Everything You Need to

Start Your Website

Please look at all 20 items below. You can call Marla with the answers or send them by email to marla@northcountrywebsitedesign.com. 1. What type of Website do you want? An Informational site is a site for information about your business or organization. An e-commerce site gives information about your business AND also generates income by selling products or services on the website. There are many other types of websites, click here for a list and information about each type. Whatever type of site you want, you will also get a mobile site to go along with it! • Do you want a totally customized website maintained by North Country Website Design? (Design cost is $495). An estimate for an informational website is approximately $950 for a custom website. • Do you want a template-based, WordPress site that can be maintained on your own? (Design cost is $695). An estimate for an informational website is approximately $1700 for a WordPress site. • Do you want a template-based, online store- front setup and maintained on your own? (Ask for details). 2. Domain Name: A domain name is the address (example: northcountrywebsitedesign.com) where your website will be found on the Web. The best domain name is one that uses the company's name in the URL. But sometimes that can be hard to get, if you haven't already registered it. If you can't get your company name, then consider something catchy or memorable that your customers can associate with you. Remember that it should be something that you like and can live with for a long time, as there is a possibility that people will start remembering your domain name before they remember your real company name. North Country Website Design can transfer your domain or create a new one. Click here for more information. 3. Website Hosting: (also known as webhosting) Deciding where you're going to put your website doesn't have to be your first step, but it should be on the top of your list. This location is called Web hosting and there are lots of options to choose from. If you've decided to hire North Country Website Design to work on your site, we prefer to use our web host (which is ionos.com). Click here for more information. 4. Email and Email Hosting: • New Domains: What email(s) do you want with your domain? Emails are free (the only cost is for NCWD to set up the email initially) and have up to 2GB of storage. Need more than that? You can upgrade to a business email with 50GB of storage for $6 per month. You can get anything you want for emails (if your domain is domain.com, then you can have info@domain.com, name@domain.com, or orders@domain.com, etc). • Existing Domains: Do you have a current website where your email is hosted? If you want to transfer your domain to our webserver, there are some things to think about before transferring your domain. Do you keep all your emails on your current webserver? Do you download your emails to Outlook, Windows Mail, or to your phone? MAKE SURE TO TALK TO MARLA ABOUT YOUR EMAILS BEFORE YOUR DOMAIN IS TRANSFERED. 5. Logo: Do you have a logo you would like us to build the design around? 6. Brand and Slogan: Do you have a brand or slogan to use on your website? 7. Pictures: Good quality pictures are a very important part of your website. Take VERY GOOD quality pictures of your business, or hire a professional photographer. Pictures are usually needed BEFORE we start the design of your website. North Country Website Design can take pictures of small items and easily and quickly put them on your website. For bigger projects and beautiful website photographs, we rely on Cutting Edge Photography to do our photography. David Hakamaki works out of Iron Mountain, MI and has taken the beautiful pictures as seen on his website. He can take pictures of your building, inside and out, of your employees, inventory photos and anything else needed for your website. The pictures are then edited and sent directly to the website developer for immediate use on your website! Another option for high quality pictures is to purchase them from stock.adobe.com. There is a HUGE selection of pictures available for purchase to use on your website. Note: We will NOT use photos unless they are purchased for the website, are taken yourself, or you have permission from the photographer. 8. Demographics: Who are you trying to sell to? What types of clients are you trying to find with your website? Who do you want your website to appeal to? Male, female, young, old, business owners, home owners, etc? 9. Design Colors: What colors do you want your website to have? Are the colors business colors, colors to match your logo, feminine colors, masculine colors, etc? 10. Design “Feel”: What design theme or “feeling” do you want your website to have? 11. Information: Information about your business and what the business does and how you do it. We will also need information such as information about the owner(s), contact information, history of your business, pricing (if you want it on your site), types of services or products, testimonials, calendar dates if applicable, etc. • What navigation buttons/tabs would you like? (Home, About, Contact, Services/Products, Testimonials/Reviews) • To get started, 2-3 paragraphs are needed for the home page. We also like to ask for all the information for the “About Us” page, we can take a few paragraphs from the “About Us” page and use it on the home page. 12. Call To Action - A calls-to-action (CTA) is a piece of content intended to induce a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific act, typically taking the form of an instruction or directive (e.g. “Buy now”, “Click here”, “Sign up now”, “Contact us”, “Subscribe”, “Join”, or “Pay now” buttons.) 13. Hours - What are your hours of operation? 14. How will you accept payments/donations? PayPal, Venmo, credit cards, money orders, checks, etc. Discuss your options with North Country Website Design. • Do you want an online store setup? 15. Web Presence / Social Media: Do you want to link your site to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Yelp, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other sites? What other types of sites do you want to have linked to your site? Local city sites, state sites, travel sites, Pure Michigan, Area Chamber of Commerce site, IronCountyLodging.com, etc. _____ I want a Google Business Listing _____ I want a Facebook Business Page _____ I want additional social media (need depends on the type of business). ________________________________________ _____ I want an email list to send out weekly/monthly newsletters or information to my customers (using MailChimp, Constant Contact or another email marketing company) 16. Professional Editor for Grammar, Spelling, tests website and all links. Our professional editor does a great job making your website look polished and professional. _____ I want the professional editor to go over my website. 17. Google Analytics: Do you want to know how many visitors have looked at your website or mobile site? Then we can set up Google Analytics. You can log into Google Analytics and only you will see the stats. It gives you a very good idea of where your website traffic is coming from. • Google Analytics is free (only cost is the time to set it up - 5 to 10 minutes). 18. Keywords, Site Title and Description: Site title tags and meta descriptions are important elements of your website’s content. The title tag and the meta description tags should include keywords relevant to the content of the web page they describe. This helps search engines understand what the page is about and index your web pages accordingly for relevant keywords or keyword phrases. We use this page to help us find the perfect site title and description with the correct amount of characters needed for search engines: https://seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html. • The title tag should have 580px or less, should contain the name of the business and the major keywords for the business and the local descriptor (like the city name, state, or county). • The description should have 990px or less and should contain more of the major keywords and more of the local descriptors in it. Try to make this description flow as much as possible. • Please give us a list of all keywords needed for your website. Also give us all local descriptors that make sense for people looking for your products or services. 19. What are ways you would like to promote your business? Weekly social media posts, social media ads, radio ads, 906BigDeals.com, advertising on other people’s blogs or websites? Do you want your website linked from other websites, like Chamber of Commerce, city website, county website, travel websites, etc? For your new website, you should contact as many people as possible to link their website to your website in order to move up in the search engines. 20. Besides a new website, what else do you need? We have many other technical, graphical, and business skills within our company. We also have quality business contacts that we can refer you to. Just let us know what else you need! We can create business cards, posters, menus, signs, we can help new start-up businesses with advice on banking, taxes, legal inquiries, marketing and so much more! We also have a business partner that can fix computer hardware and save you money on business phone lines! 21. Would you like a webcam? We have partnered with Absolute Computer Design to bring webcams to your business and display on your website! For more information about webcams, click here. 22. Lastly, we need a DEPOSIT to get started (non- refundable after any work has been done): This is the last thing you need to get your website design started! Deposit must be in the form of cash, money order or business check. All future payments for services can be made in credit card, PayPal, Venmo, money order, check or cash. • Custom Designed Website (maintained by NCWD) - Deposit is $495. • WordPress Websites (maintained by customer and/or NCWD) - Deposit is $695. Website Estimate: $ _______________________________________________________ __________________________________________ Your monthly fees: $ _______________________________________________________ _________________________________________ Your yearly fees: $______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________ 1. Webhosting $12.50 per month (explain what webhosting is if needed) 2. Domain $27 or more per year (explain if needed) 3. SSL Certificate $35 per year (explain if needed) 4. Other monthly charges: $8 for WordPress site, $20 + for MyStore subscription, $5 for upgraded email storage, etc. 5. Updates $72 per hour (by 5 minutes/$6 increments). Updates are charged after the change is complete, the webhosting, domain, and SSL is charged the month prior. o We charge for our time. We will send out an invoice on the first of every month even if we are not done with your website, you will be charged for what we have done so far. You will then get additional charges on the next month’s invoice. Websites have no SET COST, and all sites are different costs depending on how long it takes us to get the site done. Each site has different amount of content on each page, and the number of pages differ from site to site. The estimate we gave you is only an ESTIMATE and not the set price your website will cost. IMPORTANT NOTES AND QUESTIONS: 1. How did you hear about North Country Website Design? Did you find us on Google or did you hear us on the radio? Did you see a social media ad, did you hear about us through a friend or colleague (who can we thank?); or did you hear about us in a different way? What made you decide to call us? What made you decide to hire us? 2. You must agree to not to publicly promote your new website until the website and design are finished. Websites that are not finished not only make North Country Website Design look bad but also the business that owns the website. You are welcome to show co-workers or close friends but you cannot publicly display the website until it is ready. Thank you for understanding. 3. If your website is not ready within two months you will still be charged for the design, domain, and webhosting, before the end of the second month. 4. Meetings are charged at a rate of $72 per hour, charged in five-minute increments. The first meeting (the initial consultation) is free, but all other meetings, either in person or on the phone, are charged. Quick, 2-minute phone calls are not charged.