Hosting and Domain Names

We need to know if you have an existing Domain Name and Hosting Provider, and yes they are two different things.
Your Domain Name provider is where your domain name resides, a place like GoDaddy, A2Hosting, or SiteGround.
Your Hosting provider can also be at the same company or at another company. You can point your Domain Name at any Hosting service you want to use, you don’t have to have them at the same place. Every Hosting service has different prices and offerings. Some may have higher speeds or more storage space. Some may provide private or shared hosting. If you go cheap, you get cheap results. Do yourself a favor and do your research, look at reviews, see what others are saying before you buy. We have our favorites and can help point you in the right direction in both price and performance.

Content, Content, Content

• Where is your business?
• What do you sell?
• What services do you provide?
• What is your history?
• How did you get started?
• What locations do you work in?
• What do you want your customers to know about you?
• What is your Tagline?
• What is your Mission Statement?
• How long have you been in business?
• Privacy Policy?
• What is your business phone number for your website?
• Do you have a support phone number?
• Who is the main contact?

Get your Images Together

Images are a large part of your website. Great images help your site tell a story about your business. Having your own images to put on your website is always best. Before and after images, work in progress, products, service images, and any image that shows your customers what your company does or provides. Reading what your company does is great but people want to see examples of your work or products.
Provide clear images. Blurred or out-of-focus images are just a bad idea. We can edit your images but only to a point, a bad image is a bad image.

Free or paid images are a good option. Never use images that you don’t have user rights to.
We use Adobe Stock images and iStock Photos for paid licensed images. Our free images come from Pixabay. If you use someone else’s images try to give them credit for those images on your website or leave a donation (Buy Them A Coffee) on Pixabay.

I Like This Other Companies Website

This is a good thing. If you admire or like the way another website looks, let us know.
This input will help us design a website that you like and that fits your business needs.
Take some time and search out your competition’s websites. What do you like and dislike about them? This is your website, make it your website, we work for you.

Emails

All hosting services for your Domain Name come with Domain Email Addresses, usually free.
A domain email address has your website domain name at the end. (Example:jim@mybigsite.com).

This will help your emails look professional when your customers and clients receive or respond to your emails. You may decide to use the Web Email from your website or use a paid email provider. We will need to know your preference before setting up your website. Some configuration will be needed so your email works properly and doesn’t end up bounced to the spam folder. We can help you configure your email.

Functions

What functions do you want your website to do?
Bookings, Contact Form Functions, Quote Generator, and CRM-Customer Relationship Management Software, just to mention a few.

Choosing your Font Styles for your website

We use Google Fonts on our websites with almost a hundred fonts to choose from.
Our default font is “Open Sans” and works for almost any website. Great for titles and paragraphs.

If you have a font style you want us to use, please let us know. If you want to search for a font style you may like better, go to “Google Fonts”. It is easy to get lost in font style selections but a word of advice would be to keep it simple. Choose 1 to 2 fonts to use and remember to choose a style that is easy to read in long paragraphs. Header or Title fonts can be made fun with styles like:

“Comic Sans”

or

“Impact”

but don’t overdo it.  When you find the font style you want, add it to our Website Design Form.

Choosing Your Website Color Theme

The basic colors used in website design are Black #000000, White #FFFFFF, Dark
Grey #808080, and Light Grey #E0E0E0. Usually used as contrasting font styles.
You may want to pick background page color shades from these basic colors. Bright White pages with Black Text can be hard on the eyes, try a dull shade of white for the page background with a lighter shade of black for the text.

How To Choose Your Color Theme With Adobe Color

If you already have a color theme and know the HEX-Color-Codes (Example #000FFF), then you may add them to the Website Design Form. If you need to find the HEX-Color-Codes or want to find or create your Color Theme for your website, then head over to “Adobe Colors”.

When you land on the Adobe Color page it can be a bit intimidating but don’t worry we will walk you through this.
One of the easiest ways to get your color theme is to extract it from your company logo or an image that has the colors in it you like or want to use.
In the top menu bar just under the adobe Color logo click on “Extract Theme”.
An “Extract color from an image” will appear, choose an image from your computer file and drop it into the box. As soon as you upload your image you will get a complete 6-point color theme.
You can move each point on the picture around to choose another color if you aren’t happy with the ones provided for you. When finished you can click save if you have an Adobe Account, if not just take a screenshot or print the page out. What you will want is the HEX-Color-Codes. (Example #000FFF)
You may also click the box next to the code to “Copy and Paste” the codes into a file to be used later.

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Explore Color Themes

At the top menu bar in Adobe Colors is the “Explore Tab”. Click it and it will take you to a page of color themes created by other users. There are thousands to choose from.

Click on the top left “Search Bar”. Search for anything that you think may have the color theme you’re looking for, we searched for “Burger Restaurants”. Wow! Look at all the theme choices.

Click on one you would like to explore the colors for, if you like it, click the download option on the right. I use JPEG to save as an image.
Once you have your color theme or codes, add them to the Web Design Form. Upload the image or just type in each color hex code.

Access

We will need access to some of your accounts. Usually being added on as a user or contributor.

We will need access to your; 

• Hosting Provider and Domain Name Provider
• WordPress or other platforms
• CRM
• Social Media (If using us for management)
• Email Provider

We do this with all of our clients. All companies in the web design and development business do the same. You can always change your passwords or use temporary passwords when this is needed and is recommended.

Ask Questions

It’s your business and website, ask any question you want. No question is stupid or dumb when it comes to your business. Not everyone is “Tech-Savvy”, we will do our best to answer any questions about your website or services and explain as simply and in-depth as we can.

Conclusion

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact us at (804) 777-9241 or use the button below.