A Guide to Website Creation and Maintenance

Why Have a Website?

If you have a small business, we can help you create and maintain your own website. Investing in your own website can offer numerous benefits such as:

• A means of communicating with potential and existing customers.
• A presence online when people carry out web searches for businesses like yours.
• Somewhere to advertise what you do.
• A potential worldwide audience.
• Somewhere to post regular updates which can be shared on Social Media.
• A means of taking bookings or reservations.
• Selling products.

When looking into investing in a website, it can be quite daunting, especially with the amount of jargon you will see.
Phrases like ‘web hosting’ and ‘domain name’ are not always self-explanatory.

Our goal is to make your life easier and to do it at a fantastic price.

What Steps Are Involved?

When creating your website, these are the steps involved, along with the costs:

1) You need to choose your domain name. A domain name is the text you type in your internet browser (Internet Explorer or Google Chrome are examples of “web browsers”) to get to your site.
For example, our domain name is ClickAndSimple.com, our website can be accessed by typing www.clickandsimple.com into your web browser.
You might want something like www.joebloggspainters.co.uk for example.
You will need to choose a domain name that nobody else has taken already, we can help you check this.
Once you have chosen your domain name, we will register it online, so the rest of the world can find you. This usually includes web hosting at the same time.
Web hosting simply means a server somewhere on the internet for us to save all the pictures and code which make up your website. A good analogy to help you understand is, imagine you opened a shop, you’d need a building to put it in.
The total cost of your domain name and web hosting is usually around £15 per month. This can change slightly depending on the name you choose but will not usually be above £20 per month.

2) You will need to decide what you want on each page of your website. Our standard website has four pages, usually costs a one-off fee and the pages are usually along the lines of:

• A homepage – what you do, services you offer, where you operate.
• Contact page – how can your customers find you? Contact details, where you are on a map.
• About you/Your services – a page about you and your business. What qualifications and experience you have, what expertise you possess, more in-depth details about your services.
• Your latest news/updates – a page that you can update yourself, writing regular updates and news as you see fit. Your own personal blog.

When you have decided what you want on each page, you’ll need to write your content. While we can assist with this, you know your business better than anyone so let your imagination get to work and really sell yourself. Check out the websites of your competitors to see the type of things they have written for inspiration.

3) When you have written your content, got any photos you wish to use and any artwork/logos we can then create your website for you. This process usually takes up to two weeks. After that, you’re ready to ‘go live’ and start telling the world about your new site. We can also begin working on it behind the scenes whilst you are busy writing your content or gathering pictures.
If you don’t have photos or a logo, we can help with this.

Can You Help Me Keep My Site Updated?

Yes, of course.

We offer a monthly website maintenance service. With this you will get the following services every month:

• Up to 2 hours of our time every month dedicated to updating your website, creating blog posts or publicising you on social media for you no extra cost. We will never work beyond these 2 hours, without checking with you first so you’ll never get any unexpected bills. This is the perfect opportunity if you want a new page to be added to your site, or something to be re-worded.
• Any essential security updates will be installed on your website.
• Work will be carried out to get your website moving up toward the top of Google’s search results, so customers see you before they see competitors.

Without a maintenance agreement we can still help you with ad-hoc updates as and when you need them but you will be in control of keeping your own website updated, backed up and secure.

What If I Don’t Have Any Social Media, Photos or Logos?

The best way of publicising your website is via social media. We can create your social media accounts for you if you wish. For this you will get a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

We can then train you on how to add content to them, or we can do it for you if you have decided to take out our monthly maintenance plan and wish to use your inclusive 2 hours for this purpose.

We work closely with local graphic designers and photographers, so if you require professional photographs or logo designs, we can put you in touch with the experts.

We hope this information has given you a clear overview of the entire process and the costs involved.
We look forward to working with you!