Part 1 - Get Coffee, Sit Down, and Jot out Some Things you'll need to have on hand
- Pour cup of coffee (and add cream and sugar.) Stir vigorously.
- Find a comfy chair and sit down.
- Either at your computer OR with a Pen and a Paper, write the items in this list down:
- The name of your business, charity, or club that you are building your site for.
- Mailing address
- Email address
- Telephone number for customer calls or other communications (get Google Voice and this becomes very simple too.)
- Type of entity (charity? business? club? individual?) If it's got a legal incorporation include that too (like a 501 c 3 status for a charity or an LLC for a business)
- Name of your website?
- Four paragraphs. If you feel like it, you can write more, but you do not need to write too much.
- ABOUT your entity. So, who formed it, why, when and where? What does it do? If you have a "Mission Statement" this is a good place to include it.
- CONTACT information. The items above usually cover much of this. Who would you want to contact you? Why would they want to do that? (In other words, what do they need?)
- YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. This can be a simple paragraph that explains briefly the kinds of services or products -- or if you're a club, the activities -- that your entity does. Don't worry, you can add to this later. If you are a restaurant for example, a soft copy or file copy of your menu will help. (Call us and we can put your file menu right into your website.)
- EXPERIENCE, CLIENT LIST, or TESTIMONIALS. If you are a charity, this can also be information about services you have provided over the years. This paragraph aims at building up your reputation, and letting potential customers, donors, and site visitors know that you are someone they can trust. If this is something you will need time to get together, that is okay, you can proceed for now and get back to it later.
Did you jot these things down? Okay, maybe you typed them on your computer. It's really up to you, but you need to write these things down before you move to the next step. (Notepad is good for this and so is Microsoft Word but any editing program should work nicely. Personally, we prefer those big index cards. Sometimes we use legal pads. Mostly we just compose our content right at the computer but this does not work very well for your first web site.)
How are you doing? Do you have four paragraphs? You may have more and that's fine.
These 4 areas are the essential elements of a website. You can be much more elaborate than 4 pages, and First Cup Site Creator provides ample room to grow.
Right now though you want to build your initial website. You have just done the most important part, and this is the part that actually takes effort: you created your website's initial, basic content. Now let's publish that content on a website for you.
