Why You Need a Website

Everyone is on the web. Why shouldn’t you be too? If you thought it was too costly and too difficult to get a website that looks original and works well for all users, think again. At Photography and Design by Michelle Harbour, my goal is to make the web work for you — at a price you can afford. Websites should be fun and within your means, whether you’re a small business, a charitable organization or an individual with a message to share.

Perhaps you thought your business was too small for a website, but consider this – when a potential new client does an internet search for your business, wouldn’t you like for something more than a search engine map with a marker pointing to a street address to come up as a search result? Wouldn’t you like a website that you own and control the information in it to come up as a result? For the price of an ad in the newspaper you can have a Web Page that will tell new clients who are, what you do and even provide an email link to contact you immediately. It’s professional, it’s yours, and you control the content.

Maybe you have a business that needs to share a little more information than what will fit in an average sized browser window. At a very affordable price you can have a page twice the size as the above mentioned Web Page with the Basic Web Page. With about 200 lines of content, a Basic Web Page is perfect when you have a more to say, but you don’t require more than one page to say it. In addition to the basic page, you may have a small contact form on the same page or a second page and unique contact success and contact fail pages.

Most business do require a full website to organize and share the information they need to get out there to current and potential customers. You can afford the website you need and together we’ll come up with a design that’s unique to your business or organization and properly conveys the message you want to share with your visitors. With a Standard Website you will get up to six pages on your website, including a contact page with unique contact success and contact fail pages. In addition, you’ll receive 15 minutes of free monthly upkeep and changes to your site for one full year.

For business and organizations who require a large space to convey their message or share their products and services, I offer a Deluxe Website package that includes up to 12 pages as well as 15 minutes of free monthly upkeep or changes to your site for one year. Additional pages can be added if necessary at a minimal cost in most cases.

Perhaps you have a website, but it’s old and outdated and it needs to be refurbished to bring it into the 21st century. Chances are that it fails to open properly in today’s modern browsers and may not be easily viewed on today’s hand–held devices. Let me Refurbish your Outdated Website to reflect your business properly.

How You Can Be on the Web

When you've made the decision to get your business, your organization, or your ideas on the web with an original website designed by Photography and Design by Michelle Harbour, before you contact me there are a few things you can do in advance so that I can get started helping you right away.

• Come up with several choices for your domain name. Keep it something simple that visitors to your site can spell easily and remember well. Also, if you can use wording in your domain name that have to do with your business or service, that is good for search results. Finally, be sure to come up with a few names in case your first choice in a domain name is already taken.
• Fill out the form, “Building Your Site from the Ground Up”, also found linked below, and email it to me at connect@michelleharbour.com or snail mail it back to me at PO Box 475, Ordinary, VA 23131.
• Begin to draft a list of what information you would like on your website. From colors and fonts to content and overall look, write down every idea that comes to mind. Enlist the help of your employees or members of your organization — get everyone involved. The more ideas, the more we have to work with. Content is key on the web, and getting your message out in a clear and understandable way begins when we first start to put all those beginning ideas in order. It’s better to begin with too much content and have to cut out that which doesn’t “fit” in the finished design, than try to add content to an almost finished design after you’ve realized you forgot information you wanted to include. I suggest keeping a notebook or pad of paper within easy reach of all your employees and allowing a week to ten days for everyone to participate in the brainstorming process.

These are the first three “assignments” I give my new clients when we’ve agreed to work together to build a great website. By having this work started, if not completed when you first contact me, you’ll be ahead of the game and that much closer to sharing your message with the world in the form of an original website.