A website project broken down into 10 steps
In an effort to educate, I’m taking 45 minutes to draft this piece of content to outline how melindasommerfeld.com came to fruition. As someone who helped create brand strategies over the past 20 years, there has been a fair share of website work completed. That being said, I have never created a website, fingers on keyboard. Here are the steps I took to get the first draft developed.
Determined I was ready to pursue freelance, consulting or contract marketing alongside a full time job, family and good ol’ life (countless hours).
Brainstormed names or ideas on a business name (again, countless hours).
Decided ‘Melinda Sommerfeld’ was more than sufficient to get started (5 min).
Determined I needed a small, turnkey website to hold static and dynamic copy and content as a foundational element for my business (5 min).
Researched how to get started on website creation and hosting options. Confirmed domain was available and the cost associated with purchasing (15 min).
Completed Google searches of “Melinda Sommerfeld” to ensure results were mostly positive or neutral (10 min).
Brainstormed what kind of content would be valuable when first getting started (30 min).
Started producing about an article or idea a week on LinkedIn to get myself comfortable with committing to content creation on a regular basis (up to 45 min/article).
Hands on keyboard in designing melindasommerfeld.com to launch (1 hour of learning; 10 hours of developing the structure, content and design; 4 hours of revisions following step 10).
Routed my website to a pilot group of trusted former co-workers, associates, all around amazing and smart people for open and honest feedback (1 hour).
After steps 1 and 2, the remaining process of steps took me about four weeks. I didn’t pressure myself and had my eight year old son, Graeson, alongside for some opportunities to learn as well. His closing words for this article. “Let’s adventure into marketing.”
Content Development
