This document provides an overview of the website design process for small businesses. It discusses planning content and structure, different types of sites, budgets, domains and hosting, finding designers, contracts, the design and development process, pre-launch testing, ongoing maintenance, and marketing the completed site. Business owners are advised to thoroughly plan content and functionality before hiring a designer, provide timely feedback during the process, and budget for ongoing maintenance and marketing after launch.

1. Small Business
Website Design
What Every Business Owner Needs to Know
about Participating in the Process, Working
with a Designer and Producing a Site that
Works for Your Business

2. What we’ll cover
 Planning the site
structure & content
 Types of sites
 Budget
 Domain names
 Hosting
 Finding a
designer/developer
 Contracts
 Design &
development process
 Pre-launch check
 Maintenance/
updates
 Marketing

3. Planning
 The more you have planned ahead of
time, the better!
 Things you should know:
 Your business model
 Who are your customers or Audience?
 What do you want your customers to do?
• Call to action
 How will this site solve your customers’
problem?

4. Who is your Audience?

5. Site Types
 Brochure - Set it and Forget it, (but don’t)
 Basic static pages, simple form
 Informational - Regularly Updated
 Needs a database and/or blogging capability
 E-commerce (Can be used for services, too)
 Requires shopping cart (customer, order and
product information storage and retrieval)

6. Planning
 Things you should have an idea about:
 Branding
• visual interface to ‘set tone/expectations’,
based on your audience and corporate
culture
• Logo, Colors, Look and Feel
• Focus on good design, not clutter
 Content (Message or ‘Pitch’)
• Written copy (Optimized for Search Engines
Humans with keywords)
• Product photos or other images
• Video or Audio

7. Planning
 Functionality
 Forms (registration, mailing
list, contact us)
 Shopping cart or way
for customers to pay
you
 Content Management
System (CMS)
 Information feeds like
news or MLS

8. Planning
 Structure
 Flow chart (your
developer can/should
assist with this)
• How many pages or
‘screens’
• What links to what
• How pages are
categorized (Do you
sort by color or
style?)

9. MORE Planning!
 Examples
 Competition
 What you love (functionality, color, style, etc.)
 What you hate
 What you NEED now, what would be nice later
 Sites can be built in stages, as long as it’s planned for
 Questionnaire is a good place to start
 Whew! Now that all the planning is done….

10. How Much Will This Cost?
 How much do you project
making?
 10-20% of what you will make in the first year
is a good baseline
 How much can you do yourself?
 Writing, photography etc.
 What is your time worth?
 It Depends….
 Website is an ongoing
investment
 “Average” small business should
expect low to mid 4 figures.

11. How Much Will This Cost?
 What type of site do you need?
 Blog (minimal design capability) = Free
(remember your time…)
 Brochure = $2500-$4500 (Estimated labor
20 to 60 hours)
 Infomational or E-Commerce = $4500-
$8500++
 Maintenance and marketing are key to
success and not included in these
estimates!

12. Domains & Hosting
 Domain - $10+ year
 Your site address: www.greatsite.com
 Leased not owned! If you fail to stay current
on payment, you will LOSE the rights to
lease the domain.
 Hosting - $120+ year
 The server where your actual files live
 Hosting packages normally include a limited
# of email addresses that can be setup
 YOU MUST PAY YOUR OWN BILL &
KEEP TRACK OF THE LOGIN
INFORMATION!
 Use the spreadsheet

13. Finding a
Designer/Developer
 Not all designers know how to code, not all developers
know how to design
 $Designer/developer, small company, freelance, home office
 $$-$$$Advertising/Design firm
• Designer, developer, writer, photographer, ad placement,
fancy office
 Ask your friends & family
 (If you have a friend actually do the site, do you care about
deadlines and quality? Professionals are much more
accountable.)
 Who developed the sites in your industry that you
admire?
 Look for functionality, not ‘Flash Bang’
 LinkedIn, Google

14. Finding a
Designer/Developer
 Do they have the skill set you need?
 Don’t be shy about asking questions
• Be cautious about FLASH
 Have they made sites that work the way you
want yours to work?
 ALWAYS –
 Check the designers’ site (broken links or
‘coming soon’ pages are a RED FLAG)
 Check their clients’ sites and get references
 Get more than one bid
• (Compare by services offered, not just price.
Lowest is often more expensive in long run)

15. The Proposal & Contract
 Don’t leave home without it
 Protects the owner and designer
 Defines the scope of work
 Define WHO is responsible for
WHAT
• Who is providing content
 Deadlines go both ways
 Who “owns” what at the end
• Content, artwork, code
 Payment structure
• Typically 33% or 50% up front
 Is maintenance covered?
• Negotiate!
 Can you get out?

16. The Proposal & Contract
 What can raise the cost
 Revisions, additions,
changes
• Remember all that
planning?
 Scope Creep

17. The Process
Yay! We’re finally creating something!
 You’ve planned, now
designer does
discovery
 Share all of your
planning
 Be prepared for more
questions!
 Wireframes
 Structure first, to include
all content and plan
layout

18. The Process
 Mock-ups
 Picture of the home and
possibly additional page
 May have more than
one choice
• Now you can see
which shade of
purple works best
 Now is the time to
change your mind and
revise!

19. The Process
 Stay Flexible
 Not everything that was
planned for can happen
exactly
 Content and images are
never exactly the same

20. The Process
 Remember – Sites
aren’t magazines
 You don’t control how
people see your site.
 Keep the design flexible
and user friendly
 Talk about the site being
“responsive” with your
designer

21. The Process
 Development
 The coding that actually creates the site
 Includes functionality that makes the site ‘go’ and can
include Galleries, Slide Shows, Email forms,
Shopping Carts, Blog installations . . .
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"> <title>Designing Your Site, Things Every Business Owner Should
Know</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <meta
name="generator" content="WordPress 2.9.2" /> <!-- leave this for stats please --> <link rel="stylesheet"
href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/wp-content/themes/BDD_Su/style.css" type="text/css"
media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0"
href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92"
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title="Atom 0.3" href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/feed/atom/" /> <link rel="pingback"
href="http://www.beckydavisdesign.com/seminar/xmlrpc.php" />

22. The Process
 Each stage needs YOUR approval
 Layout, design, development, launch
 Delays in content delivery, approval and
payment schedule all directly affect your
deadline
 Design changes or added
functionality requests during
development will be extra $$

23. Pre-launch Check
 Use more than one tester
 Preferably someone who has not seen the site before
 Does every link work?
 Do the forms work?
 Does the shopping cart work?
 Does it pass the Mom test?
 Test in Major Browsers: Explorer, Firefox,
Chrome, Opera (both on PC and Mac) AND as
many devices as you can find
 Designer should do, but you should too!

24. Maintenance & Updates
 You planned for this, right?
 Monthly fee?
 CMS training?
 Publishing schedule for blog or events?
 Updating products or inventory?
 You’re NEVER done.
 Relevant and current content wins in search

25. Marketing
It’s a live site!! Now, how do you drive traffic to it?

26. Marketing
 Social Media (easier for some business types
than others)
• Facebook fan page
• Your LinkedIn Profile
• Twitter
• Use what works for you!
 Email marketing
• MailChimp
• Constant Contact
• AWeber
• Active Campaign
 Printed material
• Your Email Address should be you@company.com
NOT gmail, and NOT aol. (Support your domain!)

27. Marketing
 Nothing replaces real face to face
networking!
 Advertising
• Adwords
• pay-per-click
• Print, radio
• TV advertising
 Part of the planning
 Part of the budget

28. Contact Information
 Becky Davis
 becky@beckydavisdesign.com
 773-809-5640
 These slides and MORE!
 http://beckydavisdesign.com/seminar-
schedule/