Website Development
An Effective Way to Building Your Online Presence
Running a Small Business nowadays almost always comes with the intrinsic need for a strong Online Presence. While setting up and maintaining a business profile on social media is a very straight-forward and rather non-technical exercise, designing, creating and maintaining your own Website still is a significantly more complex endeavor.
Especially for Small Businesses on a rather tight budget, finding the right balance and level of scale is the key to a successful online presence. Larger companies easily spend hundreds of thousands of Dollars every year on their ongoing web development activities – something completely out-of-scope for a Small Business.
On the other end of the spectrum, DIY approaches supported by platforms such as HubSpot, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and many others more, enable the creation of a simple website at little to no cost … but as soon as you go beyond the (admittedly) beautiful display of rather static content you quickly find your self programming code and reading through manuals for e.g. the PHP programming language or the CSS style sheet language.
In order to help Small Business owners out of this predicament, SmallBiz IT offers Website development services helping you to create a well designed web presence with the functionality you need – without breaking the bank. We exclusively build websites using the WordPress platform, which is estimated to be the foundation of more than 35% of all websites worldwide. Key building blocks for every WordPress based website are:
- WordPress itself, which is the underlying development and deployment platform, i.e. kind of the ‘engine’ behind your website.
- A so-called Theme, which basically defines the design and look-and-feel of your website. As of now, more than 10,000 different themes are available to chose from, giving endless options for the visual appearance of your website.
- A number of so-called Plugins, which add dedicated functionality and styling options to your website – things like sending emails, online stores, handling of payment options, and many others more. As of now, more than 50,000 (!) different plugins are available to chose from…
Running a Small Business nowadays almost always comes with the intrinsic need for a strong Online Presence..
While setting up and maintaining a business profile on social media is a very straight-forward and rather non-technical exercise, designing, creating and maintaining your own Website still is a significantly more complex endeavor.
Especially for Small Businesses on a rather tight budget, finding the right balance and level of scale is the key to a successful online presence. Larger companies easily spend hundreds of thousands of Dollars every year on their ongoing web development activities – something completely out-of-scope for a Small Business.
On the other end of the spectrum, DIY approaches supported by platforms such as HubSpot, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and many others more, enable the creation of a simple website at little to no cost … but as soon as you go beyond the (admittedly) beautiful display of rather static content you quickly find your self programming code and reading through manuals for e.g. the PHP programming language or the CSS style sheet language.
In order to help Small Business owners out of this predicament, SmallBiz IT offers Website development services helping you to create a well designed web presence with the functionality you need – without breaking the bank. We exclusively build websites using the WordPress platform, which is estimated to be the foundation of more than 35% of all websites worldwide. Key building blocks for every WordPress based website are:
- WordPress itself, which is the underlying development and deployment platform, i.e. kind of the ‘engine’ behind your website.
- A so-called Theme, which basically defines the design and look-and-feel of your website. As of now, more than 10,000 different themes are available to chose from, giving endless options for the visual appearance of your website.
- A number of so-called Plugins, which add dedicated functionality and styling options to your website – things like sending emails, online stores, handling of payment options, and many others more. As of now, more than 50,000 (!) different plugins are available to chose from…
For any Website development project, we apply the following step-wise process:
You schedule an appointment, so that we can meet you at your place of business at a time which fits well into your busy schedule. You should plan for a 2 hour conversation, where we will dig into your specific needs and requirements, any ideas you may already have for your upcoming new website, and many other related aspects.
This initial consultation is free of charge and comes with no obligations.
Based on your inputs and requirements collected in step 1, we compile a quotation for A) the development of your website as well as B) any ongoing maintenance of your website once it’s online. Separating these elements gives you the option to either have us maintaining your website later – or having us just covering the development while you handle the ongoing maintenance yourself.
Once you place the according order, we will first compile a detailed Statement-of-Work (SOW) document clearly describing
- The exact scope of the development activities
- The anticipated timeline and major milestones
- The exact responsibilities of the two parties – you provide the content, we handle the development parts
- Handling of any change requests
- Payment schedule
- And many other aspects more
While the actual timeline for a website development project heavily depends on the specific requirements, you may want to expect this to be in the 4-8 weeks range.
As soon as the SOW is fully agreed upon and signed, we will in a first step suggest several Theme options for your selection. The Theme will then define the design of your website. We also will meet with you to discuss and agree on the overall structure of your website.
As next step, and following the timeline as defined in the SOW, the actual site development will start. This is also the phase, where you will need to provide the actual content to be displayed on your Website, so please anticipate a regular interaction during this phase.
As outlined in the SOW, the development phase will include several dedicated milestones. When reaching these milestones, we will ask you to review and approve the then current status of the work being completed.
These milestones also typically are an excellent point in time for any potential change requests. It’s not unusual that you may experience some “I know it when I see it” effects, i.e. while the development of the website is ongoing, you may have new or additional ideas regarding its structure or functionality.
Once the last milestone (as outlined in the SOW) is reached, we will ask you for a final review and approval of your brand-new website
In case you had decided (see step 2) to maintain your new website yourself, we will provide a dedicated hands-on training for WordPress, explaining to you how to incorporate any modified content, how to do a regular review of the administrative elements, how to keep any used plugins up-to-date, and many other aspects more.
In case you had decided to have us doing the regular maintenance for your website, this subscription based service will start once the development is completed, reviewed and approved (step 7). Going forward, we will handle any incorporation of modified content, take care of the administrative elements, etc.
Please understand, that any significant changes to the design or structure of your website won’t be covered by the ongoing maintenance and will require a new quote and project.
You have any question regarding Website development?
Just drop us a note
We usually respond in less than 24 hours.
