Nowadays having a website is not a luxury but a necessity. And in order to reach success and extend the sphere of activity, each company should be concerned about a worthy online presence. With the website a company gains a range of new possibilities and advantages: the increasing number of customers, the ability to tell about a company in the more interactive way, to present new products and services in time, to make order more convenient and fast.
This time we decided to write a tutorial on how to create a website for any type of business. It's an excellent choice for small or growing companies. Build an outstanding online presence and make your business grow faster. And we will help you with it. So, let's go on.
Choosing a template design
The fastest and easiest way to create a professional looking website (if you are not a web designer, of course) is to take an opportunity of pre-made web templates on the basis of which you will create an attractive website. When you start searching for a site template, you will come upon many web page designs. But as usual, I recommend you to review website templates provided by TemplatedBusiness. It offers high quality design products that can be easily customized to meet your project needs. Here you will find both business website templates and business Flash templates that correspond to the main web standards and concentrate on the customers' core requirements both in terms of usability and information. Well, my choice is 22505.
The orange color represents enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, and stimulation. It has very high visibility highlighting the most important elements of the design.
After purchase you will find HTML-version and source PSD file of the main page, fonts which are used in the template and some screenshots in the archive.
In case of a low-budget project, you may take advantage of free web templates that will help you solve both problems: time and money. FreeTemplatesOnline.com offers quality free web page designs that can be easily customized and used as a basis for your website.
Template Customization
Now it's time for the template customization. But if you feel that you don't have enough knowledge or time to go though the whole customization process, you may take the opportunity to use Template Tuning services. Here you can order the template customization at an affordable price. Their web developers will easily and skillfully do all the necessary changes for you. But if you are not afraid of difficulties, then let's go on! As it was said above, we will start from the HTML version.
To perform all necessary modifications you will need Adobe Photoshop CS+; Adobe Dreamweaver 8+ or any other HTML editor. Before you start you should install necessary fonts (usually they are placed in "sources/fonts" folder- in this tutorial you'll find more detailed description. After that open .psd file in Photoshop and let's learn how to make necessary customization.
The first thing we are going to do is to modify the template header. With the help of Horizontal Type Tool enter your company name instead of the default one and change a tag line. If the slice is not long enough and your site title goes out of its limits, don't worry. You may easily resize the slice. For this choose the Slice Select Tool and highlight the logo (mouse left click + Ctrl). By mouse left clicking stretch the slice borders.
After making all these changes we need to save the customized logo and then replace the existing one. While the slice is still selected, go to "File" -> "Save for Web and Devices". Leave the settings as they are because everything has already been done by a coder. Press the Save button to save files to the Image directory replacing the file logo.gif.
The next step is to modify text titles. I must admit that all text titles in this website template are made as pictures. And if you even don't want to modify them, you need to re-save them anyway.
The next thing we are going to customize is the menu buttons.
The main peculiarity of this web template is that the menu buttons have 2 modes: active and inactive. But that's not all: the designer created them in the way that each of them should be re-saved from two neighboring pages. For a total each menu button should be re-saved 4 times (only "Home page" and "Contacts" - three times).
Here are, for example, the files that stands for the "Home page" button.
I decided to rename "Clients" button into "Partners", so that the template would perfectly suit my project. Using a Horizontal Type tool I just edited the button name.
Now we should re-save the "Join Now" circle.
Make sure you save this slice on the transparent background. For this deselect the background layers visibility and while the slice is still selected, go to File -> Save for Web and Devices. The file button.png in the "Images" folder should be replaced.
Then you will need HTML editor. Open file index.html and start customizing text.
The Home page is ready. Save changes (Ctrl+S) and verify the result.
Let's customize the other pages. But before going further, you should define first what parts of the website design you need for your project.
About Us
On the "About Us" page tell about your company and services you provide. Open file 02_about.psd in Photoshop and customize the page title. Even if you decided to leave it as it is, you should re-save it anyway. With the help of Slice Select Tool highlight the title slice and save it for web and devices. (File -> Save for Web and Devices).
With the help of HTML editor customize all other texts of this website design. Provide detailed information about your company, write down a full description of the services and products your company offers.
The same should be done with the other pages: Services, Partners, Support and Contacts. All actions should be performed in the same way, so I guess there is no need to repeat what has already been said above.
On the Contact Us page write your postal address and customize the contact form. For contact from implementation you need to have some PHP programming skills and while I don't have them I recommend to order it from TemplateTuning website. They said that it will cost you about $60 - for any type you choose.
Choosing a hosting provider
When choosing the hosting services you should be guided first of all by other people reviews, prices and quality. On this basis I recommend you webhostingbuzz.com.
If you experience any troubles with registering a domain name or hosting you can always contact TemplateTuning.com professionals.
Website Promotion
You may find a lot of website promotion services all over the Internet. But probably, one of the most reliable among them is website promotion services from Web Design Library. It offers:
- Search Engines Inclusion
- Website Analysis Report
- Keyword Research Report
- Link Building Campaign
- Link Analysis Report
- Search Engine Optimization Report
- Search Engine Rankings Report.
There are two packages:
- Standard package: it would be great for new websites
- Pro package: a complex approach to website promotion.
There is no monthly fee. And by ordering a pro package you will get a 30% discount. Moreover, if you purchase a website template from TemplateMonster.com or TemplatedBusiness, you will get 50% off on the SEO services provided by Webdesign.org. You don't need to learn the secrets of search engines algorithms in order to increase your ranking, because everything will be performed by qualified SEO specialists.
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You can visit sample website to see the final result or compare your code.
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