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To help you get up to speed quickly with your new business website here is our advice about the key issues you will face. Click on the topics below to move down the page to the advice.
Which domain name should you choose? One issue here is whether or not to choose a domain name that includes one or two keywords. This is a contentious issue, but it seems to me that over the years the advantage has all but disappeared. If your website is set up correctly, the search engines will know where your business is located and what sort of business it is, and so if you have a cottage called Green Gables in Royal Leamington Spa, there is little to be gained from a longer domain name like: greengablesroyalleamingtonspa.co.uk. The shorter the domain name, the better. Ideally, it should just be the name of your business or property.
Warning! Some have been tempted in the past to ignore their business name and use a string of their most important key words as their domain name (e.g. www.5-star-cottage-with-hottub-sleeps-8-cornwall.co.uk). Be aware that search engines are on the look out for websites using what are called black hat techniques to game the system. One technique is known as "keyword stuffing". The guilty are punished by being given a lower ranking. Avoid anything that could look like keyword stuffing.
If your preferred domain name has already been purchased, try adding a small and easy to remember word. So if frinton-bnb.co.uk has already been taken, try go-frinton-bnb.co.uk or stay-frinton-bnb.co.uk.
Are hyphens in the name a good idea? Hyphens can make a name easier to read (but slightly trickier to type and dictate). If the name will look confusing without hyphens, you should go for hyphens. If the name remains easy to read, some would advise dropping the hyphens. Won't the search engines get confused and fail to distinguish the words in an unhyphenated domain name? The answer to that is: No.
Who should I buy a domain name from? First of all, you should buy a domain name directly from a reputable registrar, not through a middle-person. The domain name is the lynchpin of the whole operation, so you need to make sure it is registered in your name, with your details, and you have the access details for the account.
Handcrafted Websites is not a domain name registrar but we can recommend reliable registrars in the UK. Contact us and we'll advise you.
Where can you search for and buy UK domain names? We recommend the company below (we get no commission).
UK domain names, search and buy - Heart Internet
Every website needs photos. You might take some yourself or you might use commercial photos. In either case the chances are that the original photos will be way, way too big to upload directly to your site. If Handcrafted Websites are going to design your website, we will resize the photos for you and compress them so that they load as fast as possible on the website.
But if you are later going to manage the content of the website yourself, you will want software to resize your photos. The following is a nice piece of free software for resizing a batch of photos, all at the same time: Faststone Batch Photo Resizer.
To resize images that you are going to send to us, a good rule of thumb is to resize them so that they are 2000 pixels wide (the height doesn't matter). When you save the images there will be an option to specify a level of compression. This will determine the size in bytes of the final image file. Be careful! If you apply too much compression, an unacceptable level of detail in the photo will be lost. If you are shown an indication of the final final size in bytes, give yourself up to 500kb (0.5mb) per image.
If a photo is intented to fill the full width of the screen (e.g. a wide background image), it should be 2000 pixels wide.
If photos are intended for a slide show or gallery, it is best if they all have a landscape orientation.
Save the resized image with a new file name, leaving no gaps in the filename. Use a name that describes what the image depicts (e.g. doublebedroom2.jpg). Save it in the JPEG format, using the lowercase extension (.jpg).
You will need to send us the digital images for your website. If there are only a few to be sent at one particular time, just send them as email attachments (don't paste them into the body of the email). Don't attach more than 15mb of data to any one email because that is the limit for email attachments.
For larger batches of photos, it is better to use a free online service to send the files. WeTransfer and DropBox are both good for sending large files. With DropBox you need to create a (free) account, and then log in and create a folder. Upload all the photos (and text documents, if you like) to that folder. Then look for the option to invite us to share that folder with you. Send the email invitation to Handcrafted Websites. We will then be able to download the photos.
The text is important. Firstly, people will pay attention to how well you describe your products or services. Secondly, search engines pay more attention to the text than to images. They are looking out for certain key words and phrases repeated in the text. We will make sure that the most important key words and phrases are repeated without this sounding artificial to human readers.
You can send text in a Windows-compatible text file attached to an email. Acceptable formats are .txt, .rtf, .doc and .docx. Please don't send the text as a PDF.
Include information about the page title and which photos you want to accompany the text.
Simply attach the text documents to an email to us.
Alternatively, text can be pasted directly into the body of an email.
For business you are almost certainly going to want to use an email address that ends with your domain name (e.g. bookings@myluxuryholidayvilla.co.uk). For that we need a good email client (i.e. software for reading, writing and organising emails). We recommend Thunderbird. We use it so it will be easier for us to advise you if you run into difficulties. (A popular alternative is Outlook Express.) Choose the version of Thunderbird for your operating system here:
Get the latest Thunderbird email client..
If Handcrafted Websites are building your website, we will send you the configuration details you need to set up the new email account on your software.
Before you set up an account on your email client, you need to decide whether the account is going to be an IMAP account or POP3 account. You have a choice of either when using our servers for your email. Here is some information to help you decide which is better for you.
If you are going to rely on one main device (e.g. a laptop or desktop computer) to access your business emails, you should set up a POP3 email account. If you want to keep life simple, set up a POP3 account and use a single device to read and store emails. Make sure you keep this device regularly backed up.
Use IMAP if you need to access emails from more than one device (e.g. desktop/laptop and hand-held devices). The IMAP account lets you - for instance - read an email on one device and later see the same email in your inbox on the second device. With an IMAP account the mail files are left on the server, and there is a system to synchronise certain files and folders displayed across multiple devices. With a POP account mail is downloaded when it is read - copies are not left on the server for you to access from multiple devices.
For detailed step-by-step instructions setting up either a POP or IMAP account, please download the corresponding PDF document below. Note that the particular server details (server name, port number) and the format of your username might be different for the particular server that your site has been built on. Handcrafted Websites will send you the exact configuration details you need for your particular email address:
Guide to setting up a POP email account
Guide to setting up an IMAP email account
If you run into difficulties setting up the account, have a look at the helpful Thunderbird tutorials listed below.
IMPORTANT: Read the warning about your mailbox below to avoid nasty surprises in the future.
The settings for your email account will need to be entered manually. There is an automated system, but it usually fails to find the right settings, so you need to click the button to enter the details manually. The following should be helpful
http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/manual-account-configuration.
For further assistance, see the list of How-To documents on this support page:
http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/category/20.
Your mailbox has a limited capacity. This will eventually fill up if you don't ensure that old emails that are no longer needed are deleted on the server. If the mailbox does fill up, the email address will cease to work until space is freed up. You are advised to do the following.
1. With POP3 accounts: Click Tools -> Account Settings. Immediately under your account name on the left is the item Server Settings. Click it. Find the option Leave Messages On Server. Make sure this is NOT ticked.
2. With IMAP accounts: You need to archive your old mail. This means moving it into an archive folder created offline on the main device that you use for your business records (this should be a device that you keep backed up). The steps will depend on the email software you use. Google should help you find a good description of the steps for your particular software.
You can get direct access to the mailbox on the server, where you can see what is in the inbox and can read and write emails, by putting this URL in the address bar of your browser (substitute "mywebsite.co.uk" with your domain name):
http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/webmail
You will need to enter the email address for the mailbox you want to access plus the password for that email account (which we will have given you). If you have mislaid the password, let us know.
Once you initially log in, click to see your inbox using Round Cube:
The Round Cube admin area should look something like this:
The numbers in red on the graphic indicate:
1. The email address for the mailbox you have accessed (important if you have multiple mailboxes).
2. Click the inbox to see the mail it contains. If you then click one of the mails in the inbox to open and read it, the options to do things like reply, forward or delete, will become active above.
3. Click the Round Cube logo to return to the initial window showing the inbox.
4. Click the cog at the bottom to see the options to manage folders. You then have the ability to empty an entire folder if it contains mail you no longer need.
5. The cog at the top gives access to things like display settings to change the language of the Round Cube interface.
Click Log Out at the top when you are finished. Note: It is vitally important to log out especially if you are using a computer which is not used exclusively by you.
For a longer PDF showing how to use the webmail facility to delete unwanted mail on the server (which you might want to do when you are archiving your email to avoid having problems with excessive disc space usage) click here
It's important to reduce the chances of your business email ending up in your recipients' spam folders, and it is also important to guard against malicious systems that might hijack your business email address to send out fake mail that damages your reputation.
For both of these reasons it is worth checking three important email settings. These are known as your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. For more information see our article about how to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC email authentication, and how to guard against email spoofing.
You have a control panel for the hosting account. For most clients, there is rarely a need to log into the control panel. It is worth knowing, though, that in the control panel you can set up email auto-responders and email forwarding systems. If you log in, you will see icons with those names, and clicking on them takes you to easy-to-use panels to set things up yourself.
If you want to log onto the server to get direct access to your mailbox, use the Webmail facility.
Note: In the eventuality that you want/need to move your website somewhere else, the CPanel hosting control panel gives you (or your new designer/developer) the facility to do that without requiring any assistance from Handcrafted Websites. The CPanel back-up facility can be used to make a copy of the entire website plus database/s, which can be sent to a new server and installed there, providing the new hosting account also uses CPanel (which is common hosting software).
To log into your control panel use your domain name with /cpanel/ appended:
http://www.mysite.co.uk/cpanel/
Use the CPanel username and password that we will send you when your website goes live.
To be able to update (and perhaps extend) your website without having to delve deeply into the code used to actually build web pages, you need to have your site built with a content management system (CMS). The latter gives you a simple-to-use interface enabling you to alter the text and photos in key parts of your site.
Is a CMS tricky to use? If you already know how to do simple word-processing and image editing tasks on your computer, you should have no problem finding your way around the CMS. We will provide full documentation to explain how the system works, and we will be on hand to provide email support if you need anything clarifying.
Will you need anything installed on your computer? The CMS will operate on the server, not on your computer. However, to handle images you will need some software to resize your digital photos.
The screenshot below shows the CMS manager area, with the pages listed on the left and one page open on the right for editing.
Will the CMS impact the search engine optimisation of the site? With many content management systems there is a concern that they might make the site less search engine friendly. However, the CMS we use has excellent SEO features and sites managed with it have nothing holding them back in the race for search engine rankings.
If you have further questions about sites with content management systems, don't hesitate to contact us.
If for whatever reason you don't want to update the website yourself, we can do that for you. The cost would depend on how much material needs updating and with what frequency.
Google Anaytics is a free visitor statistics service that lets you see data about the number of people visiting your website, with information about things like how they arrive on your site. To use it (and to use any other Google service) you first need an account with Google. This is free. If you don't have one, you can create one here: accounts.google.com/SignUp.
Once you have an account with Google, you need to register for Google Analytics (if you want to see their stats). Do that here: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/.
To be honest, the Google Empire has become Byzantine in its complexity, and after registering for Google Analytics, the options confronting you can seem to be impossibly bewildering. Unless you know what you are doing, it might be better to add Handcrafted Websites as an admin for your Google Analytics account at least temporarily so we can complete the set up process so that we get the right snippet of code and can then add it to the website for you.
The techniques known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) aim to move your website or web page closer to the top of the lists created by search engines like Google and Yahoo. In recent years SEO has become big business and a number of those offering SEO services are not necessarily particularly scrupulous. Once your business website goes live you will start to get spammy emails from "businesses" offering SEO services. Be careful! If someone promises to get you to the top of page one, he is - to put it bluntly - lying. He will take your money, your website will stay where it is, and he will disappear.
The advice here is intended both to help you avoid getting ripped off and to show you how you can do lots to help your site to rise in the listings with little or no financial outlay.
Like football, search engine optimisation is basically a game of two halves: one part being what is called on-site SEO and the other being off-site SEO.
To decide where a page should come in a search list, the search engine makes a note of a particular set of features on the web page. The first SEO task is to make sure all those features are present on your key web pages and are set up to highlight the most relevant key words and phrases. Because this involves working with the code for the web pages it is usually something only the designer can do. At Handcrafted Websites this on-site optimisation is something included as standard in every website design package.
A few words about key words because this is the most important part of on-site SEO for you.
Key words: To be given a good listing the page needs to highlight the relevant key words. If, for instance, you provide bed and breakfast in Keswick and you know that most people searching on the web will type "keswick bed and breakfast" in the search box in Google or Bing, then these will be the key words for your website's home page.
These need to appear in different parts of the page. For instance, each page has two titles: one visible on the browser screen and another in the invisible head section of the web page. The most important key words must appear in these titles. In the invisible head section there is also a description of the content of the page (a kind of summary that each page carries with it). This must also highlight the key words.
It is also a good idea to have a fair amount of text on the page that repeats the various key words and phrases. Here a balance needs to be struck between writing text that seems natural and pleasant for human readers while also achieving the density of key words that will score enough points with the search engines.
In the normal process of designing web pages we will make sure that they are constructed in the right way so that they can work well with the search engines. This we do as a matter of course; it is not something we charge for separately.
What you should do at the outset is spend some time researching the best keywords for the key pages of your website. Choosing the best key words is absolutely crucial.
Once the web pages have been constructed correctly the big issue is incoming links from other sites on the web. The search engines need to judge how popular a page is, and they do this by looking for other websites that link to it - incoming links that are sometimes refered to as backlinks. Building up a rich network of high quality incoming links from other websites is what off-site SEO is all about.
It doesn't matter how well-designed the page is, if there are no links to it from established pages on the web, the search engines will never find it and it simply won't be listed.
For more practical advice about how to start the promotional campaign for your new website see our page with website promotion tips.
