Show Notes
Having a website for your business can be very important. We aren’t saying every business needs a website, but most will.
So how do you go about getting a website made for you? Should you make it yourself?
These questions are answered by going through the list below. Once you have gone through all of this you will be in the right position to either get one made for you, or do it yourself.
Its VERY important to not call a website company or start building one yourself until you listen to this podcast and answer the below questions / understand the below statements.
- Understand that websites are complicated.
- Getting a website up and running can go from EASY to HARD very fast. There are things like DNS Records, and Site Security and Privacy and setting up your email to go under your domain.
- Take some time to research the basics of the anatomy of a website. You can do this by looking through training videos on places like Wix or Shopify, watching Youtube videos or even taking an online course.
- Why do you need a website?
- Your answer should be very clear. Examples might be:
- To show I am a legitimate business
- To have customers order online
- To communicate what i offer
- As a sales tool to share links
- To be found online
- To have a place to send online ads
- It’s very important to know WHY and the more “WHYs” you have, the more expensive the site
- Your answer should be very clear. Examples might be:
- Is there anything interesting or special your website will do?
- If it’s just to “show words and pictures” that is the simplest site. But is there anything else?
- Customers can order products online
- Customer can upload art files
- Connect to your accounting or CRM software
- Be able to create mini-stores for your customers
- If it’s just to “show words and pictures” that is the simplest site. But is there anything else?
- What do you want it to look like?
- The easiest solution for this to start searching for sites you like and note them
- Also consider keywords and feelings you want the site to have:
- Modern
- Fresh
- Professional
- Feminine
- Masculine
- Urban
- Country
- Patriotic
- Religious
- etc
- What pages do you want?
- Home
- Contact
- About Us
- FAQs
- Testimonials
- Use other websites to make a “wish board” of the look and feel of your website.
- Consider a platform you want it to be on
- Do you want an e-comm store? Search those platforms and create a short list. Get demos.
- Do you want very heavy custom coding and complexity?
- Do you want the most economical and be able to DIY?
- Platforms you might choose may be:
- WordPress
- Wix
- GoDaddy
- Drupal
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
- SquareSpace
- OpenCart
- Start Shopping for the cost
- Get price quotes
- What does the CMS cost?
- What are 1 time set up costs?
- How will you get art / graphics?
- Who will write the website? How much to have someone write the content for you?
- Any ‘hidden’ fees or add-ons
- What are the other costs involved?
- Site Security -SSL
- Maintenance / updates
- Domain
- Custom email
- Alternate domains
- Hosting
- Back ups of the site
Once you have gone through this exercise you should know a few things:
- Do you still want to build a website now?
- Have your plans or ideas changed?
- Do you want to DIY or pay someone?
Knowing all of this will help your website project be a great experience at a fair price.
Transcript
Mark Stephenson:
Hey everyone and welcome to episode 173 of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast, this is Mark Stephenson.
Marc Vila:
And this is Marc Vila and today we’re here to talk about how to order or build your own website.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. So this has come up a bunch lately, I just had a conversation yesterday with a lady that actually, a potential customer for ColDesi that listened to the podcast and she wanted to set up a meeting. And I didn’t realize it, but she was interested in having me design her website, which I don’t do for the t-shirt business. So that inspired this whole idea and Marc Vila and I have been talking a lot about website design and different website platforms that we might use for ourselves or that we might recommend to our customers. So this seems like a timely topic.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And between the two of us, we have to help administer, oh gosh, over 20 websites currently and over the course of both of our careers, I mean, it’s tons. I don’t even want to begin to pretend count how many we’ve messed with over the past probably 50 years of combined experience or something like that. But we’ve learned a lot and we’ve seen a ton of mistakes and we’ve seen mistakes all the time being made. I don’t mean to sound like I go to somebody’s website and I’m like, “Oh God, look at what mistake they made.” I’m referring to in the very beginning trying to build their own or paying somebody to do it, overpaying, overshooting for things that you don’t need. Picking platforms that are really expensive are really hard to work with in the long term. Or just generally speaking, having no plan and just going forth on building a website.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. And I mean, I of course do go to people’s website and immediately list off in my head the things that they’ve done wrong.
Marc Vila:
Well, that’s another podcast, which actually we’ve done some podcasts on that, and I think it’s worthy of going through that again, maybe that can even be the next episode. But this one specifically is really about you are looking to get a website or maybe you’re looking to get your website revamped even and you have an existing one.
Mark Stephenson:
Good point.
Marc Vila:
And what are the steps you should take before you do all this? How do you go about getting it made? Should you do it yourself? And really just going through this list of questions and statements below. And by the end of it, I would say you should have a really clear picture of what you’re going after, what you’re going to do, if you’re going to do it yourself or who’s going to do it with you, and what’s the long term of that. And you’ll be in a much better position than the alternative, which is the most common that I see. The most common thing I see is a small business owner just goes to Wix and just signs up.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Marc Vila:
Like that’s step one, right? Which is not step one. And then they start putting things together and then it starts becoming a mess. And a friend of mine, this happened recently, a good friend of mine asked me for some help, said, “Hey, this isn’t working on the website.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll look at it with you know, come on over.” And then it turned into like, “Well, why is this here? Why are you doing this? Why did you start…” “Oh, well, I had this idea and I switched it.” And I don’t think it was anything that he did necessarily wrong but there wasn’t as clear of a preplanning that really is-
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, there normally isn’t any planning. I think what happens is somebody starts with the website platform, with picking it because they’ve heard about it or a friend used it like, “Oh yeah, I just did a WIX website.” Or, “I just did a WordPress site,” or something like that. And then once they get into it they use what the defaults are or what they see as some stuff that they can do as what they should do and end up with. Like if you go through the I want to start a custom t-shirt business workflow when you sign up for these websites it’ll lead you down a path that you don’t know anything about. You don’t know what the stop signs are, what the yield signs are, what the green lights and red lights are along the way.
So it’s a great idea just to have this preplanning session, because honestly, when you think about it, I mean, if you… Of course, if you plan on doing all of your business online or the most of your business online, I mean, this is your business, right? It’s the store you put your t-shirts in, it’s how you sell your designs is with this thing that you’re going to build. So you should spend, I hate to say this, but a lot of ColDesi customers, even, they spend more time trying to choose the right printer to make a custom t-shirt than they do mapping out how they’re going to sell them on their website. And I think this is a good opportunity for all you guys to get a head start on making sure that is not so.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, this is great. And what I think about when I consider building the website and where we are today with building websites, it’s a product of where we are in society today. And I was thinking about it like photography. I always feel like I have some interesting… I can’t think of the word right now, I’m a metaphors and such.
Mark Stephenson:
Analogies?
Marc Vila:
Analogies, that’s the word. Excuse me, I should have poured caffeine in this cup but I put water. But an analogy I think is photography, right? Because 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, if you brought your camera to Disney how many pictures would you have with you, realistically?
Mark Stephenson:
36.
Marc Vila:
36, yeah. Yeah, 36. Maybe, if you had a bag you had 60 you had, 60 or 70 because you had multiple roles. But it was important to make sure that everybody’s ready, everybody’s smiling, this is the background. Like it was a little bit of, like, “All right, we’re going to take it. Three, two, cheese.”
Mark Stephenson:
It’s a process, it’s a process.
Marc Vila:
Right. And now it’s just if you watch people take pictures they bring their phone up and they just blast and they’ll take like 30 in a row and then like none of them will be good and they ask everybody to get back together and just blast again. And there’s like four people in a row sometimes all taking pictures from different angles.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s great.
Marc Vila:
And I think that’s what it’s like now because it’s so easy to go to a website service like Wix or wherever and build a website, delete it, build a website, delete it. It’s so easy to just go in there, just start doing things because it’s virtual like the virtual images on your phone. Compared to before where you had a distinct amount of things to do, like building a house. So you wouldn’t just start throwing down bricks to build a house or a business before you would be ready to go then start building it. So I think today is, wrapping that up, building a website should be more like building your house. The good news is that it is virtual so you can change it easily later. But if you put the proper planning in it, you’re going to be in a much better position financially, much better position –
Mark Stephenson:
I really like that house analogy, let’s use that for the rest of the time here.
Marc Vila:
Okay, great.
Mark Stephenson:
Because I think it’s a good way to do it. So I think the first thing to talk about is, like building a house, it’s a complicated process, right? There’s a lot that goes into it. Building a website isn’t just clicking four buttons and getting something that you like just like building a house isn’t throwing up some wood and an outlet you got from Home Depot and expecting there to be a house. So it’s the same kind of thing. And there are a lot of things that even as an experienced web designer that I don’t like to deal with, and Marc Vila has made a list of the things that I hate to deal with. Right up front that’s DNS records, site security, and privacy while you set up your domain. I mean, those are all things that I shy away from.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And when you mention the house and you talk about things going from easy to all of a sudden, “Wait a minute, what happening here?” I saw something on TikTok actually and it was like, “Check this out, you can build a two story house from a kit at Home Depot for like $300 a month. And I was like, “That’s funny.” And it was like a very, very nice shed. And it had a door and windows upstairs and downstairs and stairs inside and it was like, yeah, it was like $12,000 or 300 a month. Similar to what you could do buy an embroidery machine for probably, I would suppose.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Marc Vila:
And then immediately I thought, I was like, “Yeah, I guess it was cool if I had some land and I built that on it, that’s pretty cool for 300 bucks a month.” No electricity, no plumbing, no insulation, no climate control. I was like, “Wait a minute, this sounds terrible unless society has gone to like nothing, where I need shelter.” You know?
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
So I think building a house and building a website go from quote unquote easy to hard, really fast. So it is good to understand, you need to just understand that there are going to be complicated steps, it’s going to be definitely a lot harder than building a Facebook page. Even if you had a MySpace page back in the day where there was a lot of hard things to do, way harder than that. So I think it’s just good to understand that there’s going to be complexity, that you need to either need to be prepared to accept and learn those things or have somebody that’s going to help you.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, or do it for you.
Marc Vila:
Do it for you, yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
I like the idea that you should do, whether or not… It’s like when we talk about learning Facebook advertising or marketing or Google ads or anything like that, I really feel like you should know basics even before you hire somebody so you can have an intelligent conversation. So I like the idea that you do a little research on the basic anatomy of a website, right? That you can look at training videos on YouTube, you can actually go through a free account with a couple of the different ones like Wix or Shopify or whatever and just walk yourself through it. So at least you understand the process of this is what creating a product is like, this is what creating a page is like, this is how you build a form. Just those things, even if you’re not going to do it yourself, you’ll have a better conversation with anyone that you hire to build it for you.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. No, it’s really good. It’s very similar to going to a mechanic and things like that. If you don’t know anything at all, a mechanic can charge you for things that don’t exist and you would have no idea. Which is a lot of the cliche of people getting taken advantage of at the mechanics and website folks can do the same thing because there’s a lot of words that you’re not going to know. So I think it’s a good idea to have a little basic stuff. So if you want to go as simple as just watch a couple YouTube videos that say, what are the basics of a website? And you spend an hour, great. All the way up to maybe taking a little online course or even if you’re more of an in-person thing, that you could take a course at a community college even.
Mark Stephenson:
There you go. But I mean, in the end, I’ll say that just like if you’ve seen any of our, we hear comments about it all the time, when Marc Vila is doing a demonstration on a digital heat FX or an embroidery machine or a cutter, it looks easy. Because he knows what he’s doing, he’s done it before, and he’s ready by the time we record it. So it’s going to be the same way for anyone that you see doing a course or selling a web development software, they already know what to do. And they already have the graphics ready, everything is the right size. They’ve built whatever they’re showing you several times before so they’re just running through the things that they’ve already accomplished. So when you look at the, “Oh, look how easy it is to build a website with Wix,” or with WordPress or something like that, just keep in mind that you’re actually looking at a pro that’s trying to train you on how to do it. They already know so everything they do is going to make it look a little easier than it actually is.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I’d even say all of that stuff is easy when you’ve taken the time to learn it.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
Right?
Mark Stephenson:
True.
Marc Vila:
And then there are hard things aside to it, just like doing embroidery, putting a name on shirt is not really hard now because I’ve learned how to do it and I’ve gone through training and I’ve asked questions, just like building a website. But, yeah, watching an ad on YouTube for a website builder, thinking that you’re just going to build one real quick in an afternoon, it means that you’re going to run into some steps that you’re going to need some help with. And you should just prepare for that. And the same with doing embroidery, and I don’t even think we hide, or t-shirt printing. We have training, we tell you to take it. We have support, we tell you to call them because you’re going to need it. And then in a year you’re going to be like, “How hard is it to put a name on a shirt?” And you’re going to say, “It’s easy.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, “It’s easy.”
Marc Vila:
But enough about ColDesi advertising.
Mark Stephenson:
For now.
Marc Vila:
For now.
Mark Stephenson:
As we both wear our ColDesi shirts.
Marc Vila:
ColDesi shirts.
Mark Stephenson:
I’ve got my Custom Apparel Startups coffee mug.
Marc Vila:
I do, I’ve got Digital Heat FX printed shirt and mug, by the way,
Mark Stephenson:
I’m wearing the Digital Heat FX panda shirt today.
Marc Vila:
You have to go on YouTube to see the video, to see our lovely apparel. Well, all right, so the first step that we said was just understand that websites are complicated, just to get a basic understanding of what you’re getting into and it’s not just going to be a plug and play. The next thing is really a question that you should answer, why do you need a website?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Important question, because the answer is going to inform what your website looks like and what’s in it. So there’s a reasons that we talk about pretty regularly, and the first one is to show that you actually have a legitimate business. And to talk to people about your business, you can tell people you’re on Facebook and have a great Facebook business page, but believe it or not, not everyone is on Facebook. You can have a great Instagram account, and that might be a cool place to send people, but it’s not going to take care of everything that you want to tell people about your business. So if you want to look like you’re a real business, I think a website is necessary.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And then we always talk about do you need a website? And I mean, the answer isn’t just yes or no. We had an episode a few episodes ago about selling on Etsy and eBay and such. You might not even need a website at all, if that’s all you’re doing.
Mark Stephenson:
Or you could just say like, those are your websites.
Marc Vila:
Or those are your websites, right? Yeah. So we’ve talked about that before, but the answer for most people is you should have a website. And what’s it for? So for one, it’s just to show you’re a legitimate business, it’s a place to send people that just as the basics of who you are, what do you do, what’s your contact information, how long have you been around, just some basic stuff. It allows people to feel a little bit comfortable of who they’re working with and maybe answer some questions. Also they might want to share it with somebody, so it’s a thing to share. “Yeah. Oh, what’s your website? I’m going to text it to my cousin right now because I know he’s looking to get that stuff done.” A common conversation. So another reason why you might need a website is because you want to sell things online, online orders.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s probably a lot of you.
Marc Vila:
That’s a lot. To share and communicate exactly what you sell and what you offer. So go to my website and you’ll be able to see all the t-shirt options that I offer.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, I like that.
Marc Vila:
“Go to my website and you can see various designs and styles, I’ll send you some links to my website and there’s a page on there with the different types of hats you tell me which style you think looks the best for you and we can get you a sample.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And there’s also some nice little opportunity in there if someone goes to your website to see one thing and they see everything else that you offer as well.
Marc Vila:
There you go, so that’s great. There’s also, it’s a sales tool. Just like we talked about, that hat example just now. I mean, that was a sales tool. Somebody said, “I want to buy hats.” And you said, “I got something to send you.” And then when they get there they’re like, “Wow, this lady,” or guy or whatever, “really knows what they’re doing. Look at all these hats that they have, they’re the person I want to buy from.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And you can think about that as an answer to a question, like we get people that comment about how much money can I make with Digital Heat FX or nobody can make money selling one or two t-shirts at a time. We did quite an article with videos and everything that break down all the costs and what the average sale price is. We spent a lot of time doing that, so that is a place on our website where we send customers with this specific question.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve answered the question, “What’s the time and temperature to sublimate,” by sending somebody a link to an article. I’ve done it three times this week, definitely, definitely. So that’s the benefit of a website, is that the answer of what’s the time and temperature for sublimation is actually not two things, it’s a long answer. So we have a few different blog posts and you can send people right to them and then that answers the question for them. So again, that’s another sales tool or an information tool for customers.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And it also gives you an opportunity to be found online. And if someone is looking for what you sell, if it’s a niche market, if it’s car t-shirts or something, if they’re looking on Google they’re not going to find you unless you have a website. It’s just not going to happen. If you don’t have a website or a registered business, really, if I say, “What’s the closest t-shirt shop to me,” then you’re just not going to show up. So if you have a website at least you have the opportunity to show up.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I think that’s great. And then there might be some other further deeper technical things or deeper reasons for marketing. Like one of the things we listed was you want to put ads online, and ads online are generally going to send you to a website. So it’s a place to send people to ads, it’s a place to sell things, it’s a place to communicate. And also being found online from a search engine perspective and also, Mark, you had mentioned the other day when we spoke about being found online for somebody just searching your business name.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, absolutely.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. XYZ embroidery shop in Tampa and then your website comes up and they click it and they know that they found the right person and they found your phone number, et cetera.
Mark Stephenson:
There’s a little self-defense there too because if you don’t have your own name and you don’t have a website with your name in it then it’s likely that when somebody searches for you they’re going to find your competition. Because if you’re Mary’s t-shirt shop and they type in Mary’s t-shirt shop and there is none online then it’s going to be the next person’s t-shirt shop in line because Google knows that person is looking for that.
Marc Vila:
That’s good. And the easy answer to this is typically, all, I want all of those things, right? So I think it’s an important note to just say the more whys, the more reasons you want to have a website, the more expensive and longer it takes to make.
Mark Stephenson:
I like that a lot.
Marc Vila:
So if it’s just, I just want to show them legitimate business, have an online business card basically, cheapest website. ,Most expensive website that plus an online store, plus a bunch of pages about all the products I have, plus a bunch of sales tools to upsell customer, plus a bunch of SEO, plus ads, it’s a more expensive website. So I think it’s important to know where you want to start. And if you want to do online ads one day, or you want to do SEO one day, that might not be what you’re doing in the first build of the site or the initial startup. All right, so what’s next on the list here?
Mark Stephenson:
Is there anything interesting or special your website will do? So in other words, websites have words and pictures and sometimes videos and they give you a lot of abilities but is there anything special about that? So you want to allow customers to order products online, that’s great. Do you want them to be able to upload their artwork for you to put on a t-shirt? Or upload an embroidery file even or a picture for you to convert into an embroidery file? That’s different and that’s not something everybody, the average website builder does not have experience in letting customers upload data, right? It’s just not a typical thing.
Are you going to have a customer follow up system? Are you going to have a CRM? Is it going to hook into an email marketing software so you can track customers and you can respond to them automatically or you can market to them later? And something that’s really popular with a lot of our customers, especially that operate in the school, that sell to schools, is having many stores for your customers. So for example, it’s possible to have Plant high school has their own store in your store, Hillsborough high school has their own store in your store. So those are capabilities that I would put in into the special category. Right?
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I think that’s all great stuff is, that some folks have some really great ideas on what they want to do for a customization website. I would like the customer to be able to type out their own design and pick from clip art and build out the design of their mug themselves and then submit it to me and then I can go ahead and fulfill that order for them. You know, to have like an art design builder in there. All of these things are all great ideas and it’s important to have answered that first question, what you want your website to do and maybe buy things online. And then is there any real special or interesting things you want to happen? Like I want it to have a custom builder and I want that to connect to my order system and that’s going to connect to my accounting system and that’s going to connect to my sales team system so the sales team can follow up. This is an important thing to map out because you’re going to want to discuss that with whoever you’re working with on your website, that this is what you want to build.
Mark Stephenson:
And even if you only want to take orders online for your own designs you do have to make sure that how you’re going to get the information to fulfill those orders. So that’s also slightly different, if somebody places an order are they going to get a notification that an order was placed? Are you going to get a copy of the design? Are you going to get an email? Do you have to log into the back of your website? To see these are all different things that not every person building a website, whether an amateur or professional, is going to have experience with.
Marc Vila:
Right, that’s great. And then also just like above the more where we said, the more whys, the more expensive it is, the more special things, the more complicated it is. And what you’re going to run into is the more complicated a website is the more you’re going to need to work with somebody who’s a professional or has experience at this.
Mark Stephenson:
And it will sneak up on you. So I’ll tell a quick story.
Marc Vila:
Sure. Story time.
Mark Stephenson:
Probably seven years ago or eight years ago, someone in upper management, may or may not have been the owner of the company, decided he really liked the 3d thing online where you can use your mouse and you can rotate a product around 360 degrees so you can see all sides and it would be very useful. Back then it was also very hard. So just if that was on my wishlist, then what I had to do was I had to hire a photographer that would come around and do 360 degree photos of the equipment. And that involved him, because it was back in the day when you needed special equipment, setting up the lights and moving the lights around. It was basically a one day process. They tried bringing in a turntable that they put the equipment on to turn it around so they could lead the camera stationary. This all came of a request that started with, “Hey, you know what I think would be really cool on our website?”
Marc Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Thousands of dollars later, no one ever saw
Marc Vila:
Hey, now you can, for like a few hundred bucks, you can rent a machine that does that for parties, weddings and stuff.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s great.
Marc Vila:
And so a few hundred bucks and you have probably a teenager come set this thing up and plug it in and leave it there for three hours.
Mark Stephenson:
Here’s the great part about that statement, Mark Vila, is no one from ColDesi ever listens to our podcast.
Marc Vila:
Really?
Mark Stephenson:
We’ll never have to do that. We’ll never have to do that.
Marc Vila:
Well. So anyway, that’s a great story and that’s very true on just how complicated things can be. So it’s just really important to understand what you’re getting into, what you’re going to want to get into, this way you can start to research that type of stuff. So list out anything special you think you do or don’t want it to do, and then this way when you start getting through the process, once you start getting to some of those complicated things it’s going to be, “Okay, I’m prepared to invest the time and money and effort and follow up to get that completed,” or it’s going to be, “Scratch that completely, bad idea,” or it’s going to be phase two of the website. And we do that stuff all the time here. So now that you know if there’s any really special or interesting things you want the website to do, the next one I think is a little more fun and interesting.
Mark Stephenson:
I was just going to say, let’s get to the fun part.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I mean, what do you want it to look like?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I love and hate this part all at the same time because I can never make that decision. Because there’s so many great examples of beautiful websites out there. And here’s one thing I guarantee, if you picture in your mind what you want your website to look like and if you shop around a little bit at other stores that do something similar to you and you find the ones that are awesome, that you love, none of them are going to be the basic generic store that they went through, the easy to fill out, drop your product photo here, templates. Zero of those. So it’s better if you go through this exercise that Marc and I are going to talk about before you start trying to design your own website or before you engage in a redesign so you can start with the wide view and then narrow down to the specifics.
Marc Vila:
Yep. Yeah, that’s really good. And one of the things that you do hear, you mentioned shopping around and looking at either competition or products that you like or web stores that you like, or just jump on Google and start typing in keywords until you find something that’s interesting. But you should also go back and look at who your market is, what’s your niche market, if you’re unsure. Because remember that what you like and what your customers like may or may not be the same thing.
Mark Stephenson:
Super good point. Super good point.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. It makes me think about, there’s a company that sells spices for like grilling spices. And all of the branding is very bold letters, sharp edges, dark colors, simplicity and strength is what I would say. The bottle is just big and all this stuff. And it’s got this masculine vibe to it and it’s a female owned company. Now that I saw her in a video, she doesn’t look anything like that. So her favorite websites probably don’t look like the branding.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. But she also understands that, she probably can appreciate the beauty in that design too and the look in it. So she likes it, I’m assuming. But also, the places that sell it in town are all a bunch of dudes that look like me, that grill. So it’s a bunch of guys with beards and big bellies and tall.
Mark Stephenson:
ColDesi t-shirts on.
Marc Vila:
And ColDesi shirts and they smell of smoked meat and it’s one of their favorite brands, So it’s important to speak to your audience as well as you like branding you’re creating.
Mark Stephenson:
And so in the notes you’ve got a word cloud here, which I really like, that will give you the you can start picking out the feel of the site. What you just described I would not characterize as modern or fresh, it might be both, but that’s not what I would think of if I’m thinking of barbecue sauce. If you go back to the house example, what would you want your house or your office to look like? What would your customers want their houses to look like? It could be modern, it could be fresh, it could be professional or feminine or masculine. There are a lot of vibes.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I love word clouds when it comes to designing things, I think it’s great to just write down a bunch of words of how you would describe what you don’t have a visual yet, or what do you want it to feel like? I want it to feel comforting and proud and patriotic and religious, I mean, and you pick what words you want it to feel like, what feelings you want it to give to people. This way when they get to your website it resonates with the image that you want to project of your brand and the feeling you want to give customers when they are getting ready to do business with you.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And I mean, it could be across social groups, across states, it could be related to the niche market or the area that you’re in. If you’re in Clearwater, Florida, then beachy might be appropriate if those are the kinds of clothes that you sell. If you’re in Clearwater Florida but you intend to do urban wear then beachy is probably not going to work.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, right.
Mark Stephenson:
Right?
Marc Vila:
Right. Yeah, makes perfect sense. And while you’re in there, that you’re looking for how you want it to look and the feel and creating a bit of a word cloud, you should also consider what pages do you want to have on your site.
Mark Stephenson:
So there are some pages that you, in my opinion, you have to have,
Marc Vila:
Sure, okay.
Mark Stephenson:
You’ve got to have a homepage. You’ve got to have a contact page, so tell people where you are if they need to visit or how to get in touch with you. I like having testimonials or reviews, I think that’s great.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. It’s also important, I think, to have some sort of an about the company page, about us, meet the team, who we are, what we are, what we stand for, something like that. A place where people who want to decide if they want to do business with your company can read a little bit about your values or your mission statement or your history or just who you are, because some folks make buying decisions based on that type of stuff.
Mark Stephenson:
I think we’ve talked about this a couple of times between us, Marc, and that’s I think the lady I talked to yesterday, she’s got a great mission. Why she’s doing this particular t-shirt and the designs that she’s going to get and things like that. And if you think about it, your customers are going to have thousands of places they can buy custom t-shirts. Literally, you can go to eBay or Amazon or you can just Google, “Sell me a custom t-shirt,” and look at the number of results. So if they do find you and they don’t know you personally, I think it’s super important to put who you are and why you do things right up front, like that’s my homepage.
“This is why I started my business. I started my business because one person I talked to had a tragedy in their family years ago and they do some pro bono things to help out, they volunteer, and they’ve been through a lot and they want to communicate those helpful messages that helped them get through it in their t-shirt designs.” I mean, if you tell that story on your homepage, anyone that finds you that can relate is going to buy something. So that’ll inform your design and it will help connect you to your market. That’s not really what pages you want.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Well, that’s what, Mark, what got me thinking of there’s a whole ‘nother episode about what to build on your site. That’s a whole episode and that’s, I think, a taste of what that episode would be. But yeah, it’s important to just write down what pages do you expect to have, and you’re going to have your own list in your head and you’re also going to have a bit of a wish board that you may have created because you’ve seen some other websites that you like. And you say, “You know what? I really like that they did this. I think my website would be great to have that page as well.”
Mark Stephenson:
I would do that actively. So as you’re going through the internet, if you see something that you really like, then break out that sniping tool if you’re using a Windows computer and just snip out that page or the graphic or whatever and make yourself a board for your website.
Marc Vila:
Yep. Take a screenshot, take a picture of it with your phone, write it down on a piece of paper, whatever’s good for you, and make sure you know what it is. So now that you have a basic idea of what you want it to look like… And this is just a basic idea, by the way, too, it doesn’t need to be exact yet, there’s room to grow as it goes. But you want to consider what software you want to use to have your website built or what platform or a CMS, a content management system, would be a term for that. This is going to be the software that runs your website, where you put in all the information and where all the programming is done.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. And I would just say that you should become aware of a variety of different platforms, like a few popular ones. You should look at them a little bit, see if there’s one or more that especially appeal to you. If you’re going to do it yourself, this is vitally important that you find one that’s comfortable. But I’m going to say that, other than that, if you’re planning on hiring someone out and just having all this information and your goals and your wish board and the pages that you want and everything, which I think is great, and you go to somebody to build it, you take a look at their work and it looks amazing. Then don’t be in a position where you’re not going to hire someone that you think is going to do a great job because they don’t use Wix. So pick your platform if you’re going to do it yourself, be aware of platforms if you’re going to have somebody else do it.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And it is important to understand what they are, this way if somebody tells you what they’re going to do and what platform they’re going to use then you understand what they’re doing. So if they say like, “Oh, I’m going to completely custom make everything on your website.” Well, you’ve done some research and you realize that custom making everything is very expensive and is hard to maintain because you’ve learned some of that.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s a bad idea.
Marc Vila:
If you got a ton of money, maybe it’s a great idea because you can literally do whatever you want. But not everybody listening to this podcast is going to want to have a quarter million dollar website that costs another a hundred thousand dollars a year to keep up and running.
Mark Stephenson:
No, probably not.
Marc Vila:
No. Target, that’s that’s like their monthly budget maybe. So it’s just good to understand all of that. So platforms, there’s WordPress and Wix and GoDaddy and Drupal and Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, OpenCart, and there’s a ton more. It’s good to just look at all these, understand where they go. And if you want, maybe get some demonstrations, if they have salespeople that’ll do live demos, or watch videos, get an understanding. And if you have a platform that you think you like and you want to work with but maybe you don’t want to do it yourself, when you’re talking to somebody about doing it you can say, “I’ve been looking at Shopify. I think that’s the right store for me. This is why. What do you think?” And then you can let this expert say, “Yeah, I build Shopify stores all the time. I’d love to do it for you.” Or they may say, “You know what? I do do that but I could build something very similar in BigCommerce that I like better. Here’s why.” And then you can say, “You know what? I think this is a good expert. I’m going to go ahead and build it, have this person build it on BigCommerce.”
Mark Stephenson:
I love that scenario right there. That’s great.
Marc Vila:
And it’s just a great way to do it. But if you don’t have a little bit of an idea upfront, you’re going to be at the whim of whatever the person says and you’re going to hope that it’s a good decision without maybe truly understanding.
Mark Stephenson:
And I agree. And I think next we’re going to start talking about shopping for the costs. You put two things in there that are part of it and not, and that is who’s going to develop the content? So there are some web developers that you’ll talk to that they’re basically mechanics. You give them all the pictures and all the words for every single page and they’re in charge of building out your ability to put stuff there. So that puts all that burden on you. You might get a more comprehensive vendor that says that they’ll do the pictures and the videos and the words.
Marc Vila:
Right. So it is important to start writing down the shopping for what is this going to cost and get some quotes. If you’re going to do it yourself and you’re going to do it through like Wix or Squarespace or something like that, you need to look at what plans do they offer? What do they all include? And if you don’t understand what some of those things are that they include, like, “Well, why would I want that? It doesn’t sound like I need it.” You should ask what that means. And an example of that is a friend of mine was looking to do some stuff through Wix. And he said, “Well, when somebody buys this product online I want it to send them this email and I want to do this. And then I wanted to send another notification to the business so the business knows to do it.” So you need to do three things.
Well, the standard platform of Wix comes with two automations so you can only do two. Now you have to upgrade if you want to get up to I think five. And he was already using three on one transaction, he also wanted an email sign up list and I think a newsletter or something like that. So he had five in mind already, so he was already full before he even got to the second one. So it’s important to understand what all these things are, get some price quotes, and answer what’s the one time setup cost for this? And to start, who’s going to get the graphics? Who’s going to write all the content? Is somebody going to write it for me or do I need to write it? Is there anybody that will edit what I’ve written to make sure it fits in the site?
Mark Stephenson:
And I just want to point out here that even if you are just going to do… I say that. Even if you are opening up an online t-shirt store, custom t-shirt store, there’s still tons of stuff to write. There’s still a lot of written content that needs to be done. You’ve got your homepage, your about page, your contact page needs some information in it, all of your products need product descriptions that are decent. There’s still a lot to write. So definitely I’m glad you mentioned that, don’t forget that has to happen.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. It has to happen, somebody’s going to have to do it, and you could do it yourself or you could hire somebody, whatever it might be, but those are costs that are involved. And the graphics too, even if you’re going to take pictures with your phone, like your iPhone, which is perfectly fine for a website, are they all going to be the right size? Is there need to be any Photoshop done to them? Are they going to need to be cropped and resized so they fit on the website? Does the website builder you going to use do that automatically? How much is automatic? How hard is it to do? If you have a picture in the wrong size for WordPress? Nightmare.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. That’s true.
Marc Vila:
And they have a thing in there where you can crop and resize, but it’s just frustrating to use. It’s like putting an image in Microsoft Word, as soon as you put it in there, all the text just goes shoo.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s great.
Marc Vila:
And so it’s important to understand. And you could say, “Well, I could do that myself. Great. Or, “Oh, I’m not good at that.” Okay. When you’re shopping, say, “Hey, I can take pictures, I’m actually really good. I’ve been told, my mom told me I’m really good at taking pictures. But I can’t edit them or crop them or anything.” And then the person hopefully will say, “Oh, I don’t do that. I can help you find somebody.” Or they might say, “No problem, you get me the pictures, I’ll size them up.” And they may tell you, “Does that cost more money?’ “No, it’s pretty much included.” Or, “Yeah, every picture that we’re going to edit, we charge $15 or $20 or $100 for.” You need to understand what that is upfront so you can get a quote with all that information.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And that leads into your next point here, which is what are the hidden fees or the semi hidden fees? And it may be that content creation is one of them that you would not have thought of otherwise.
Marc Vila:
There’s a bunch of other costs involved in a website in general. Or related to a website in general. And you need to know what all those are. Are they included in what you’re going to buy, whether you’re DIY or paying somebody. And if they’re not included what do they cost? And these costs are both long term and short term. So what are they, what does it cost today? What does it cost next month? What does it cost in one year? So these could be like site security or SSL certificate, it’s a certificate saying that your site isn’t going to steal credit cards and –
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, that’s basically it.
Marc Vila:
In so many words. I mean, that’s not it, but that kind of thing. And that costs like 10 bucks a year or whatever the price is. There’s maintenance and updates, whatever website you have, you may go through Shopify and they’re going to say, “Yeah, we update all the time. It’s included.” You may go through WordPress and they’re going to say, “Our updates, you’ve got to update yourself. You’ve got to click the button yourself. And if it breaks, you’ve got to fix it.” Or there’s automatic updates or there’s quarterly, whatever it might be, you need to understand that. Your website domain, the actual name of your website, BobsShirtMart.com, you’ve got to pay for that.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep, you do. And you probably want to get a few more around that.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Alternate ones.
Mark Stephenson:
You might consider getting the .net, the things like that, just so nobody else gets it. So there’s a little bit of self-defense there.
Marc Vila:
Misspellings, you know?
Mark Stephenson:
I mean, honestly, I think that you should have an email with your domain on it. So you want to order email, typically it’s done through your hosting service, not always. So when you go to GoDaddy or one or the other really… Bluehost or whatever, you’re going to get your domain name and then typically you’ll sign up for an email service.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And you could do that through Outlook, you could do that through Google, you could do that through your various web hosting platforms.
Mark Stephenson:
You just want to avoid having your email address for your website be Mark@gmail.com.
Marc Vila:
Right. And by the way, it costs a little bit of money to do that.
Mark Stephenson:
It does. Yeah, sometimes not a little bit, sometimes more.
Marc Vila:
But for the most part all that stuff is inexpensive. But the SSL, 10, the domain name might be 15, the custom email might be 15 a month, the alternate domains you have might be $15 a month. Now you have hosting too, of the site, you have to pay for where the site is going to live. It lives somewhere on a computer, essentially.
Mark Stephenson:
You’ve got to rent that space.
Marc Vila:
And you’ve got to rent that space, just like a physical building. So that can be 25 to $500 a month, depending. Or way more, by the way, that’s just like a common range. But for a standard website, it’s in there. So some websites will have hosting for, they charge $300 a month, but all the questions you asked up above, “Well, who’s going to update it. Who’s going to maintain it? Who’s going to back it up? “Okay, we do all that.” “Oh, all right then.” And another one will be 25 bucks a month. “Oh, cheap.” “Well, we only allow like 5,000 people to come to your website. So if any more than that, then we charge you more.” So you need to understand all these costs and what that means.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep, I agree. So after you go through all that we’ve got a few questions that you have to ask yourself.
Marc Vila:
So do you still want to build a website? There’s one. Do you want to do it yourself still? Which, yes, is perfectly fine of an answer now that you understand it because you say, “Yes, I feel good about all that stuff. I’m apprehensive about this step and this step, but I’m also prepared to learn and I’m pretty good with tech stuff and I’m trying to build it cheaper. So I don’t mind putting in the sweat work versus the dollar work.”
Mark Stephenson:
I mean, I know I don’t think I ever took a WordPress course.
Marc Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
You know what I mean? We’re not formally trained in web design, but both of us can work through it.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And you kind of decide… a friend of mine asked me for help for a Wix site and I said, “I’m not a pro there but give me 30 minutes and I can figure it out,” because I feel comfortable with that stuff, I’ve worked in it. And he doesn’t know a lot but he was prepared to make all that stuff. Another friend of mine is just like, “I’m not even touching it. I’m not even going to pretend to say I’m good at tech stuff, I struggle on Facebook. And this is how much money I can afford, within this range, and I want this to be done.” And then I’m going to call a couple places and see what they have to say. And then the other thing is have your plans or ideas changed since you went through this list and this exercise? Because you might have thought you want to have a website where a customer can come and custom design everything and order online and you want to be found number one for get a custom t-shirt made on Google. And then found out that whole thing with every other bell and whistle you put in there was going to be $35,000 and you said, “That’s not where I’m going to start.”
Mark Stephenson:
Right. “I guess I don’t want those things.”
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Or it might have been, “Great, I’m prepared to invest and I want to do that.” There’s no right or wrong, it’s just understanding. And have your plans changed further from that? You might have thought the opposite and said, “I was just going to do a website where people can find me but now I’m really liking the eCommerce store thing. And I looked at the prices and what it would cost and have somebody do it, and yeah, it’s a bit more money, but I want to go for it” So do that too. That’s what I love about all this stuff is everything’s personal and it doesn’t matter if it costs you a hundred dollars or a hundred thousand dollars, it’s your idea and you get to do whatever you want with it. But if you don’t know what you’re doing you could pay a hundred thousand dollars for something that should have been a hundred.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And by the way, none of you need a website for a hundred thousand dollars. We’re throwing around some big numbers here but I think somewhere between like maybe 500 or a thousand dollars, up to $5,000, probably weighted a lot towards the bottom end of that price range to have somebody with some skill do it for you. And I mean, there’s a lot that happens in that range.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And I don’t want to underestimate the person who’s listening there who has a really good idea of connecting and they have some investors and they’ve vetted out some of this stuff and they stumbled upon our podcast and they really have something that’s a big investment and they’ve got the investment to go back on it. So I would still like to shout out that person because I think that’s-
Mark Stephenson:
I love that you feel like that person is listening to this episode of the podcast.
Marc Vila:
And it’s great, there’s a lot of great information here so I don’t discount that person could be-
Mark Stephenson:
There you go.
Marc Vila:
But I will say that Mark is right, that most of our viewers are going to be… Listeners, viewers, are going to be startups in the custom apparel business, that’s most of our listeners. And most of them, statistically, are going to be selling local, maybe a little bit online. They’re going to be selling through referrals. If they’re doing some advertising, it’s a little bit here and there, or maybe a lot of local stuff, a lot of networking type of business and a lot of business that is gotten through referrals from other customers. And if you fall in that range, if you’re part of the largest chunk, then yeah, a website that’s a DIY or up to a few thousand dollars I think is probably the range you’re going to be in to be able to create something that’s perfect for your business.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay, I love that. Well, I think that knowing all this is going to help you guys either get a website at a fair price or do a better job of building one yourself.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I can’t wait to see what some folks do out there. And naturally, as Mark alluded to in the beginning of this episode, you can reach out to us if you have some questions about what you’re going to do, what you were going to do, how much somebody is going to charge you, if you’re in over your head. And we don’t really build websites for t-shirt businesses but we’re happy to give you as much free advice as you need and help you along and get you in the right direction.
Mark Stephenson:
Fantastic. This has been Mark Stephenson.
Marc Vila:
And Marc Vila.
Mark Stephenson:
You guys have a terrific business featuring a wonderful website.
Marc Vila:
Awesome, can’t wait to see it.