Website Development Strategy

Website Development & Strategies

Its Easy to Build Your Site When You Have Help.

This Step By Step Guild Will Help

No matter what type of site you want to create, it’s crucial that it represents you or your business effectively. However, this can often be more challenging than expected, leading to burnout when building a website from scratch or using a builder.
Here are Six key things to consider before or while building your site. These are also things we look into before we build or refresh your current site.

Research

Look at your current competitors and see what their sites look like. It is good to see what others are doing and emulating or expanding on their content and style.

Identify Your Goals

What are some of your goals? Are they just to sell a product or engage/reward the user/client.

Content & Content

How much and what type of content do you want on your site? Is it basic or more interactive and engaging?

A sleek laptop on a wooden table showing a smartphone advertisement, perfect for tech and gadget content.

Scallability

Whether you’re building a small site or something much larger. You have to ask yourself can we scale this site to be bigger or smaller when need be.

Budget

Can we afford to build this site? What are the total costs to build it, and what are the costs to run it after the build.

Promote

Once the site is built do you have a plan and tools needed to effectively promote and grow your site?

Before we begin

Think of your website as an employee!

When we work with clients we really try to express what a website is by describing it as an employee. A website is a living breathing entity of your company, exactly like an employee. It needs to be taught, trained, led, managed, given the tools to grow, corrected when it makes errors and given the freedom to make your company money.
But most off all you have to invest in it!

Four Basic Steps To Get Started

Define Your Website

This is where you layout what your website is, what are the contents, goals and budgets. Build out a framework of everything you need, including content and structure of the site.

Domain, Host & Builder

It is very important that you take time in figuring out these key things. A Domain is like a street address, the name of where people find you online. A host is like the house, you have to have a big enough and easily accessable house. The builder is who builds the house, is the layout and openness right, can people move about it easily?

Build Your Site

Choose the correct template. Yes it could be just as easy as a pre built site, and customizing it to your needs. Design the structure based on your pre build notes. Make sure all of the backend plugins are functioning right.

Test Your Site

It is key to run tests on your site, making sure everything runs right and people understand it. Get friends or pay people to run around your site. We often tell them to break it! We also ask where the site leads them, and if its in the right direction.

Define

What Type of Website?

It is very important to first define and determine what type of website you are building. It may be easy, if you’re a Pizza Restaurant, but if you work in consulting or are a photographer. You will need to figure out if you fall into one catagory more than the another especially when it comes to the next steps.

Domain, Host & Builder

These three things can make your site last forever or cost you more money in the long run.

This is one of the most crucial stages of building your site. This is where you determine your sites flexibility and growth potential. While also factoring in long term maintenance and costs. Your Domain Host & Builder can all be located with the same provider. Not all are created equal.

01

Domains

A domain is your address, that you park on a host. You can buy this from a host. The host may even have a builder. Most domains cost around $10. This should be the first thing you purchase, don’t worry you can always move a domain to a new host.

02

Host

A host is like the town you live in. Some towns are big, other are small, some have great amenities others are bare. Things to look at when picking a host are email, builders, speed, storage, and reliability.

03

Builder

Often within a host like GoDaddy, Wix, WordPress, Shopify etc. are backend builders that give your site content and structure. But not all are the same, some offer more creativity while other are more basic. Then you have to account for apps and subscriptions.

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Wix | GoDaddy | SquareSpace | Weebly

These sites are considered to be plug and play for building nearly any type of site. They offer simple, often now with AI build, and are considered to be quick launch sites. Plug and Play as we say, just enter in your info add some about and images, you can have a site up in a few days if not a few hours. While these sites are great, eventually if you grow your small business you might find yourself moving to other services.

Pro’s

All In One
Drag and Drop, Customizational
Speed and Integrity from Desktop to Mobile
Free Starter Plan
Tons of Apps for your needs.

Con’s

Limited Templates
Subscription and Fee costs can add up
Limited Customization
Locked in, growth limited to these sites.
SEO and META limitations.
Hard to get API and customized apps (monthly costs for apps)

Websites We Have Built or Maintained on These Platforms

Tina’s In Dundee
Casa Mi Casa
McMinnville Music Festival

Shopify | Big Commerce

Having built my fair share of sites on E-Commerce sites like these, they can be very helpful for a quick start online business. Especially if you are offering a dropshipping or etsy like home business. But that is their only use. They have base page builders that expand upon a limited number of templates. Unlike WIX and the others, however these sites are built just for sales channels so they come with everything you need to sell.

Pro’s

All In One E-Commerce
Drag and Drop, Customizational
Speed and Integrity from Desktop to Mobile
Free Starter Plan
Tons of Apps for your needs.

Con’s

Limited Templates page builders are expensive or difficult
Subscription and Fee costs can add up
Limited Customization
Locked in, growth limited to these sites.
SEO and META limitations unless you pay.
Hard to get API and customized apps (monthly costs for apps)

Websites We Have Built or Maintained on These Platforms

Northwest Food & Gifts
Davison Wine Supply
Ames Research

WordPress | Customized Site

These sites offer some of the best customization for website building. This site is built on WordPress, using a various amounts of free and paid plugins. Unlike a Customized web site that is completely coded and built independently from any outside, open source or paid programs/codes. There are many ups and downs about using sites like these. First and main one that often gets people to not use them is it can be a little intimidating, and time consuming. Second, the price to build out and maintain can be a lot.
WordPress sites are great for building Blogs, Small Businesses, Membership Sites, Online Course and Portfolio Sites.

Pro’s

You are in Control Fully
Flexability & Customization
SEO Integration
Updating & Security
Free, Open Source

Con’s

Time consuming maintenance
Cost or Too many plugins
WordPress Sites tend to get attacked more
Knowledge of Backend Set Ups
Site speed can be an issue

Websites We Have Built or Maintained on These Platforms

McMinnville Downtown Association
Mad Plaid Media Group
Oregon Wine Board Blog

Some sites we have worked on are no longer maintained by us, although some build elements and structural changes are still present.

Ask The Right Questions

When it comes time to build your site, whether it is with us or another designer. We want you to have the right tools and be able to ask the right questions. This can be the difference between a job gone right or a job gone expensive.
Remember you can have a site built fast and cheap, or you can have a site built great and save you from fixing the cheap one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Find out some great questions you should ask the designer of your website. Here are my answers.

Still have a question?

If you have any other queries, feel free to reach out to us. Our knowledgeable team is here to help!

Contact Us

Ready To Build With Us?

Fill out this questionairre and let us start working for you….

Contact Us Today
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