Budget Website Design, Small Business Web Site, Web Page Template

About WebLaunch

Budget Website Design for Small Start-Up Businesses

WebLaunch has been developed by The Marvellous Media Company to allow new start-up businesses to launch their company website and establish an essential online prescence quickly, efficiently, and most importantly affordably.

The key benefits are:

• one low price - only £495+VAT
• totally expandable
• no web skills needed
• 24 hour turnaround*

What we need from you:

• Your choice of website template
• Your logo
• Your corporate colours
• Your corporate font
• Your chosen domain name
• Your keywords and description
• Your page titles
• Your words
• Your images
• Your address/contact details

How you get it to us

• On-line
• By email:
• By post:
  WebLaunch
  The Marvellous Media Company
  1 GMS House
  Boundary Road
  Woking
  Surrey
  GU21 5BX

Before you start

Who is your target audience?

Give some thought to your target market. Who do you want to attract to your website? Why? The answer to that is more than likely to sell them something. So how are you going to do that?

Don’t just tell them what you do/sell. Tell them why they want it (yes, want – not need). Offer incentives, freebies, discounts – anything to get that dialogue started.
How will they find you?

Consider what people might type into a search engine to find you. Actually do the searches yourself. Who comes up in the top 30? Because that’s where you need to be. Are your competitors there? Look at their sites. Do they work? How can you improve on them?

Those keywords – or keyphrases to be more accurate – need to be incorporated into your site. You may have to localise or specialise to get in that top 30. Identify something unique about your business that sets it apart from the rest.

Your logo

There are a number of different ways you can supply this to us. In order of preference they are:

1. Illustrator or other vector artwork file (.ai, .eps, .wmf, .emf)
2. High resolution image (.tif, .jpg, .png, .bmp)
3. Low resolution image (.tif, .jpg, .png, .bmp)
4. Letterhead

Your corporate colours

These are the colours you use on a regular basis in your print or advertising work. These can be given in a number of different ways:

• Pantone Colour Reference (eg P618)
• Use the simple colour selector, when you sign-up for your small business website online.
• RGB (eg 255,128,56)
• Hex (eg FF7733)
• CMYK (eg 15,100,50,0)
• Printed brochure or letterhead

You may not know what the colours are, in which case you can supply us with something that is the right colour (either electronically such as an Acrobat PDF or physically such as a brochure or piece of cloth) and we’ll sample it.

Your corporate font

The choice of fonts available is restricted by what the internet-surfing public have installed on their computers, so it’s a case of going for the lowest common denominator.

These are:

• Arial
• Times New Roman
• Courier
• Georgia
• Verdana
• Geneva

You can choose a font for your headings and links, and another for your copy.

Your chosen domain name

This is what people type into their web browser to find you. You may have one already registered in which case tell us what it is and we’ll work with you to get it transferred to your new website.

If you haven’t registered one already don’t worry. You can follow one of two schools of thought on choosing a domain name:

1. My Company Name
   Choose a name that includes your company name. This may be a problem if your company name is a common one or consists of three or four letters (such as ABC). There are millions of companies already on the internet and chances are someone has already registered your company name. If they’re a bona fide company there’s nothing you can do about it. If they’re not there may be some legal angle but unless you have money to throw at it we strongly advise you come up with an alternative!
2. My Company Activity
   The alternative to choosing a domain name based on your company name is to choose one based on your company activity. For example, our home page is multimedia-production-services.co.uk. The other benefit of going this route is search engines like your keywords being in your domain name!

When you’ve decided on a domain name use our domain checker to see if it is available. Tell us what it is and we’ll do the rest.

Your keywords and description

Hidden in your website will be a list of keywords and a description of your business. Whilst this won’t necessarily improve your search engine ranking (contrary to popular belief) it may help people make better informed decisions on whether to click on your link from a search engine. The description appears in the results list immediately under the link to your website (see below).

We will include:

• A list of 10 keywords
• A short description (400 characters)

Your page titles

Now it’s time to think about what you’re going to say on your website. Break it down into logical sections to make it easier for your visitors to find what they want. Here are some suggestions:

1. Home Page OR Welcome Page
2. Company Profile OR Company History OR About Us
3. Products OR Services OR Menu
4. Testimonials OR Client List OR References
5. Contact Us

Your words

Here’s the most important bit of all – make it short, make it snappy, make it relevant.

• Make it relevant
  What is your target audience? What do they want to hear? You may be especially proud of certain aspects of your business but unless it’s a selling point leave it out! Focus on what your customers need to know to decide to buy from you instead of your competitors. Offer guarantees that only you can make – on price, on service, on whatever your unique selling point is.
• Make it snappy
  You have to make an impression on your visitor within the first few seconds if they are to spend any time on your website. You need to grab their attention and then hold it.
  Use attention-grabbing headlines. Make outlandish claims. Be bold.
  Write in a manner that is engaging. Involve your audience. Appeal to their desires. Paint pictures in their head of dreams and aspirations and then offer it all to them.
• Make it short
  If you present people with too much text they simply won’t read it.
  Try to break what you have to say into easily digestible morsels using short paragraphs.
• And one more thing
  Include your keyphrases in your text wherever possible to improve your search engine ranking. This does not mean a list of your keyphrases 50 times – you’ll get penalised for that. Just use them in a natural manner, because once the search engines have done their job it’s your prospective customers that will be reading it.

Your images

A picture is worth a thousand words. And it’s much easier on the eye.

Do

• Include relevant images
• Use images that are properly lit and well composed
• Use images that build aspiration and desire for your products/services
• Use images that demonstrate your products/services

Don’t

• Use fuzzy, blurred or pixelated images
• Take mugshots of your staff – they may be a beautiful bunch but you need a professional to do this
• Use images that don’t belong to you
• Use images with messy, untidy, cluttered backgrounds

We’d like your images supplied in one of the following formats:

• jpeg/jpg
• tif
• bmp
• png
• psd

Your address/contact details

You should state:

1. Your address
2. Your telephone number
3. Your fax number
4. A generic email address (eg sales@abc.com or info@xyz.co.uk)

People like to deal with people, so it’s a good idea to have a contact name. If you have different departments (such as sales, service and spares) you could list them all, but be wary of overloading the visitor with too much choice. People may choose not to contact you at all rather than contacting the wrong person.

*Dependent on domain name availability