Web Education in 5 Easy Steps [Article]

Before Development

Your website is a landing place for your customers, and we all know how important they are! But, where do you start if you need a new website?

Like everything else in life, we don’t know what we don’t know, so you’ll need a bit of education to learn what you need. Think of this brief guide as a starting point to help you figure out what you need for your new site.

Step 1: Register Your Domain

This is the address people will type to visit your page, and in recent years, there have been many extensions to domains, such as book.club instead of bookclub.com, but as a rule, you’ll want to secure .com as people will almost always assume a .com extension.

You can buy domain names from several websites like godaddy.com, name.com, and even Google.

Step 2: Find a Host for Your Site

Most sites that sell domains also offer to host and most hosting sites offer domains for sale, but that’s not always the case. Not all hosting is the same, and this matters a lot when determining what type of website you’d like to have.

For a guide in determining what’s best for you, you can visit CNet’s article, or you can just let us take care of that.

Step 2b: Set Up DNS Records

If your host and where you registered your domain are not the same, you’ll need to setup DNS Records which can be a little intimidating and easy to mess up if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Step 3: Design and Planning Process

After completing steps one and two, you’ll be able to start developing, but for best practice, you’ll always want to create mockups/wireframes to help decide what the site will look like, and how it will navigate.

Designing for the web is a lot more involved than designing for print because we always need to think of the site in several formats, from wide horizontal screens to the thin vertical mobile phones. You can have someone design it and someone else develop it, but in our experience, that is highly time-consuming and inefficient, it’s better to hire someone who can design and program (we know some people we can recommend).

Step 4: Development and Content

Receiving all the necessary content is the most time-consuming part of development. The programming of special features can also slow down the development process, but you’ll be made aware of that before starting and will be included in the initial quote.

This is where you need to make sure you talk through your expectations with your web team. Tell them your timeline, and ask what theirs is too. After all, teamwork really does make the dream work.

Step 5: SEO

Search Engine Optimization is something that is done during development which means all metadata is easy for search engines to read and understand. Metadata include the page title, page description, image tags, anchor tags, and keywords. Schema is a format used that further expands on the possibility of metadata allowing for some cool features on search results.

Understanding and controlling what gets crawled by search engines is very important because you want to be easily discovered. You also want to hide old, irrelevant pages away (kind of like how you don’t want people finding your old Myspace profile).

Deprigo launches all websites SEO ready but also offer SEO packages that expand on the service. Active SEO is about competing for the number 1 spot on search results as opposed to just being discovered. Check out our SEO packages to see how SEO is done right.

Wrap It Up: The Perfect Website

Websites are like digital homes; even after building the perfect home, it is normal to continue working and making improvements. Deprigo offers complete web service so you don’t have to worry about maintaining your site. Hopefully, this guide can help you make a better decision about what you need for a new website.