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Website Rehab Story
Website Rehab Story
Website Rehab
I find websites that are in need of a little or a lot of rehab.
These sites are usually out of date, built with outdated programs and technology. The design is probably not what you want it to be but you don’t know what to do with it. In most cases, it needs to be rebuilt with the latest platform and technology which can be pretty costly and overwhelming. This is where I come in, I specialize in bringing websites up to date and making them do the job they were intended for. Your website should be your most informative, hard working tool for you. It’s supposed to have a conversation with your visitors educating them and showing them all about your products and services.
IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT
Most of the websites I help are outdated or built on some pretty difficult platforms to work on. what i see often is the company where you purchased your domain from offers you a “free or affordable” site builder, you choose that thinking you should be able to do it yourself and you should. but these site builders are not friendly and the user interface is no fun to figure out. you get enough information on your site with a few images and then your exhausted wondering how you even got that far. you can try to reach out to support but its not very easy or they want to charge you for support and upgrades. If you site is old enough you may have built it on a home program such as dream weaver or even microsoft word. Back then there weren’t that many choices. You are simply trying to save money and build a site yourself- your building your company yourself shouldn’t you be able to build your site? yes you should, except….. you need some help.
You decide to reach out for help and whamo! The webmasters wont even think of doing a site for under $2-$5k and before you give them any money you have no idea what they are going to do for you. WHY, why don’t we know what we are getting for our money? because thats the business model and process most webmasters use. you can see what they have done in the past which looks nice and gives you confidence in them but you still have no idea what your going to get.
DOES THIS SEEM STRANGE? Or is it just me?
i created my own process, i turned the process around a bit where i actually hunt for your website and you don’t even have any idea i’m on the job for you already, costing you nothing i might add. if i find your website and it looks old- meaning its definitely built on old technology and an old platform i can spot it pretty easily. maybe no real color scheme going on, all super old information, no new images, you might not even have contact information up. and by the looks of it you probably did you best with what you had but you had to leave it as is and get back to running your business at hand.
All this, NOT TO MENTION… that you need to keep up with googles’ latest demands in being able to look good on a phone first, then a desktop /laptop and then finally a tablet (they dropped the tablet). In that order. And you learn this now!? After you just spent all this time building your site on your computer to look good on the screen, you check how it looks on your phone and you want to scream! been there, done that- VERY frustrating.
OK, so WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?….. I may have already done it 🙂
The Nuts & Bolts
I have put together this list for you to go through to get yourself acquainted with various details regarding what comes together during this process. You will be happy to know that there are some items you should know about initially and you can forget about them later (just background working stuff).
Domains
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Selecting a domain should be done on a computer at any of the domain registration companies. GoDaddy I think may be the biggest one. Each domain registration company has a domain name checker usually right on the front page of their site for you to type yours in and see if it’s taken. They do try to help by listing suggestions too. You need to do this on the computer to make sure the domain you want to use is available. More than likely your perfect top level domain is already taken. A top level domain, the generic one word category of your business. For instance if you have a bicycle shop, www.bicycle.com would be the best generic top level domain to have for search engines. Because you’re not likely to find your top level domain available, you need to get creative and try using the actual name of your company if it makes sense online. Remember, your trying to use a domain that makes it easy to remember your site and is easy to find online with search engines. For instance www.bicycles.com makes more sense than www.aubreyswheels.com although aubreyswheels would be just fine, it may be better to try aubreysbicycles.com. your domain does not have to match your company name exactly. Lots of companies have different names online simply for the same reason. And yes if you’re thinking can I have more than one? The answer is yes.Â
Hosting
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In order for your website to be found by the public it has to be hosted. You want a hosting company that utilizes digital cloud-based servers. These provide the best up time and usually the fastest loading time. You will find most of these companies have already moved on to the Cloud-based servers but you want to ask to be sure. When you do eventually start looking for a hosting company, be prepared for an effort by them to sell you ad ons and products that will multiply your bill exponentially. Normally, all you should need is just the hosting for your one single site. All too often I have seen clients who have paid for shared hosting and didn’t even realize it. Shared hosting is used for multiple websites.
Here at 2upnorth, we normally host our clients websites.
Wordpress platform
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The WordPress platform is used by nearly half of all websites. This is primarily due to how easily it is available and it’s free! It’s a very clean and intuitive program. There are many user groups and forums where you can find answers to many questions. WordPress is very SEO friendly also. It is comprised of posts and pages. This is very helpful because posts allow you to continually update your site while pages are well suited for more static information.
I use WordPress because of all these features and more. Best of all, it allows me to teach the user to assist in managing their website after I build it.
Content
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Content is KING! Always will be. I will keep this short by mentioning websites are no longer static vehicles that can sit by idly and gain attention from search engines. You will need to schedule a constant, continuous method of adding content to your site. Posts and social media are key in this strategy.
Responsive Design
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Responsive design is in relation to how well your site looks on computer screens, tablets and phones. The same look on a big computer screen may not look at all right on a phone. Google decides what to build for and the priority it is given by google. Recently google changed the priority from computer first to phone first. Tablets are currently falling out of favor. So your site should first look best on phone, then your computer. Page load speed is EXTREMELY important.
SEO
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SEO is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room and everyone sees it. This is a vast ever changing sea of do’s and don’ts . There are a few rules to to follow initially. The first rule is never leave a section blank. The second rule is never use the automatically generated names for images. The list goes on.
Security
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A secure platform is important. WordPress offers a very secure platform along with additional plugins that allow added security. Google recently required all sites to use the secure protocol https: which means the site has at least a secure certification of its owner. More security requires higher level certification depending on what your trying to secure. If you have e-commerce on your site security will be a bigger issue than if you don’t.
Social Media
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The ever changing landscape of social media is an immense and ever expanding universe. What once was for play is now serious business. This is another area where content is king and TIMELY. There is a lot of debate over social media platforms, they are necessary in creating a culture around your product / service.
Why be online
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The number one answer to this question is your website should be doing all the heavy information lifting for you. It is no longer acceptable to say your business is not online. It is taken as you saying you don’t care.