The physical design of your site based on agreed-upon visual direction and messaging. For instance, should we use Arial or Times New Roman concept for our cascading style sheet. Times New Roman is often viewed as austere while Arial/Helvetica is viewed as welcoming/friendly. What font sizes should we use? Hint: usually, the larger the better. In the early days of the internet we used 12pt, then a decade ago moved to 14pt. Now 16 and larger are becoming the norm. Read more about this here. It is important to create what appeals to our visitors more than what appeals to us. Choose a color scheme.

A Web outline that fully integrates all navigation and makes the site user-centric. Simple Navigation vs. Gateway Pages for SEO. (My major in college was Computer Science and my minor was Systems Analysis and Design.) Look through the structure and make sure it flows smoothly. Note: It is very important to me to give people precisely what they want. The only time to let structure suffer is for the sake of SEO.

I nearly only use the Elegant theme because it is so powerful, but there will be times to choose a different theme. I tend to lean toward white, clean, professional, sparse, simple navigation.

Decide on a look for the home page. For instance, how many columns (1-3) and Sliders on Home Page? How much information on the home page? Consider using parallax sliders. I like them as they give motion to the site and yet are SEO searchable.

I’ll install archive software and back your site up before beginning.

Uploading, FTPing and adding plugins. Install plugins: Akismet spam protection, Email Address Encoder, Shortcodes Ultimate, WP Super Cache –to protect the database, Backup plugin, Hacker protection, and more.

Most of this is – opening the page in HTML view instead of WYSIWYG, then pasting it into my Dreamweaver software for backup and then also pasting it into the new site. This is where I make sure every page looks the way we want it. Some pages are simple. Other pages are complex- such as incorporating databases. Typically, it all averages out to about 1 hour per page.

Find stock images without copywrite restriction (15 minutes), resize (10), edit in Photoshop (25), upload (10). (About 1 hour per image.) Or just buy stock images – preferable as it is more cost effective.

Make sure each entry is selectable so that users can gather more information. Set it up so users are RSS notified in the future of this event. Often, each event requires an image.

There are numerous options for payments.

Paypal It is a well-known and trusted company, its features are easier to use, and it offers many services.

Stripe: My preference as it is more powerful.

Add social widgets to incorporate Twitter and Facebook interaction. This will be important for the marketing campaign.

Let me know if you want these.

Interactive forms for online inquiries and data capture, while protecting identities. Here we can add options for visitors to sign up for your newsletters/RSS feeds. Also setup the Captcha protection.

Setup interactive password protected forum. This is a very useful tool for a whole community to enjoy interaction. The only issue is that someone would regularly need to go into the system and determine who may access what forum. They would need to also reject any inappropriate comments from the public forum and then accept for posting all accepted public comments. This could become a full time job.

Instantly export/push updates/blogs/newsletters/other fresh content- to users who have signed up for RSS feeds.

To protect the data different users with different levels of authority can access only what pertains to their role.

Mailchimp plugin allows you to create, manage your own mailing lists, have fantastic templates, and special offers. Eventually, this will be a part of the marketing plan. (Consider a free digital giveaway like “Your guide to…”.)

Top Researchers say that users abandon sites when they can’t easily find what they are looking for. Search should be at the top. Most templates have this build in.

Let me know if you want the site translated.

The site should be designed in a way that is search-engine friendly. Note: The more words, the more people will find you. This needs to be balanced against a simple menu structure. (Sometimes page content can be merged.) I have had a lot of success over the last 2 decades at getting my sites highly ranked with the top search engines on the keywords I went after. I will send an analytics report to show how traffic has increased and can show you what time of day/week your visitors came to the site. Once we are ready, I’ll go ahead and submit the site with the major search engines. (They probably regularly spider you, but it still helps with ranking to be proactive.)

When I’m done, I’ll verify that it works on different devices and and browsers. Extensive testing will require an extra hourly fee.

Make pages displayable for both a large screen as well as for a small screen. (According to Google, 75 percent of users prefer a mobile friendly website.)

Create and install a favicon (The small image in browser tab)

We can create an Internal walkthrough for all steps necessary to maintain the site for employees.

Visitors may need help- email, online chat, etc… to walk them through various aspects of the process. Q&A, Online chat, reply form, community forum, etc…

We can create a custom 404 page.