2 hour business setup, it is possible!
Yes it really is possible to build a business in 2 hours read more here!
Is it possible to build a business ready to trade in under a day? absolutely we just set one up in just two hours!
A local newly qualified plasterer and drylining specialist came to us and wanted a brand created, colour pallet, website and email because he had possible clients asking. Almost all other web developers said they wanted weeks to complete the job and at best Fiverr was about 2-5 days for the logo alone.
So what did we achieve in 2 hours?
- Brand name
- .com domain name
- Brand design
- Colour Palette
- Website built with contact forms and google and mail verified
- Google Search Console Set up
- Domain registered
- Business ready email with info@ email address
- Website verified on google
- Emails verified for SPF & DKIM
- Logos in various formats
- Icons in various formats
- Business card designs
- Letter head Designs
- BrandBook
This list goes on and some people might be surprised how we did it, but it is very possible if you know what you're doing and you use the right tools. This is something we have done for many customers over the years but here we document it and how we did it.
Start with Logo Concepts
Logos and brands are one of the hardest things to do successfully, even worse is finding a suitable domain name. Domains are almost impossible for proper words due to domain squatting. Everyone has an opinion on the subject is it free market or is it underhand to register something opportunistically to resell for what could be £1000's. We always aim for a .com, .co.uk, .biz if not you are into the many other TLD's. Google will tell you this doesn't affect rankings but humans being stupid and lazy, .com and local domains such as .co.uk are considered better. We use www.namecheap.com for our registrations and can thoroughly recommend them.
So what ideas did we have? We ask the client for ideas and we ran these through a tool called www.namelix.com its brilliant for giving you ideas of colour and in particular fonts with the same name repeatedly displayed in different ways. its great for distilling the names down, it also gives and idea of domain availability.
Having distilled down the brand options the client first distilled these down into:
The ideas were all around the key aspects of plaster and a 'does what it says on the tin' approach following another few back and forths covering around 20 mins the client got to a choice of four brands ReliPlaster, Preceiling, SmoothlyBuilt and BarePlaster.
We loved the BarePlaster option (we bought the domain and therefore it is available in your own brand with a set up company here) and came up with a sage green option that would be great on a white van however the client loved SmoothlyBuilt so we combined the two brands in tone and colour. We gave some other font and colour ways to test his commitment and the final version was chosen.
Brand completed now for the palette
So how did we curate this in such quick time? We used a tool called www.brandmark.io its brilliant in distilling down ideas. For small businesses its ideal for bigger projects what we would do next is give it to our graphic design team and further enhance it however this client was on a tight budget and a very short timescale. I do however think the results are brilliant for what it costs and require only a good eye for colourways and understanding the client. This brand is .com as were all the others, trademarkable and fresh. best of all created in superquick time.
Next?
We needed to set up email and a website. We are partners for ZOHO suite of products including email and they do a free version so we linked the newly registered domain and verified it in the DNS with SPF and DKIM so mail is super deliverable when our client sends emails to clients. The free zoho mail service gives him 5gb of mail storage but no pop or imap but to upgrade is very cheap. If you need a reliable email host ZOHO is hard to fault and we use it for many of our clients and all our own storage in ZOHO WorkDrive and in our opinion its better than MS365 and SharePoint. 10 mins later the email is set up and verified at DNS level.
The Website....
We built the website in 30mins, this might seem incredible but its possible if you use the right tools, and this is where
www.strikingly.com comes in there are loads of web builders and we use a few of them as its only really necessary to build from scratch in complicated builds. We have our faves such as Duda, Strikingly and Webflow and the ones we hate like WordPress! For this we needed speed and simplicity so we used Strikingly people might scoff at it as its cheap but boy does it punch above its weight. Good support and flexibility and we had a client that using its native shop that was banking £100K a year and we regularly see strikingly sites ranking first page of google. So what did we build?
This is a single page Strikingly site with 3 anchors for The Team, Services and Contact. The hardest bit is the images and this is where our Freepik and other stock image sites come in. The hardest thing here is that because the majority of images are US or worldwide finding British construction pictures is a challenge and a half! But we came through till he has his own job shots to add to a gallery.
Last few jobs?
- Google search console
- Verifying the site in the DNS
- Verifying the email address
- Organising the customer to send me a picture for the Team photo!
So in two hours we built an entire business identity from scratch and we have done it quicker including company formation and a bank account Order your business set up in under 2 hours here
Lastly, if your based in Torbay in Devon and need a plasterer give our client a tinkle or visit their site here www.smoothlybuilt.com
