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25 Questions That Every Business Owner Must Answer Before Building A Website

Building a website it’s easy —at least the technical part. When it comes to telling the world about what you do, in a way that resonate with what people need, then things get a little bit fuzzy. Before you build your website, take a moment to answer some basic questions that will help you communicate better with your audience. Make sure that you keep your answer short, simple, direct to the point. Most use a vocabulary that your target audience can understand. In a nutshell, these are the questions that you must answer to your constituents. Here we go:

In 15 words or less, what does your business do?
(e.g. Create websites and apps to help business catch up with technology)
ANSWER:_______________
Who is your client or target audience?
(e.g. Small businesses and professionals who can benefit from using websites and apps for business)
ANSWER:_______________
What is the problem that your product or service can solve?
(e.g. Deliver simpler, faster, affordable websites to small businesses)
ANSWER:_______________
What is the most common, alternative solution used by your target audience to address the problem that you are trying to solve?
(e.g. Do things in-house)
ANSWER:_______________
Provide a list of products and services that you offer today —please include average price.
(e.g. Website Programming and Design: $5,000; Mobile App Development: $10,000; Hosting and Support: $49; Technology Consulting: $120/hr).
ANSWER:_______________
Can you offer discount or free trial for your products or services?
(e.g. 10% off first time customers, FREE up to…)
ANSWER:_______________
Can you give me 1, 2, or 3 names of prospects or current clients that you believe are your ideal target audience?
(e.g. ABC Cleaning Services, Good Food Restaurant, Smith Legal Services)
ANSWER:_______________
What make your services unique? —why choosing your company over your competitors?
(e.g. Unlike competitors, we built for our clients personalized, enterprise quality solutions that are affordable and implemented by experienced professionals).
ANSWER:_______________
What is your biggest business challenges that you expect can be minimize by having a website?
(e.g. Customers not always understand the difference between “price” and “cost”. While some customers might think that the “price” of our services seems high, the “cost” of not having a professional website or mobile application is several times higher, when compared to the potential loss of revenue caused by not being able to promote client’s products and services online).
ANSWER:_______________
Which of your competitor is doing better that you? … Why?
(e.g. XYZ Competitor, which target high paying customers)
ANSWER:_______________
What would you like to add to your website, to help your business succeed?
(e.g. Short videos to teach customers how to use our products to generate more revenue).
ANSWER:_______________
Who takes care of the website? —programming and design
(e.g. Appcropolis LLC)
ANSWER:_______________
How much time do you spend or expect to spend maintaining your website? —Hours per days, week, or month (adding new content, SEO, Online Marketing, etc.)
(e.g. 8 hours per week)
ANSWER:_______________
On average, how many people visit your website on a monthly basis?
(e.g. 5,000 unique visitors per month)
ANSWER:_______________
How having a website or a mobile app will benefit your business?
(e.g. Connect with potential customers that are search the web looking for product and services that I offer)
ANSWER:_______________
Do you use Social Media? —please provide your Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.
(e.g. Yes, Twitter: appcropolis; Facebook: appcropolis; LinkedIn: appcropolis)
ANSWER:_______________
How often do you contact your customers? (emails, newsletters, phone calls, greeting cards, etc.)
(e.g. Monthly newsletters; christmas cards).
ANSWER:_______________
Currently, what is your most effective way to acquire new customers?
(e.g. Attending networking events to learn about prospect needs).
ANSWER:_______________
Do you keep a list of prospects or potential customers? —if so, how many contact do you have in that list?
(e.g. Yes, 550+).
ANSWER:_______________
Iy you do not have a website, how would that affect your business?
(e.g. I won’t be able to sell my products).
ANSWER:_______________
In you could accomplish only one thing with your website, what would that be?
(e.g. get more leads that I can call)
ANSWER:_______________
How many hours a week/month are you willing to spend adding content to, or marketing your website? —estimate total hours per year
(e.g. 10 hours per week; 10hr X 52 weeks = 520 hours per year)
ANSWER:_______________
How much revenue do you expect will originate from your website in a year? —consider customers who found you online, or make the decision to buy base on the information in the website, of purchase your products or services directly from the website (feel free to make your best guess or just set an ideal goal).
(e.g. $150,000).
ANSWER:_______________
Determine your expected/desired Return On Investment (ROI) —Divide the amount of revenue you expect will originate from your website by the amount of time you will spend working on your websites.
(e.g. $150,000 ÷ 520 = $272)
ANSWER:_______________
In a scale of 1 trough 10, 1 being “just kidding” and 10 being “I am an dead serious”, how serious are you about building and running a successful website?
(e.g. 10 —Nothing will stop me!)
ANSWER:_______________

Although this questions might feel overwhelming. Do your best to answer as many as you can. Expect your message and your value proposition to change over time, as you learn how people react to what you have to say in your website. I hope this can help!

How Can I Change Images From WordPress

I just added a block that contains an image and I can not see it in WordPress.

When adding blocks in the Appcropolis Builder, images can be edited directly inside the builder. In most cases the image src URL will point to a static file located in the builder, not in your WordPress project. To control the image from WordPress please do the following:

Open your project inside the Builder.
From the Project dropdown select the option CMS.
Login using your username and password.
From the left sidebar, click on the Media link.
Then click on Add New and follow the instructions to upload a new file.
Once you are done uploading, go back to the Builder.
Find the image that you wish to link to WordPress.
Rollover the image and click on the Image Icon.
A popup will show all images available inside the WordPress Media Gallery, including the one that you just uploaded.
Select the image that you would like to use and click on the button Use Image.

The change will be save automatically and the image will be replaced. In the future if you want to change the image again, you can simple go to WordPress and replace the images source without having to open the Builder.

IMPORTANT: To replace the image source, your project must install the Enable Media Replace if it is not installed yet.
(see: https://wordpress.org/plugins/enable-media-replace/).

Binders: share

TODO:

/**
 * Outputs social media button
 *
 * @param $params
 * 			$params['assign_to']
 * 			$params['networks'] (valid values: twitter, facebook, google, linkedin)... default: 'twitter,facebook,google'
 * 			$params['url']
 * 			$params['class']
 * 			$params['style'] (e.g. default, arbenta, metal, pagepeel, plain, retro, ribbons, simple, somacro)
 *
 * @example 
 *
 * {{share networks="facebook,twitter" class="btn-group" url="http://domain.com/my-page/" style="retro"}}
 */

The above code will generate HTML code similar to:

<ul class="appc-share btn-group">
    <li class="appc-share-item">
        <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://domain.com/my-page/" title="Share on facebook" target="_blank">
          <img src="http://builder.appcropolis.com/resources/images/share/buttons/simple/facebook.png" alt="Share on facebook" class="appc-share-image"></a>
    </li>
    <li class="appc-share-item">
        <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://domain.com/my-page/" title="Share on twitter" target="_blank">
          <img src="http://builder.appcropolis.com/resources/images/share/buttons/simple/twitter.png" alt="Share on twitter" class="appc-share-image"></a>
    </li>
    <li class="appc-share-item">
        <a href="https://plus.google.com/share?url=http://domain.com/my-page/" title="Share on google" target="_blank">
          <img src="http://builder.appcropolis.com/resources/images/share/buttons/simple/google.png" alt="Share on google" class="appc-share-image"></a>
    </li>
    <li class="appc-share-item">
        <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://domain.com/my-page/" title="Share on linkedin" target="_blank">
          <img src="http://builder.appcropolis.com/resources/images/share/buttons/simple/linkedin.png" alt="Share on linkedin" class="appc-share-image"></a>
    </li>
</ul>

Binders: related

TODO

/**
 * Retrive a list of related posts. This binder requires the 
 * BAW Manual Related Posts plugin to be instaled in the blog.
 *
 * @param {object} $params
 * 				$params['post_id'] (optional, uses current post ID if nor post_id is provided)
 * 				$params['assign_to'] (optional, uses "related" as the name of the variable to which data is assigned).
 *
 * @example
 *
 * {{related post_id="23" assign_to="rel_posts"}}
 * 
 * <ul>
 * 	{{foreach $rel_posts.data as $item}}
 * 		<li>{{$item.post_title}}</li>
 * 	{{foreachelse}}
 * 		<p>No related posts.</p>
 * 	{{/foreach}}
 * </ul>
 *
 * @see https://wordpress.org/plugins/baw-manual-related-posts/
 *
 */

Example:

<ul class="appc-dynamic" id="appc-related">      
{{related post_id="{{$post.ID}}" assign_to="rel_posts"}}
{{foreach $rel_posts.data as $item}}
    <li>
        <div class="popular-post-img">
            <a href="{{$item.post_permalink}}"> <img src="{{$item.post_thumbnail}}" alt="{{$item.post_title}}"></a>
        </div>
        <div class="popular-post-content">
            {{post show="categories" assign_to="item_categories" post_id="{{$item.ID}}"}}
            <div class="post-category">
                
                {{if $item_categories.data[0]}} 
                <a href="{{$item_categories.data[0].cat_permalink}}" class="cat-item-{{$item_categories.data[0].cat_ID}}" rel="category tag" title="{{$cat.name}}">{{$item_categories.data[0].name}}</a>
                {{/if}}
            </div>
            <h4><a href="{{$item.post_permalink}}" rel="category tag">{{$item.post_title}}</a></h4>
            <span>{{date when="{{$post.post_date}}" format="F j, Y"}}</span>
        </div>
    </li>
{{foreachelse}}
 	<p>No related posts.</p>
{{/foreach}}
</ul>

How To Handle Search Results

A search results page as well as other archive pages, will bind a “$posts” object to the page. That means that you can simply iterate through the different posts contained in the collection. Below is an example that show how to render this collection:

<div class="row">
	<div class="col-md-12">
	    {{if count( $posts.data) eq 0}}
	    <div class="row no-results">
            <h2 class="aligncenter">No Results Found</h2>
            <p class="aligncenter">We could not find the any page associated with the term <i>"{{$smarty.get.s}}"</i>
            </p>
        </div>
        {{/if}}
	    
        {{foreach $posts.data as $post}} 
        {{author user_id="{{$post.post_author}}" assign_to="author"}} 
        {{meta post_id="{{$post.ID}}" assign_to="meta"}} 
        {{post show="categories" assign_to="post_categories" post_id="{{$post.ID}}"}}
		<article>
		<div class="row">
			<div class="span8">
				<div class="post-image">
					<div class="post-heading">
						<h3><a href="{{$post.post_permalink}}">{{$post.post_title}}</a></h3>						
					</div>
					{{if $post.post_thumbnail}}
					<img src="{{$post.post_thumbnail}}" alt="{{$post.post_title}}" />
					{{/if}}
				</div>
				<p>
				{{$post.post_content|strip_tags|truncate:400}}
				</p>
				<div class="bottom-article">
					<ul class="meta-post">
						<li><i class="icon-calendar"></i><a href="#"> {{date when="{{$post.post_modified}}" format="F j, Y"}}</a></li>
						<li><i class="icon-user"></i><a href="#"> {{$author.data.fullname}}</a></li>
						<li><i class="icon-folder-open"></i>
                            {{foreach $post_categories.data as $cat}}
                                <a style="float: none;" rel="category tag" title="{{$cat.name}}" href="{{$cat.cat_permalink}}">{{$cat.name}}</a>{{if !$cat@last}}, {{/if}}
                            {{/foreach}}
						</li>
					</ul>
					<a href="{{$post.post_permalink}}" class="pull-right">Continue reading <i class="icon-angle-right"></i></a>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div>
		</article>
		{{/foreach}}
		
        
        
        {{paginate type="array" assign_to="pagination"}} 
        {{if $pagination.total > 1}}
		<div id="pagination">	
            <ul style="list-style: none;">
                {{foreach $pagination.data as $page}}
                <li>{{$page}}</li>
                {{/foreach}}
            </ul>
		</div>
        {{/if}}	
	</div>	
</div>

Redundant Width And Height In Body Tag

When importing a new template into the builder, be aware that some developer might specify that the width and height of the body is 100%. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, however, by default the width of the body tag is 100% and the height is dictated by the content inside the body. When specifying the height as 100%, the builder might not be able to assess the real height of the body, since the content is no longer taken into consideration.

/* avoid */

body {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    }