Building a Website

Search Terms

Sidney Mews Website

First and foremost, it is critically important to establish what prospective clients might enter into a search engine like Google or Yahoo.  There are free tool online that can help you with this but an easy way to get started building a website is simply to list these terms.  For example, if you are selling ceramic raku horses and tiles, your list might include “Raku, Raku Horses, Raku Tiles, Ceramic Tiles, Handmade Raku, Port Townsend, Clallam County, 100 Horses Raku”.   The first portion of this list is your product lines while the latter portion is your location and company name.  Always put the most important terms at the beginning of the list.  For example, if you are a known organization like the “Clallam County Gem and Mineral Association, CCGM” you might want this to be your first terms.  Google now offers a service called Google Trends.  When you enter search terms it you the number of times they were used, the trend, and optional search terms and their trends. See a sample of this in the photo on the right.

Look and Feel of a Website

Personally, I feel the best way to determine layout features when such as fonts, colors, imagery, etc. , is by looking at other websites when building a website.  If you can provide us with list of links of websites that have layouts you like that can really save us some time and expense.  In addition, it’s useful to analyze the competition for your product or service.  So be sure and include these in your list.  If your a website developer or a wanna be web developer, visit my website for tips on picking the right plugins for your WordPress site.

Cost for Building a Website

As of 6/2012, I charge clients $20 per hour.  For 501(c) organizations, I charge $15 per hour.  I charge a 15 minute minimum.  Basically, most websites can be developed for about $400 – $750.  I have done websites for non-profit groups for as little as $150.  Don’t forget you will need a host for your website and a domain name.  Hosting charges are $7-$10 per month and a domain name costs about $10 per year. I recommend BlueHost.com for their low cost hosting fees and great support for WordPress.

Moving Your Website

The website we create for you is yours to move to another host or another developer.  We will do everything possible to make this transition painless.  Whoever you use for your developer, this is very important.  I have several clients who have relayed nightmare stories about being locked out of their website by unresponsive developers and are unable to move their site.