Digital Fox builds creative responsive websites on a WordPress platform. Depending on your requests and needs, whether it is a small presentation website or a more complex one with shopping cart and login account and different functionalities that may be included, the website setup might be ready in one day as I’ve done for alisonglennie.com on a self-building platform or two weeks, the time I needed to set all functionalities for rosscarbery.ie
Lets see the usual steps taken in building a website. They are not all compulsory, depending on your business needs. It is a general set of working rules and advices that will help your online business to be consistent and growing in browsing searches.
Buying a domain name and a space to host your files
Ireland’s Domain Registry (IEDR) has some easy steps established on how to acquire your Irish domain and hosting through some certified partners.
I used to buy my domain as .com from GoDaddy and Bluehost. GoDaddy prooved unreliable, after taking money from my account on their upgrades and they are also big SOPA/PIPA fans. Bluehost’s support was very hard to get through and it didn’t suited my needs in the end. As I have an Irish business and my target is the Irish public, I chose to buy my domain and hosting according to IEDR rules. For this, I’ve selected Hosting Ireland and a package called CloudLite+ that cost me 56 euros. So far, so good. IEDR offers you a full list of registrars from where you can pick whatever you like.
Usually my clients ask me to do this step, and I always help them. I just want to inform you about the importance of buying the domain and hosting.
Let’s meet and talk!
In order to start the website, Digital Fox needs:
Making and releasing the website
Once we’ve met and I gathered all the information, I can start setting up the website on a Wordpress platform. This offers you an easy to use content management system, which means that once the website is done and handed to you, you can easily login and modify texts, images, add posts and pages by yourself.
The website is customised to your needs either being a small presentation website or a more complex one with shopping cart and login account. Other functionalities that may be included are: contact form, contact map, schedule, image slider, portfolio, gallery, testimonials, team and more.
In a couple of days I’ll send you the demo link and see how your website is taking to its online life.
SEO INTEGRATION
Once step three is finished, and you have your website up and running, you have to make sure that your content texts, titles and image descriptions are all set correctly for a good search in browsers. The search engine optimization tool should be set in place with all the features needed: page titles, page descriptions, content texts, image descriptions, keywords. Many of these features are hidden in the HTML of your website and are not directly visible. They are only called by browsers whenever someone has a related search. If these are done correctly, it will increase your ranking and credibility in browsers.
social media page SEtup
Setting up pages on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, helps a lot in increasing your audience and targeting your products. It is an important step as thsese websites have a highly increased ranking in search engines and they easily connect and distribute the right audience towards you.
Campaigns and spread the word
All is done. You have your website, it is looking amazing on social pages too, it starts to come up in searches, however you need to spread the word and let people know that your business is around and make sure that whoever might need your services can easily get on to you. This can be done by:
These are some of the few things that you can do to promote your website. As I advised you in my Graphic Design, I recommend all the prommotional materials to be done on recicled paper, even if there is a little bit extra, it is good to promote your business with a good ethics.
The prices are purely orientative. It is very hard to set a price as all website demands come with different aspects. Some of them have branding included (logo, color scheme, fonts), the content is done, the structure is thought of, all these easen up the pricing. That is why the price may very from 200 € up to 1600€. I strongly recommend to meet, chat or email before setting a quote
Communicate your message through strong visuals and all that requires a strong branding: logo, business cards, leaflets, posters.
Special requirements as animations or personalized illustrations and comics for a special event or a special someone.