Please… step away from the keyboard.
Garry, my website is by no means stellar and I had to tweak it several times before I was happy with it, but it gets the job done and it generates a fair amount of traffic for $22/mo. The average time spent on a website is about 15 seconds, so I basically put the most important information on my first page and edited out quite a bit of info on my other pages. The biggest thing is to make sure your site is mobile friendly to look at. I just looked through some different sites back when WCRA members could put them in their profiles to get some ideas when i designed mine. Personally I’d put the picture below at the top of your home page instead of your logo (I think it kind of detracts from your home page), it pretty much says in a nutshell what you do.
Here is my site if you want some ideas http://www.windowcleaningspecialties.com
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Good points. As I get time this week or weekend I will make needed adjustments.
It now is by no means the ideal set up, but it will be for my needs as adjustments are made.
I’d still recommend switching to wordpress before you go any further - you’ll only end up doing it at a later date, so do it early before you put too much effort into this incarnation of the site…
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My best performing Facebook ad was one with my 2 cats looking out of a clean window.
Our highest return rate on a 5-around postcard was the kitten saying “Don’t be jealous, you can have purr-fectly clean windows too”
I need to get my dog in the mix somehow.
… by the way, I am a professional website designer.
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Agreed wholeheartedly
videos… you want massive return on facebook…make videos.
We don’t bother with Facebook much more, but yes, you are correct.
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Okay, so what to do with what I paid for with GoDaddy? Then use my domain name supersparklewindow.com to build off of WP and publish from there?
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Stick with godaddy - just switch to one of their managed wordpress packages instead - do NOT use wordpress.com, its rubbish!
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Garry, inside your Godaddy account under software there should be a “popular apps” tab. You can one-click install Wordpress from there.
2 notes though:
Make sure that when it asks for your install path that you male it mysite.com/ instead of mysite.com/wordpress/.
This will actually overwrite your existing site, so make sure you have your text copied over and your pictures ready to re-upload.
Since this is your first foray into Wordpress, I would suggest dropping the $50 on a premium theme with some sort of visual editor. Check out Themeforest, they have a ton of them.
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Finally, smart and informative answers! This is helpful for us as we too are wanting to build a website.
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+1
Themeforest is brilliant & I use it all the time. My advise it to check feedback on each theme carefully before you buy, make sure you choose one that is updated regularly so it’ll keep up to date with the latest online standards & security, and anything that uses the visual composer system is a huge bonus for a newbie to wordpress.
There are a few videos here that might help you figure it all out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyAeEoueuahomanRiC_vYw/videos
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I have to agree on using Wordpress. I’ve been building websites since the late 90’s, and Wordpress (not Wordpress.com) has become the standard for CMS web development. Be sure to choose a RESPONSIVE theme. This will work well on mobile devices. There are quite a few robust plugins that will make your site more efficient, secure, and optimized for search engines. I highly recommend Yoast SEO, iThemes Security, Childify, and Better Analytics. If you need help getting things in order, feel free to reach out to me. I built my site at www.WeekendClean.com, be sure to check it out.
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Another triple W. Love it. Nice site. I’m still working on my site too, @Garry . It takes balls to display your hard work to a group of your peers, You’ll probably never be "done’ with your site, now you can add or change content by yourself instead of calling someone to do it for you because you had the guts to learn it and stick it out. Regardless of what troll boy here thinks he thinks.
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Some changes…getting there.
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Its looking better - - but I still think you’re painting a sinking ship. Until you switch away from the website builder system your efforts are not going to reap the rewards they should…
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I cannot stress enough the importance of being “mobile friendly” with your website. Sites that are responsive rank higher on Google since April 2015. Plus, with over 70% of web traffic on mobile devices now, you can’t afford not to be up to date. Another statistic - some 90% of American adults have a smartphone within reach 24/7. Food for thought.
Mobile-Friendly test site: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly?utm_source=mft&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=mft-redirect
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Yes, I get you - I really do, but I feel that is part of the learning as I prod through. I actually rather like tinkering, so we’ll see how far it is to graduation. 
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