Recently we’ve had some newly-established private practice owners in our client lineup, and with that, we often get asked what’s really needed to begin your website design with us. While there’s a list that we’ll dive into, we normally suggest BigScoots as the best host for small business website. If you’re thinking, “what’s a website host”, then this blogpost is made for you!
Throughout this post, we’ll be discussing the basic requirements of getting your website designed professionally by Chloe Creative. In this list, there are some things that you are responsible for completing, as the client, and things we are responsible for, as the service provider. Either way, we’ll explain it all.
After you get onboarded as a website design client at Chloe Creative, you’ll first receive our intake questionnaire so that we can get to know your practice a little better. The second thing you’ll receive are a list of tasks that we’ll need you to complete so we can ensure that your website is setup correctly and optimized for the work we’ll do.
Now, let’s dive into what and why each of these items are, and why they are so essential to a successful website design with Chloe Creative.
Domain Registration / Purchase:
Before we can begin designing your website, the first thing you’ll want to grab is your domain name. Most of the time, our clients choose to purchase the domain of their choice when they’ve established their business name to ensure it doesn’t get taken. If you’ve found that your domain of choice is taken, consider alternate options.
Your domain name is www.chloecreativestudio.com (enter your name of choice for chloecreativestudio). You can buy this in several places such as Squarespace Domains (formerly Google Domains), Namecheap, or via your website host such as BigScoots, Siteground or GoDaddy.
Our personal recommendation is to purchase via Namecheap. This company offers domains at great prices! As a website design studio, we need your domain registration information so that we can connect your DNS settings to your website host to make your website live.
Website Host:
Your website host, is the company that hosts the settings, records and database files of your website design. Essentially, this is how it becomes live on the internet. Finding the best website host for small business website is key because your website host can have an affect on website speed, storage and support.
It’s very important to do your research on website hosts before diving into purchasing one. For example, a lot of our clients come to us wanting to use GoDaddy, but we’ve found that GoDaddy support really lacks in time of need.
Our website host recommendation is BigScoots. Although more pricey than your average host, their support is top-notch and their websites are FAST. I also love that their smallest plan gives you the opportunity for capacity of 250K visitors – most hosts only support up to 100K on their smallest plans.
Website Platform of Choice:
This sometimes is a decision that will be made prior to hiring us as your professional website design team. However, when there’s a case where you ask for our recommendation, we will provide it based on the criteria below:
Once we nail those down, we will provide our professional recommendation on what platform would be best for you. Normally, we recommend either WordPress, Squarespace or Showit.
Instagram Login:
This one can be confusing at first, but the reason we need your Instagram information is because we like to include these in the footer of websites. Embedding your Instagram feed within your website opts for different ways for your users to connect with you.
Copywriting:
Copywriting is one of the most important aspects of a successful website design. After you’ve been onboarded as a website design client of ours, you’ll receive our Website Copywriting Template. This is a template we’ve developed with helpful tips, hints and suggestions for SEO ranking. As a client, you gain access into this super helpful tool to write your website copywriting with SEO in your brain.
If budget allows, we always recommend working with Diana, our in-house copywriter to formulate personalized messaging and copywriting for your website.
Brand Photography:
One of the final pieces of your website design will be branding photography. It’s not required to book a photoshoot immediately after booking us for your website design. Instead, we recommend that you have photography you feel confident in and that can really help tell a story within your website.
We recommend getting photos of yourself working, formal headshots, and detail shots. Always have fun and show personality in your photos – this is how your branding will connect emotionally!
Now that you understand some key requirements to begin your website design, let’s circle back and talk more about BigScoots. Because website hosting is so important to the success of your website, we wanted to dedicate an entire post on this.
Selecting the best host for your small business website can directly impact how it performs in its speed. Speed is a direct factor in ranking higher on Google Search via an SEO strategy.
Taking this screencapture directly from the BigScoots website, a couple of green flags stand out for me in regards to optimizing speed for your website.
First being, CDN included.
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. When a CDN is included in hosting, this means that they will store “copies” of your website on different servers and then deliver those “copies” on the closest server to the user visiting your website. In return, this creates for a faster performance based on geographical location.
To better illustrate this, imagine not having a CDN, and your website hosting company being based in San Diego, California. That means, your website will be on the servers in San Diego, California. When someone from North Carolina visits your website, they may experience a slower load time than someone visiting your website from Los Angelos, California. This is strictly based on having that CDN.
This makes BigScoots stand tall in regards as the best host for small business website.
1000GB Bandwidth included.
The bandwidth of your website includes the amount of “storage” that a user can download from your website in a given time. The more users per month you have visiting your website, the larger bandwidth you need.
However, 1000GB is equal to 1TB of data, which is quite large for a starter plan. For example, if each of your images on your website are 3MB and 100 people visit that page, that means there needs to be 300MB of storage available for that use case.
Free backups, SSL, & proactive monitoring.
One of the last things that really stands out to me about BigScoots is that they provide backups and SSL for free. Backups are essential in case a plugin causes a critical error and your website happens to be removed from the “live” version. Then, you can restore your website from backup, before you updated that said plugin.
Your SSL is your secure “lock” icon that shows on your browser window. Some hosts require you to purchase this in addition to your hosting plan.
Lastly, BigScoots in fact proactively monitors your website. This means that they might catch errors before you do! In the event of a website error, the BigScoots team has never let us or our clients down. They are so hands-off and will help so quickly.
When determining what website host to select, we back BigScoots in scalability as the best host for small business website.
It’s the worst when you have to move website hosts as you grow, simply because they cannot handle the amount of visitors your website is getting. AKA, you’re doing a great job on your website, but they can’t do their job!
Here’s why BigScoots is so awesome in this regard:
From their pricing page, you can easily see how many visits are accommodated for each plan that BigScoots offers. As I mentioned earlier, their basic plan comes with 250K visits which is huge. Some of the other website hosts out there might accommodate up to 25K which can easily be surpassed if you are someone growing via an SEO strategy.
If you are looking at those numbers and thinking you’ll never get to any amount of those visits – think twice! Or, just come talk to us at Chloe Creative on how we can pinpoint an SEO strategy to begin growing your website! Finding the best host for small business website doesn’t have to be hard.
We are currently booking for custom design projects and want you on our client roster!
If you are a:
We want to work with you to grow your practice. As you’ve learned throughout this post, the best host for small business website is BigScoots – when you work with us, you only get the best!
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