Erica and I officially have our site up on the web! You can find it at http://www.thechoreographyexchange.com/ or click on the link at the top of the page.
We originally wanted the site/company to be called "Choreography Exchange," but that title in a .com was unavailable. Instead, we had to add "The" to the title to match the website. It's a good thing that we have yet to get a business license. We are waiting to get the license until everything is actually up and running- you know, functional.
Not to toot my own horn, but I know how to design a website, and I have a vision on how our site should look, trouble is, I don't have the skills necessary to get it there. I can do basic html and I'm proficient at Dreamweaver, but there are some technical skills that I have not acquired and don't care to spend the time learning them.
I started the website a few weeks ago, just to get something other than a bank page. I threw together a quick logo and title bar and posted it online. This is what it looks like so far.
Since I uploaded this onto the site, I have spent hours putting together the rest of the site. I obviously have not put that up. Why, you ask? It is nothing like the vision I have. Links don't work consistently and colors are off, not to mention I have no idea how to code for some of the things we need to accomplish on the site. I gave up. Time to find a template or hire someone to do it for me.
Template: Lunar Pages, our site host, has some awesome tools for design and templates. Both free and for a charge. Once you are logged into your home page, there are countless tools to help you get setup- including email, bill pay and tutorials. This is what you would see on a typical Lunar Pages setup screen.
The templates are effective, easy to edit and well organized. However, they didn't do enough. I needed a page where I could allow customers to upload their own content and allow other customers to pay for and download that content. Very complicated. I did find out that Lunar Pages offers design services and template help. After choosing your template, you could hire Lunar Pages to "help" with some of the more technical aspects when modifying the page. Convenient.
Web Designer: The other option is hiring a designer to do the entire page. You can hire them to do just the design or do that plus upkeep. I didn't need the upkeep, so hiring someone would be a little less expensive. In my case, hiring someone would mean that I could not only get the page working how I wanted, I could also have it look the way I wanted, which is very, very important to me.
The design of your Website sets the tone for what you want to accomplish and the type of people that will be interested in returning to you site. While the content has the overall importance, color choices and layout can effect whether or not people browsing stop and take and interest in the content. Likewise, The Choreography Exchange is a site that is meant to sell a product. Organization and content are key. Organization comes with good design, content is worth of its own post.
Highly recommended site to visit for personal website design:
Thought Lab
Finer Design
Turbo Nacho
Templates for sale:
Build Your Site
Templates Box
This a timelapse video showing the design of a webpage. In two minutes you can see what usually takes hours.
About Me
- Julie
- I'm 23 with a full-time job, go to school p/t, teach dance and have recently started an e-commerce business- like I didn't have enough going on in my life. I like to find things to do, stretch the box a little bit, and enjoy filling each waking moment being productive (include knitting and reading in these moments). However, I sleep when possible, and the minutes in each day seem to be getting shorter and shorter.