Frequently Asked Questions

When you are looking to set up a new website you essentially need two things.

1. Domain name – This is the domain your website will be connected to. I recommend using Namecheap to purchase your domains. See our guide on domains for more information.
2. Web hosting – This is where your website files will be stored and served from when people go to your web address. The best budget hosting provider without compromising quality and speed that I recommend is Siteground.

Then your designer and developer can gain access to both and begin installing the software your website will be run on. In our case, we use the open-source WordPress CMS which is free and most of the tools we use are free too apart from a few exceptions like if you want an online course facility.

You can learn more on our web design services page and if you want to get a quote and proposal for your website please fill out the form on our discovery page.

For a website project we will need the following:

• Domain name – Once you have purchased your domain name we will request access so we can connect it to your web host.
• Hosting access – Before we can install WordPress and start building your website we will also need your hosting login details.
• Written Content – Each page of your website should be saved as a separate word document and sent to us in one batch. We advise against drip-feeding pages one by one as we like to review and load the content once a good first draft has been provided. We want to avoid using filler content to get the best results.
• Branding – We will require you to send the master copies or high def PNG files of your logo and branding in it’s various formats. If you have a brand guidelines PDF, please send that as well.
• Images / Graphics – Any photos or graphics you would like to use on your website. We can also help you to source more from stock photography sites if you don’t have many of your own.
• Media Files (Optional) – Any other media files like videos or PDFs – If you plan to use video we will advise you to upload them to your own company YouTube channel and then send us the links. You may also have PDFs you want to provide for download on your website.
• Existing website details – If you are having a website redesigned, we will ask for the link and the login details so we can attempt to export any content and files you wish to salvage.

In our discovery process, we will also ask for the following information as this helps us to strategize and think about your SEO:

• Buyer Persona – Information about your target audience / customer.
• Location Coverage – Whether you want to focus on the local area, regional, national or a global audience. This makes a difference in how we approach your optimisation.
• 3-5 Competitor Sites – We will ask you to provide between 3 and 5 competitor websites so we can get a better idea of what other companies are doing in your industry and so we can learn from them.
• Aims & Ambitions – Finding out your goals for the website will help us to better align our services and what we recommend.

Firstly, we don’t. We believe in having a separation between us and your hosting provider for a couple of reasons.

1. We can’t provide 247 live chat support, but larger well established hosting companies can.
2. We don’t want you to feel tied down to us because your website is hosted with us, we want you to want to work with us based on merit and the quality service provided.

So, we will recommend a web host for your purposes that will give you everything you need. A fast service that performs well and is always improving, 24-hour live chat support 7 days a week and most importantly peace of mind.

Then you are free to change web hosts or web service providers whenever you feel you need to.

For most websites we will recommend Siteground, for some advanced websites or very high traffic websites we will recommend WPEngine, Kinsta or WPX, who all provide a good service.

Yes, depending on your needs we can discuss a maintenance package to include smaller updates and content changes on an ongoing basis.

We do however prefer to train you or help you to delegate or hire a virtual assistant so you can get better value.

I’m a firm believer that the best results come through collaboration, as the business owner is the subject matter expert for their business, by learning how to manage your content and SEO you can increase the chances of a higher ROI.

Of course. We build all of our websites using a CMS (content management system). The most common one we will use is WordPress CMS.

This is a free self-hosted piece of software we can use to build your website and provide you a dashboard login where you can edit your website content and various other aspects yourself.

Sometimes we will use a tool called Webflow instead, this is a newer CMS that excels in creating Avante-Garde and experimental designs, and while they look very cool they aren’t really suitable for most businesses where SEO and conversions are a higher priority than the wow factor.

The pitfall with the super modern and fancy websites is that, in being unconventional they are harder to use, less obvious and when a website isn’t user friendly it tends not to perform as well with your visitors and customers.

With all of our website builds we provide training videos you can download and save to rewatch whenever you forget how to do something.

We are also always just an email away.

The pages you should be creating content for will depend on the type of website you are planning to build.

For a straightforward informational website for a local or national service business, I would recommend the following:

Note: Each web page should be at least 300-500 words and be completely unique (not duplicated on other pages). This is to ensure your content isn’t considered “thin” which would make it hard to get Google to show you any love.

• Homepage – The homepage should be a microcosm of your entire website. Think of it as an expanded header menu. It should have a section for each of the main pages of your website and a call to action button to take them deeper into the website. This should include i) an elevator pitch, ii) A pilot story, iii) A breakdown of your products or services, iv) Testimonials as social proof, v) Your latest 4 or 4 articles if you are using the blog.
• About page – A page that covers the who, what, where, when, how and why of you and your business. Ideally contains a company bio, a founder bio (along with their photo to make it more personable) I also recommend including a mission statement. We can also include a team section.
• Services or Products page – An overview page to show all of the products and or services you offer. If you offer both products and services then you might have one overview page for each.
• – Subpages for each service or product/product range – If you can produce the content and really want to focus on SEO and ranking for your service keywords then I would recommend creating a sub-page for each of your services and producing 300-500 words of content for each.
• Testimonials – Including a testimonials page is the best way to demonstrate your social proof. Testimonials can increase your conversions as they build trust with your visitors.
• FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions) – Having frequently asked questions can help your visitors find the answers to the common questions they are likely to have. This also helps you build trust with your visitors. Look, I’m doing it right now!
• Blog – Producing blog articles that are evergreen and can rank for relevant keywords to your services is one of the best ways to improve your SEO and generate more traffic. I would recommend producing at least 3 blog articles for the launch. This page doesn’t have to be called blog. It could be called “Articles”, “Resources” or “Insights” if that is more professional and fitting in your industry.
• Contact – A simple contact page with an intro, a link to the FAQ page to see if the question they are asking has already been answered, a contact form and a map.
• Booking (Optional) – If you take bookings for consultations and have multiple calendars to manage we can add a booking form in addition to your standard contact form.
• Privacy Page – It’s important to have a privacy page, we can help to produce this from a template.
• Terms & Conditions – I recommend producing a terms and conditions page for how you do business. Include refund policies etc.

If you were building an eCommerce store then you would also have:

Note: We use the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress to add eCommerce functionality.

• Shop page – The main shop page that shows all products or different categories of products. I would recommend producing a short intro for this page.
• – Shop Category pages – A page for different categories of products, like hats vs t-shirts. I recommend producing product category descriptions for each of these to improve the content and keywords.
• – – Single Product pages – Each product will exist as its own page, we would require a product description along with price, category and other data sets.
• Cart – A shopping cart – No content is needed for this.
• Checkout – The checkout page – No content is needed for this.
• My Account – A page where customers can update their account settings. This page doesn’t require any content.

If we were building an online learning management system (LMS) so you can sell digital courses online we would have the following:

Note: We use the LearnDash plugin for WordPress to add LMS functionality.

• Courses – The main courses page where a visitor can see all courses you have available. I would recommend producing a short intro for this page.
• – Single Course pages – Each course will exist as its own page, we would require some course content along with price etc.
• Checkout – The checkout page – No content is needed for this.
• My Account – A page where students can update their account settings. This page doesn’t require any content.

The above is just 3 of the most common examples and use cases we have built over the years but hopefully that gives you a good idea of a solid website content strategy for any new website.

Yes, you will completely own your website once you have paid the final payment upon launch.

We use open-source tools so there aren’t any proprietary restrictions.

In some cases, you might need a paid plugin which comes with an annual subscription but most simple website’s don’t.

The exceptions are if you want to use LearnDash to sell courses on your website, or membership tools (Memberpress), advanced eCommerce features or automated Booking facilities.

The best way I can explain the benefits of having a well-built website is to think of it as a silent sales machine. Like a robot, it can be live and working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including all holidays.

If your website is nicely designed, user-friendly, contains helpful content and is well optimised for search engines it can be generating leads and sales while you work on more important matters, like working in your business or sipping a pina colada on the beach somewhere.

Even if your website is purely informational, you need to have an attractive online presence in 2023 to be taken seriously.

This is a difficult question to answer because it very much depends on how advanced you want your website in terms of functionality, how much content there will be and how detailed the design requirements are.

If you are planning to have a simple informational website with only a contact form and some basic functionality then that would be on the lower end provided there wasn’t hundreds of pages.

However you might want some bespoke functionality like an eCommerce store using WooCommerce or Shopify, or an online course and membership platform to sell your online courses. This involves more work and increases the price.

If you would like to get a quote and discuss your requirements, head over to our discovery page and fill out our questionnaire. This allows me to collect all of the pertinent information required to properly advise and create a proposal and costing for your project. This is absolutely no obligation so you have nothing to lose and at the very least might learn a thing or two to help you with your plans.

This depends on a several factors:

1. How large the website is in terms of content & pages.
2. How complex the functionality you need is.
3. How prompt you are with having all of your content and deliverables ready for me to work with. I don’t start the build until we have a complete first draft of content as that leads to the best results. Using Latin filler content means we have no context to work with.
4. How prompt you are with feedback when we are ready to review the first draft of the website.

Typically, once all of the deliverables are ready it can take 4-6 weeks to complete the website, allowing time for you to offer feedback at certain stages of the project.