needs to just represent an organisation as a professional outfit
3 If your website launched tomorrow what would you consider to be success in 12 months time?
4 How are you planning to generate traffic to your site? SEO or marketing strategy?
5 Consider a budget. How much value do you feel a website can give you in 1-2 years and then work out a budget from there.

Once you have considered the questions above here are some guidance notes for things you’ll need to consider with example costs.

Step 1: Domain Name

First thing you need to consider is the web address you want to be found by, known as the domain name. For example google.com is the main domain name for Google. If you know the name of your business already, then try finding a domain name to match that at any Domain Registrar, such as GoDaddy.

Estimated Cost: £15-£20 per annum.

Tips

1 You can use a - to break up words in the domain name.
2 Consider whether you want it to be a .co.uk, just .uk or whether .com or .org is more appropriate.
3 Consider protecting your brand by purchasing multiple domains so you end up owning the .co.uk, .uk and .com domain, for example.

Step 2: SEO ( Optional )

This is a one-off audit where you provide us with a list of keywords / phrases you wish your site to be found by and we then run the research on it with the aim of either generating a navigation structure for your new site or to provide a content strategy. This means that when you create content for the site, whether pages or blog posts it's based on data and will add value.

Estimated Cost: £750

Tips

1 Launching a new site doesn’t mean people will suddenly just find it.
2 A data based approach will give you a head start
3 Think about what you would type to find your product or service
4 Create a list of FAQs based on your services or products

Step 3: Content ( Optional )

Who will create the content? If you’re going to produce all the content consider how long it will take to get it altogether. Stock images are OK but a website looks far better when it has personal images, perhaps some subtle branding included. Can you produce videos to explain what you do and provide some movement on the page. Being engaging and enticing visitors to read more is important, consider the value of using a content writer who will sit with you to work on the tone, the language and discover how you want to be presented and then produce the copy for you.

Estimated Cost: from £650

Tips

1 Do you have the time to write all the content?
2 Professional images make you stand out from the stock image websites
3 Videos are a great engagement tool
4 Be careful your content isn’t too technical

Step 4: Website Design

Do you already have a brand? Does the brand need a refresh? Your website should compliment your brand identity so if you don’t have a brand identity, this should be your starting point. Once you understand your brand the website design will just flow. Make sure any design you get is responsive so it displays well on mobile and desktop.

We would always recommend looking at having a bespoke design as it will elevate your brand through consistency and present your philosophy but templates are also an option and will be cheaper if you have a small budget.

Estimated Cost: from £1000

Tips

1 Gather a list of websites that you like the look of, even if it’s just elements of another site
2 Consider whether you will be supplying the images and text or whether this also needs to be part of your designers role.

Step 5: Website Development

This is the functionality of the site, what do you need it to do? What do you need to be able to do? It can be anything from a simple contact form to an ecommerce site. If you will need to make regular changes to your site then you will need a Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress.

Estimated Cost: from £2000

Tips

1 Make a list of all the functionality you want from your site
2 Consider how you may develop it in the future so development now is future proofed
3 Assume no limits!

Step 6: Website Hosting

Once you have a website ready to go it needs to sit somewhere that your domain name can then point to. The type of server you need will depend on the traffic you anticipate so a low traffic site will just require a shared hosting environment, whereas a high traffic site should consider a private server (VPS). If you require email accounts this needs to be taken into account when considering the disk space you need.

Estimated Cost: £20 - £60+ per month

Tips

1 There is no requirement to have your website and emails hosted at the same place. For example you may choose to have Google or Office365 manage you emails and therefore just need website hosting space.

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