Here’s how to write your contact page:

Include Your Basic Contact Info

• Store address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Hours of operation

If you work remotely, or don’t have a physical location that customers visit, you should still include a mailing address. This sends a positive signal to Google and your customers that you are a real business.

Include a Contact Form

We’ll include a basic contact form that includes these fields:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Phone (optional)
• Message

It’s important to keep your contact form simple. The less people have to fill out, the better. Just get their basic information to collect leads.

If you need a more advanced form, we can create one elsewhere on your site.

Confirmation Message

After the user submits the contact form, they’ll see a confirmation message. This is your chance to say “Thank you for getting in contact!”. You can also let users know when they should expect to hear from you, or if there’s anything they should do next while they wait for your response.

Notifications

You’ll receive an email notification every time someone submits a form. We can also set up these notifications to go to multiple email addresses, and also send a notification to the user who sent the form. Let us know what works for you.

Embed Google Maps

If you have a physical location customers visit, we’ll embed a Google Maps map so users can find you you and get directions to your business.

The post How to Write Your Contact Page appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

We encourage clients to host with one of our recommended companies for reliability and support. All of them offer 24/7 support so if anything happens to your site, their support team can help you.

If you’re just launching your small business website, the WordPress Hosting Starter Plan from HostGator will work perfectly.

Be sure to register your hosting and domain name under your own name, with your updated billing info on file to ensure you have full control of your website.

Once you’ve signed up, make sure to keep your account username and password in a safe place.

BlueHost and Siteground also offer reliable and affordable WordPress hosting.

If you’re ready to take the next step with your website and are looking for fast, managed WordPress hosting, we strongly recommend WP Engine.

Learn more about how to choose the best WordPress website hosting.

What’s Next?

After you’ve signed up for hosting and registered your domain name please let us know what your login info is. Then, sit back and relax! We’ll be in touch with you throughout the process of setting up and designing your website.

Conclusion

You can trust your website to run smoothly when you host your WordPress website with any of the above hosts. We’ve personally used HostGator and WP Engine for years and continue to be really happy with their service.

The post How To Sign Up for Website Hosting appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

If you’re getting marketing material printed, or doing any sort of promotional activities, you’ll want to include your business email, not your personal email address.

Avoid using Gmail, Shaw, Telus, Hotmail or any other free email address for your business, as they look unprofessional.

We recommend two options for setting up your business email. You can either go with GoDaddy or HostGator.

Both come with pros and cons, so you can decide what’s best for your business.

Option 1: Set Up Email with GoDaddy

Pros:

• Easy set up.
• No technical knowledge required.

Cons:

• Costs more.

You can purchase email hosting with GoDaddy at the same time as your domain name.

GoDaddy’s “Email Essentials” package is perfect for small business owners.

Or choose “Microsoft Office 365” and get Microsoft Office web apps and email.

Option 2: Set Up Email with HostGator & Gmail

Pros:

• Use the friendly Gmail interface.
• Cheaper.

Cons:

• More technical to set up.

HostGator includes unlimited email accounts with your WordPress hosting plan. Learn more about how to choose the best WordPress website hosting.

Once you have your hosting account set up <<<link to next article>>>, you can simply create an email address from cPanel, and then send and receive email from Gmail.

That way you’ll get the best of both worlds. You can create your business email at no extra cost, and use the familiar Gmail interface to send and receive emails.

Learn how to configure your Hostgator email account with Gmail.

The post How to Set Up Your Business Email appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

If you’re still deciding on a name for your business, you’ll have more options for your domain name.

Here are some tips for choosing the perfect domain name:

Get The .COM And .CA

Tie up both domain names so your competitors can’t. You can forward the .ca to the .com or vice versa. This protects your brand name and users can find you easier.

Make It Short

No one wants to type out a long domain name over and over. And when you use your domain as an email address, it will be even longer. Keep it as short and sweet as possible.

Make It Easy To Remember

Don’t add unnecessary dashes, and leave out function words like “the”. You don’t need to start your domain name with the word “the”. Remove any cluttery words.

Make It Easy To Spell

Don’t try to be clever with cute spellings. If you’re on the phone with your customer and you tell them your domain name, they shouldn’t have to guess how to spell it. Make it obvious. Trust me, you’ll get frustrated with people not knowing how to spell your name, and having to remind people.

Include Keywords

Consider using keywords in your domain name that people would use to search for your business. 

There is much debate about whether Google still uses this as a ranking factor, but it certainly doesn’t hurt because it shows relevancy to your topic.

Make Sure It’s Available

If your domain name is already taken, you’ll need to think of a different name. Keep trying until you find one that’s available and matches the criteria above.

As a last resort, you may be able to buy the domain name you want at a premium price.

Get Feedback

Lastly, be sure to invite your friends, co-workers and family to get feedback on your name.

This is something you’ll want to get right from the start as it will be a lot of work and rebranding if you need to change it in the future.

Type out your domain name. How does it look? Watch other people type it out. Do people make the same typos? 

Register Your Domain

Go for it. Grab that perfect domain name and move forward with creating your site!

The post How to Choose the Perfect Domain Name  appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

Increase Revenue

• Sell your products online.
• Accept online payments.
• Teach online courses.
• Offer delivery or pickup.

Create More Sales Leads

• Get customers to contact you via email or phone.
• Promote in-store sales to encourage users to visit your business.
• Get users to fill out a lead generation form. This could be a “get a free estimate” form.
• Encourage users to enter their email address and sign up for your email newsletter so you can connect with them further.

Improve Lead Conversion Rates

• Educate your users with helpful blog posts.
• Provide a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions.
• Drive qualified traffic to your site with keyword optimization.
• Allow users to live chat with you.

Increase Brand Awareness

• Build your online presence.
• Educate users on who you are and what you do.
• Connect your social media accounts.
• Use consistent branding across the site.
• Blog about what your company is up to.
• Show off your work.
• Include testimonials and reviews.

Optimize Your Workflow

• Allow users to fill out online forms instead of printing and scanning paperwork.
• Streamline your business processes.
• Automate repetitive tasks.
• Manage customers, employees or distributors website access with a membership site.

Make SMART Goals

You’ll need to have clarity in your website goals and clearly defined numbers for what you’re hoping to achieve to be successful.

Your goals should be SMART:

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Specific

Write down the specifics of your website goals:

• What do you want to accomplish?
• Why is it important?
• Who needs to do what?
• What resources do you need?
• How much time will you need? Give yourself an extra 30% of how long you think it will take to do something. Give yourself realistic timelines and some breathing room. Things always take longer than you think.

Measurable

A measurable goal should answer:

• How much?
• How many?
• How will you know when it’s accomplished?

You can use Google Sheets to help track your goals and run calculations based on your time spent, number of leads, number of sales, money spent, money earned, etc.

Achievable

An achievable goal should consider:

• How can you accomplish this goal?
• How realistic is this goal based on your available time and budget?

Things not going the way you hoped?

Don’t get mad. Get data.

You can’t grow unless you’re tracking data. With your website you’ll be able to track a whole lot of data including how many visitors are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, how much revenue has increased, how many leads you’ve got, and a whole lot more.

Your goal could be to have 10,000 visitors in the first month of launching your website, but not only is that not realistic; it’s out of your control.

What you can control is your effort and measurable actions.

A better goal would be: I want to devote 12 hours this week to working on my website.

• 5 hours for writing content.
• 3 hours for taking photos.
• 2 hours of editing the look of my site.
• 2 hours for emails.

Sure, your end goal is to have 10,000 visitors reach your site in a month. But why not start with 10 people? That seems reasonable right? Maybe it’s a little too easy. But that’s great. It’s an achievable goal that you can build on. Once you’ve hit 10, go for 100. Then 500…

Don’t forget to celebrate those milestone victories along the way!

Website analytics are awesome, and help you grow, but be sure to focus your goals on what you can control. Don’t let your goals control you.

Relevant

• Are your website goals focused?
• Are you the right person to do the job or can you delegate?
• Does the task align with your overall goals?
• Is it the right time to accomplish your goal, or are there other things that need to be done first as a stepping stone?
• Will it be worthwhile?

Time-Bound

It’s easier to track your progress and stay motivated when you break down your goals into smaller tasks.

Ask yourself, what can you do?:

• Right now
• Today
• Tomorrow
• This week
• This month
• This year

Conclusion

Defining your goals is an important step in growing your website. Remember, you can apply these goal setting techniques to other areas of your life too.

Keep it simple and start by writing your ideas down on paper, the whiteboard, or a word document about what you want your website to accomplish.

Think about:

• Things you’d like to have on your site.
• Things you have to have on your site.
• Ways your business can improve.
• Things your business is really awesome at.
• Things your business needs help with.

Once you’ve got a big picture vision, we can help you create a long term strategy and work out the details to meet your business goals.

The post How to Set Your Website Goals appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

Your About page is a chance to win customers and influence Google. It should tell customers what you offer, who you are, and why they should do business with you.

This is a very important page on your site, so make sure to spend some extra time thinking about what you want to include.

How to Impress Google

Google is looking for signals that you are an:

Expert

Are you an expert on your subject?

Authority

Are you an authority in your industry?

Trustworthy

Are you a reliable source?

If you answered “yes!” to all of the above; and your About page proves it, your chances of ranking above your competitors in the search results increases greatly.

This is referred to as an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy known as Google E-A-T. You can show you’re an authority to Google and your customers by answering some questions you probably already know the answers to.

How To Write Your About Page

Here is a list of questions to start with. Answer as few, or as many as you feel comfortable with.

About Your Business

• Why did you start your business?
• When did you start your business?
• Why do you do what you do? Describe your mission statement.
• What experience do you have? List your credentials, formal education, and work experience.
• What’s your long-term vision for the business?

About You

• Where did you grow up?
• Do you have any kids?
• Do you have any pets?
• What are your hobbies?

About Your Employees

• Name
• Position
• Experience
• Hobbies
• Time spent with the company
• Contact Info

About Your Industry

• Do you attend industry specific training?
• Do you have any industry specific qualifications?
• Do you regularly attend industry events/tradeshows/conferences?
• Do you have any notable clients or partners?

About Your Community

• Are you involved in your community?
• Do you sponsor any teams or events?
• Do you fundraise for any charities?

Once you’ve answered the above questions, put them into paragraph form and tell the story of who you are and what your business can do. Think of your About page as your job interview to Google and your customers.

The post How to Write Your About Page appeared first on Chilliwack Design.

You need website hosting to power your website. But with so many choices, how do you choose the right one that’s right for your business goals and budget?

With this beginner’s guide you’ll learn everything you need to choose the best WordPress hosting for your business.

What Is Web Hosting?

A Website hosting server is a computer that connects users to your site, from anywhere in the world.

The server provides storage space for all the files, code, images, and content associated with your website.

Web hosting can also power your email, databases, and a whole lot more.

Why You Need Website Hosting

If you want your business to be seen on the Internet, choosing a website host is your first place to start.

Your website can do a lot of heavy lifting for you: sell products, accept payments, educate your users, allow people contact you, run automated tasks, show off what you do, and a whole lot more. All while you sleep, or run other aspects of your business.

What to Look for in a Hosting Company

With hundreds of reliable hosts to choose from, each with different plans, it can be a little overwhelming to choose the best one.

The company you choose is going to power your online presence, so it’s an important business choice to make upfront.

That’s why we’ve broken it down. Here are the 5 factors you should consider when choosing a WordPress web host:

Price

Website hosting can range from free, to a few dollars a month, to hundreds, or even thousands depending on what storage space, server hardware, and additional features your website needs.

Like with most things, you can expect to get what you pay for. Free hosting could mean limited features, and advertisements which you have no control over.

Hosting that’s hundreds of dollars per month is likely overkill for a small WordPress website, and will cut into your profits.

So What Should You Pay for Website Hosting?

If you’re a small business owner looking for WordPress hosting for a 5-10 page site, you can expect to pay around $12 CAD a month.

HostGator has entry level WordPress hosting plans that will work great for you.

If you’re ready to take things to the next level, you may want to consider WP Engine. For about $33 a month, you’ll see faster load times, automatic updates and have managed hosting.

Yearly Discounts

Oftentimes, you’ll get a better deal if you pay for hosting upfront for the year, or several years in advance, rather than month to month.

It makes sense to pay upfront and save money, since you’ll have your website for as long as you have your business.

Hosting Coupons

Always check for coupons, introductory rates, and special prices for new customers before committing to a website hosting package.

Performance

Uptime Guarantee

If your website is down, that means customers can’t find you. You won’t receive emails, the search engines can penalize your site if it’s down for too long, and essentially your doors are closed for business. Not good, right?

Luckily most reputable hosts offer a 99% (or more) uptime guarantee which is what you should look for.

Speed!

Website speed is an important factor when it comes to ranking higher up the Google search results.

If your website loads too slowly, it creates a bad experience for the user and they’ll be more likely to leave before finding what they came for.

Although there are plenty of ways we can make your site load faster, speed starts with the host.

Here are Hostgator’s 7 Tips For speeding up your website.

User-Friendly Admin Panel

Your host should provide a user-friendly admin panel like cPanel to help manage your hosting account.

This will allow you, or your IT support to manage server settings, email accounts, the file manager, one-click WordPress installs, security settings, databases, and a whole lot more.

Check out Hostgator’s beginner guide to cPanel.

Or, if you want a more hands-off approach, the experts at WP Engine offer managed hosting which means they take care of the setup and management, backups, and monitoring of uptime of your server.

Learn more about what’s included with managed WordPress hosting.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data (website files, code, images etc) that are sent over an internet connection in a given time. It’s measured in bits per second.

If you’re just starting out with a small WordPress site, you likely won’t have to worry too much about bandwidth.

Once you start getting more traffic to your site, this is something you’ll want to pay closer attention to.

Storage/Disk Space

10GB frequently offered with starter hosting plans is easily enough to handle a 5-10 page starter WordPress website, and a few email accounts.

However, as your site grows and you start uploading more and more pictures to your blog, after a couple of years you may find yourself needing more storage space.

You can either choose to delete and/or optimize images you’re not using, or increase your storage space which is easy to do.

Start small and upgrade to the next hosting package hassle-free when you’ve outgrown your current plan.

Server Type: Shared, VPS or Dedicated Hosting?

There are 3 main types of hosting environments to consider for your website depending on where you’re at with your online presence:

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most affordable option to get you started online

Usually that means sharing a server with hundreds of other sites which keeps costs low.

But keep in mind, other sites could potentially impact your site; bringing it down, or causing it to load slowly if another site owner abuses their privileges.

Shared hosting is generally in the $12 a month range.

VPS Hosting

Next up the hosting ladder is a VPS (virtual private server).

A VPS is one server that functions as separate servers.

This configuration gives you faster performance and a better quality experience than shared hosting, since you won’t be impacted by how much resources other sites use.

This is an exciting step in your business if you’re considering taking the leap from shared to a VPS!

VPS hosting generally starts in the $50 a month range.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is for advanced websites that require the fastest hosting, bandwidth, storage space, RAM, support, and that can handle a large number of visitors.

It’s a dedicated server with resources for a single client.

Dedicated servers generally start at $100+ per month.

Additional Features

Site & Email Migration

Is the hosting company you’re considering able to transfer your existing website and/or email accounts to the new server for free?

Most hosts offer this service free of charge to secure your business, but some charge a la carte.

Email Accounts

How many email accounts does your hosting account come with? Some hosting companies offer unlimited email accounts, with a disk space limit you can set that goes against your overall storage capacity.

Some hosting companies like WP Engine who are dedicated WordPress hosts, require you to purchase your email elsewhere, like from your domain provider such as GoDaddy.

Staging Server

Does your host come with a staging server, or at least allow you to set up a subdomain so you can work on your site instead of the live version?

If you’re making big changes to your site, you likely won’t want to work on the live version in case something breaks.

With a staging server, you can make changes on a cloned version of your site. Then when you’re happy with the results, you can publish those changes to the live version. This ensures a better user experience, and less stress for you to make changes.

Automatic Backups

Will your host automatically backup your website on a different server? If your site gets hacked, or you make some accidental changes, you need to be able to restore a backup of your site.

If the host you’re considering advertises automatic off-site backups, find out how often those backups are made.

Every month? Every week? Every day?

The more the better so you have more restore points to fall back on.

Security/SSL

Does your host include SSL certificates? SSL ensures that your visitors’ data is encrypted. This is especially important if you accept credit card payments or sensitive form data on your site.

Google takes user security very seriously and will penalize your site if you don’t have SSL installed.

Confirm beforehand if this is something included in your hosting plan, or something that needs to be purchased in addition to. Your host can generally help you set set up your SSL certificate free of charge.

Customer Service

Contact options

Although your website hosting experience should be mostly worry free, you still need to make sure you have support available 24/7. Since you can’t afford to have downtime with your website, make sure the available support options will work for your needs.

Chat support works well enough for most issues, but phone support is a must for more advanced ones.

Tech Support

How knowledgeable and capable is the hosting company to help fix your issue?

Will they help you install an SSL certificate? Migrate your email to your new account? Install WordPress for you? Your host can generally help with these things at no extra cost.

And check their support manuals. Do they have a well documented support knowledgebase that allows you to quickly get answers? Is it regularly updated?

There should be detailed and up to date technical documents, and a knowledgeable and motivated support team to help fix your issue.

Company Background

Reviews

Look for a well established hosting company that’s been in business at least 10-15 years old.

How well have they changed with the times?

Check the reviews of your hosting company in question. Do they seem reliable?

If you uncover some weak spots in the reviews, decide for yourself if they’re issues you can live with.

Server Location

Most servers you’ll be looking at will be located in the United States, or Canada which is perfect. If your server is in North America and most of your website traffic is also from there, that will help your site load faster.

It’s also worth noting, if your server is in the US you may be subject to US tax law.

Scalability

Make sure your website hosting company offers different packages that you can start small with and grow into as your needs change.

Conclusion

Now that you know the most important factors when it comes to WordPress website hosting you’re all set to choose a reliable host to help power your business online.

The post How to Choose the Best WordPress Website Hosting appeared first on Chilliwack Design.