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ksnazel
05-26-2013, 02:34 PM
I know basic HTML and I'm pretty good with PhotoShop but I have chosen to host with Google Sites in my belief that it would be easy to manage.. which it is but the limitations are starting to show. I'm paying for hosting with Godaddy and I am thinking I might try one of the paid Wordpress templates and build a new site. My visual design skills can sometimes be limited, I just can't visualize what I want and the result is whatever falls out of the template is what I go with.

How to sit back and plan a website? A vision.

Harold Mansfield
05-26-2013, 08:20 PM
The first thing you need to do is determine who your target market is.

Then determine what you want your website to do.

Then, organize how you want to present your company to your target market.
What's the most important thing you want people to know when they get to your site? Next important?
What's it's purpose once users get there?
What action do you want them to take?
To buy something?
To contact you? By Phone? By Form?

Gather your collateral. Logo. Color Scheme. Do you have the images and other marketing collateral that you need to present your company the way you want?
Will you need to rewrite some copy?

Once you have that figured out, look around at some websites to see what you like and get an idea of what kind of style you want to best represent your business...imagining how your content and your company would look presented in a simular way. Look at some competitors and see what they are doing.

Then you'll have a better idea of what to shop for in a WordPress theme. Once you have an exact idea of who you're talking to, what you want to say to them, and what you want them to do when they get there, it's much easier to go in a direction.

thebusinessdude
05-27-2013, 12:13 PM
There also comes a point when you start to outsource. For example, if you are an IT professional, I would propose that you maintain all your PC's etc. for your staff. Makes sense - it is your specialty. If you are not good at web design, and marketing outsource it. Let the professionals handle that portion. You monitor the outcomes. Meaning, good design and SEO will lead to increased web traffic. If you are a small company than outsourcing may not be an option at first but I would develop small budgets to include that at somepoint. The last option is teach yourself - but the cost there is time.

ksnazel
05-27-2013, 12:45 PM
There also comes a point when you start to outsource. For example, if you are an IT professional, I would propose that you maintain all your PC's etc. for your staff. Makes sense - it is your specialty. If you are not good at web design, and marketing outsource it. Let the professionals handle that portion. You monitor the outcomes. Meaning, good design and SEO will lead to increased web traffic. If you are a small company than outsourcing may not be an option at first but I would develop small budgets to include that at somepoint. The last option is teach yourself - but the cost there is time.
Yes. When I am more black than red and have a few other plans underway, website outsourcing is on the list. Until then I will follow Harold Mansfield's advice and make a plan, suck it up and get on with it.
Thanks.
Keith

Harold Mansfield
05-27-2013, 02:33 PM
Yes. When I am more black than red and have a few other plans underway, website outsourcing is on the list. Until then I will... make a plan, suck it up and get on with it.


That's the right attitude when you are bootstrapping ! With some basic HTML and Photo Shop skills, once you learn the basics of WordPress you should be able to at least style your pages well. Some CSS will help with customization too.

Just be careful not to choose a theme that is not too complicated, stay away from frameworks like Genesis (They look easier for novices at first, but they aren't really down the line) , and be alert of themes of that require huge, high quality images to pull them off unless you plan on purchasing some.


Plenty of people here do WordPress if you need help or hit any snags. Just post it up.

Jim Briggs
05-28-2013, 12:32 AM
A little hate is a good thing ;)



The first thing you need to do is determine who your target market is.

Then determine what you want your website to do.

Then, organize how you want to present your company to your target market.
What's the most important thing you want people to know when they get to your site? Next important?
What's it's purpose once users get there?
What action do you want them to take?
To buy something?
To contact you? By Phone? By Form?


Excellent points. Additional thoughts:

Brainstorm a little bit. Give yourself some options. One way to get unstuck is to divide up a piece of paper into six blocks and sketch out different interface variations, one per block. I got this tip from Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience (http://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Principles-Experience-ebook/dp/B0074KA0A4/). I tried this once and it was helpful to get me unstuck.

Use a low fidelity prototyping tool to sketch out your design. Balsamiq is awesome and has a free trial and is simple to use.

Usability tests. Do some usability tests on the design you choose to make sure that your users are responding the way you desire. If you've never done a usability test before, all the more reason to do it and learn the value. Watch people use your stuff.

Be lean-ish. Come up with something, test it, get feedback, and iterate on the design.

If you're doing WordPress, looking at themes can give you ideas, but be careful not to let the appeal of the theme drive your decision. I bet there are lots of beautiful or cutesy or clever themes out there that will not advance your cause. It doesn't matter how sucky or how beautiful your web site is; what counts is the outcomes (more customers or whatever your immediate goal is) which you'll want to measure.

So to summarize. Figure out what you want to accomplish with your web site. Come up with a couple designs. Do a quick and dirty prototype. Get feedback on the prototype. Decide on a platform and implement. Get feedback on the implementation.

Concluding unscientific postscript. Another way to go is Blogger.com. Blogger can't compare to WordPress in functionality, but its useful for certain requirements and it's easy to use and its free. I use Blogger for my personal and business blog, and sometimes to test landing pages. I've also setup private blogs on Blogger for software documentation and other purposes. If you have budget limitations and basic web skills, you just want to make sure you choose a platform that won't suck up all your time.

SocMediaMaven
06-01-2013, 04:31 PM
Op, I commend you for trying and then asking smart questions. When I first started, while bootstrapping, I asked questions, read, read, and read some more to the point of paralysis. Take action, learn, ask smart questions, then take some more action.

As for web design outsourcing, it may not be as expensive as u think...how much is NOT having a headache worth to ya?

tomaraOSB
06-02-2013, 12:58 PM
I love the brainstorming ideas listed above--I'm totally snagging them and using them on future sites. I also think Wordpress is an excellent place to start--even some of the free templates are very nice and will work well in almost any situation.

Before putting sites together for company verticals, we'll often take a look at our competition's websites and critique them for in-house use, determining what we like or what we feel is effective while also pointing out things we feel could use improvement. We'll then look at our favorite websites--determine what it is that's special--the qualities we love, getting a feel for what is trending/relevant (noticing color schemes, menu structures, and layout). Then, we take into account the vertical or product--it's attitude and goals--if it's a service, and app, or a stand-alone product (and whether or not this product is free--open source). We throw it all in a pot and try to come up with what we feel works. We then solicit feedback from people within the company that are not as close to the project. If several company eyes find fault, we start over or simply make improvements until we're all happy.

Also... Don't be afraid to make changes once you're happy, and keep your site fresh with new content.

dianecoleen
06-03-2013, 05:32 PM
Hating your own work won't do any good. I agree with Harold to use Wordpress as the platform is easy to navigate and also it is also good for some SEO stuff.

ericw
06-03-2013, 06:09 PM
I agree with Harold and Jim's lists, but right from the beginning, you'd better be designing with SEO principles in mind if you don't want to have to pay a SEO company to fix your mistakes later.

Gabe
06-04-2013, 10:03 PM
Wow, great advice here. The folks here, especially the web designers, are great at what they do, so this is some good stuff. That said, there are a lot of different ways to build a website. I'm more a fan of starting with a solid, low-cost solution that looks good enough. When you have a better idea of what you want, then move ahead with something pricier if you need it, but I prefer long-term iteration. Businesses die because they run out of money, not because they have mediocre websites. The last thing you want is to overpay for a website that's expensive to maintain and you have to pay someone else to update. It looks like you're already set on WordPress which takes care of 2/3 of those problems. Harold and Woz are two great website designers here that build with WordPress.

I agree with most of Harold's advice, except about not using frameworks if you want to build your own website. Frameworks can work well and make upgrades easier if you stick with the same framework. He gave Genesis as an example, which is the most popular WordPress framework out there. There are website and theme designers that build exclusively on Genesis, so the community is large and it's not difficult to stick with. If you want to hire a web designer down the road you can have something built custom on top of Genesis, have a custom theme built, or just pick one of the many Genesis -based themes out there.

I recommend frameworks over random themes because quality matters. If you're going to save money by doing it yourself, at least pay an extra $50 to invest in great code quality and extensibility, which most people overlook. For example, those who own use Genesis are getting updates as the framework upgrades to HTML5 compatibility in the next update. Updates like that, high quality code, and no security concerns are worth the minimal sacrifices to me. As a non-developer how do you know what secure code looks like? Most web template designers don't even know, that's scary. Besides, I'd rather be sure my website theme is going to work with the next major WordPress release than cross my fingers and hope.

Lastly, stay away from free templates. Last I heard about 80% of free website templates had some form of link spam/malicious code in them. There are plenty of reputable theme marketplaces and builders out there you can buy from for under $100. in fact, a few of the higher end themes on themeforest.net come with updates for future WordPress releases. Hope this helps.

Gabe
06-04-2013, 10:06 PM
I agree with Harold and Jim's lists, but right from the beginning, you'd better be designing with SEO principles in mind if you don't want to have to pay a SEO company to fix your mistakes later.
This just reminded me, I'm not sure what everyone's favorite is but I like the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. Yoast seems to be the premier SEO expert in the WordPress community. If your business is local, checkout his Local SEO plugin.

ksnazel
06-09-2013, 01:59 PM
I think I am going to go the WP route, probably with this paid solution: Headway Drag and Drop WordPress Theme Builder (http://headwaythemes.com/)
Any thoughts? It seems fairly customizable..

Harold Mansfield
06-09-2013, 02:25 PM
I think I am going to go the WP route, probably with this paid solution: Headway Drag and Drop WordPress Theme Builder (http://headwaythemes.com/)
Any thoughts? It seems fairly customizable..

Yeah. Don't do it. This is one of those "Frameworks" that I was talking about that are overkill.
WordPress works well by itself. It's already naturally all of the things this framework says it solves. No, it's not all "drag and drop", but don't over complicate it trying to simplify it.

Just get yourself a nice, responsive, well made theme that has customization options, and use your Photoshop and HTML skills to style your pages further.
No need to pay for a framework that is just going to get in your way the more you learn about administering your own website.

Also, I worked on a project 3 weeks ago using this framework and it was a nightmare. I had to spend hours learning how Headway did things, just to make modifications that would have taken me minutes if that framework wasn't in the way.

After the initial love affair, you'll find it to be ridiculously cumbersome and trying to do layout customizations still requires technical knowledge...but instead of learning WordPress, you end up learning Headway. There is NO WAY that a novice would understand how to use all of the tags, hooks, and short codes that are specific to Headway alone.

There are also a lot of complaints about it being "glitchy", having conflicts with other popular plug ins, and the support being horrible going back to 2009.

Lastly, you can get WordPress support and help from many places. But for Headway problems, you are limited to their support forum.

This is just my opinion. I don't like it at all. It's overkill.

And $87 a year for support and updates? No way.

billbenson
06-09-2013, 02:46 PM
I'm not one, but there are a bunch of WordPress experts here. Just use the standard wordpress.org download (or a lot of web hosts have an automatic install) and if you get stuck someone here will help you. If you use something like the link you posted, no one will be familiar with it and be able to help you.

ksnazel
06-09-2013, 07:26 PM
....

This is just my opinion. I don't like it at all. It's overkill.

And $87 a year for support and updates? No way.

Thanks Harold. Excellent advice. I'll dig through the mountains of free themes but so far nothing has caught my eye. I'm looking for something that does not look like a blog but closer to what I have now. Any thoughts on paid themes?

Harold Mansfield
06-09-2013, 07:29 PM
Thanks Harold. Excellent advice. I'll dig through the mountains of free themes but so far nothing has caught my eye. I'm looking for something that does not look like a blog but closer to what I have now. Any thoughts on paid themes?

Woo Themes
Themeforest (read the reviews and ratings)
Elegant Themes

Don't trust free themes unless you get them from WordPress › Free WordPress Themes (http://wordpress.org/themes/)

The style you have now is a little outdated and it's from a site builder, so you probably won't find anything that looks that.

Gabe
06-09-2013, 08:55 PM
My favorite is StudioPress (http://www.studiopress.com/) which builds on the Genesis framework. WooThemes as Harold mentioned is another decent option that builds on their own Woo framework. I highly recommend picking one of these two communities and sticking with it. As a non-developer it'll make your life much easier to stay within a framework that to switch between them, or switch between random themes as you redesign your website down the road.

The nice thing as about StudioPress is that once you buy the first theme and have the framework I think subsequent themes are around $20-$30.

ksnazel
06-16-2013, 11:47 AM
Thank you everyone for the great advice. Especially Harold. Big thanks.

The new Wordpress site should launch later today after I make a few more tweaks, its a huge improvement and I no longer 'hate my website".

Carsten
06-17-2013, 08:04 AM
Setting up a website with Wordpress is the best you can do as it is rather easy to handle when you know some HTML and CSS. WP nowadyas offers you all options, no matter if you want to setup a single page website or a comprehensive corporate website. Once setup you probably don't need to purchase a new theme for it. My WP-installations yet run with the included but modified Twentyten themes, whereas the current standard template Twentytwelve already offers responsive design for smart phones, etc. Though I would propose to do some little modifications for SEO purposes (h-tags, archives, etc).
But at first I'd propose to focus on the creation and setup of the content. No one cares about a wonderful website without content, but many care about great content with a non-perfect lacout.

Edit: Posted before reading page 2 ;)

WPresstic
06-28-2013, 03:32 PM
I'm with everyone else who believes WordPress is the way to go. I build websites for clients using premium Wordpress themes that I tweak. If you know which companies to go to for your theme you can get a highly functional template out of the box. Companies like Woothemes, Headwaythemes, iThemes all have great templates and frameworks from which to build your website. I would steer clear of free themes as they are often done by programmers as a hobby, have limited support and may not keep up with future Wordpress updates.

With a few tweaks and the right plugins, you can have a highly customized website that is SEO-friendly.

Bronsontyler
06-30-2013, 03:53 PM
Hating your own work won't do any good. I agree with Harold to use Wordpress as the platform is easy to navigate and also it is also good for some SEO stuff.

Wordpress helps tremendously for Newbs. Maybe start there.

highcoast
07-27-2013, 03:38 AM
I would advise not get stuck on your design too much. I think you should really think of what content you are going to produce for your target market. It is through content that is produced regularly and optimized correctly that you will climb the search engines. It is from here you will gain your customers.

You have to keep in mind a simple website that is easily navigable and has great content which is optimized correctly that will pay you dividend. Not a fantastic designed website void of content.

Wordpress is a good solution for you and it is a flexible tool which will allow you to customize it easily and you can always change your theme going forward. However I think your starting point is once you have identified target market think content and from there you will get a clearer picture of your theme.

vangogh
08-05-2013, 01:43 AM
I think you should really think of what content you are going to produce for your target market.

I agree you should focus on content first and foremost, but I wouldn't dismiss design. You mention an optimized site that's easily navigable. Well that's design. Design is not just making things look good. The looks are one aspect of designing a website, but it isn't the only part. Even if that's all design were it would still be important. People judge books by their cover. It's been shown time and time again that pretty packaging sells more products.

PayForWords
08-05-2013, 02:21 AM
I agree you should focus on content first and foremost, but I wouldn't dismiss design. You mention an optimized site that's easily navigable. Well that's design. Design is not just making things look good. The looks are one aspect of designing a website, but it isn't the only part. Even if that's all design were it would still be important. People judge books by their cover. It's been shown time and time again that pretty packaging sells more products.

Agreed! If a site looks cheap, people assume the company/business/product is cheap.

vangogh
08-09-2013, 12:10 AM
True. I'll say it again. Design isn't just making things look pretty. It's figuring out how to organize all the content and how to develop navigational systems that are easy to use. It's about understanding the goals of your business and building a site that helps you achieve those goals. Still making something look a certain way is important. There are plenty of studies that show we all start making judgements about anything within milliseconds and in that time the only thing we've had a chance to take in is how that something looks. The impression someone gets the instant they see your site contributes quite a bit to whether or not that person eventually buys something.

Gabe
08-12-2013, 10:52 PM
Yet another vote for WordPress here. But I strongly disagree with those who don't recommend theme frameworks, I think you should check out the Genesis framework (StudioPress.com). I use it for all of mu customers. The best part about it is the consistency. Using premium themes it's a nightmare moving from one theme to another because they're all built differently. Using a framework like Genesis, it's seamless and simple to switch themes. Now it even supports HTML 5 which only a fraction of other themes do.

Cutler4Life
08-19-2013, 11:52 PM
If you don't feel your skills are up to the challenge, just hire someone to do it for you. It doesn't have to be a long term agreement, just hire someone to help design develop and code for you. Don't take any SEO specialists though, they won't be worth it.

cbscreative
08-20-2013, 10:03 AM
Don't take any SEO specialists though, they won't be worth it.

A blanket statement based on no factual data posted on a forum managed by SEO specialists. Now that's funny!