Lending. Supporting. Inspiring.
Yola Step-by Step Tutorial
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Before Beginning
Some prerequisites:
• Email Account
• Marketing Plan
• Site-specific content
• Pictures
• Product Descriptions
• Contact Information
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Step 1. Site Goals
• Before you even start thinking about building a website, you have to do some soul searching
– Why do you want to make a website?
– What is the purpose of your website?
– Who will visit your website?
– What will they gain?
– What is in it for you?
• Writing the answers down will help focus you through this journey
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Step 1. Story
Sample story:
• Thomas and Jan are two hometown friends that opened a small local bakery about a year ago
• Their breads are made from a secret recipe passed down from Jan’s grandmother and are hailed by locals as the best kept secret in the area
• Still, their customer base (and profits) have stayed steady for months and they are looking for ways to expand without adding more branches
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Step 1. Site Goals
• Start in ‘expansion’ mode
– Brainstorm – spend some quality time thinking about your goals
– No idea is ‘too-big’ or ‘too-hard’ yet
– Write down everything
• End in ‘strategic’ mode
– What will help me attract clients? Increase revenue?
– What are the resources I have? How long will it take to carry out my goals?
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Step 1. Page by Page Site Plan
• Draw out a page by page design of your site
– What pages do you want to show? Site name?
– How will links work? Where will text and pictures go? Where do we incorporate widgets?
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Step 2. Create Your Account
• Using your preferred email address, go to Yola.com and create an account
• Choose the ‘Yola free’ option
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Step 2. Choose a Style
• With so many options, it is easy to get lost here
• Choose a free style to best represents the image you want to convey. Additionally, you can purchase Premium styles
Once you have picked out the right
style for you, click the preview
button to view sample content
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Step 2. Confirm your style
• Click to confirm your style
• You will need to choose a name for your site. Let’s “Build Our Site” now, we’ll come back to the site name.
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Step 3. Build Your Site
• Since we spent time on our site plan, building the website with Yola can be fun and easy!
• We’ll build one page at a time, utilizing some different tools.
• Afterwards we will incorporate our widgets and publish our site
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Step 3. Main Page
• Most important page in your site
• Customers will come to a decision about whether to stay based on how your site looks.
• Its important to look to your marketing plan for guidance on your strengths. Emphasize them here.
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Step 3. Drag and Drop
• Drag and drop a text box from your content sidebar
• Place it in the center of the page
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Step 3. Adding Text
• Put in your mission statement. This is a the main message you want your users to read. It should entice the user to stay.
• You can format this text to give emphasis to certain words
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Step 3. Adding Pictures
• Drag and drop the ‘Picture’ widget
• Upload pictures from your computer to the website
• You get 1GB of space for images and content.
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Step 3. Combining Content Widgets
• You’ll begin to see how we can build an enticing site piece by piece, easily.
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Step 3. About Us
• For the sample site, we will emphasize our business image by describing our history and our values
• Let’s drag another text widget below the picture widget we just added.
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Step 3. Additional Content
• This text is less pronounced than our mission statement. However, we highlight keywords.
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Step 3. Adding Pages
• Following our site plan, we can add some new pages to guide the user to different types of information about our business
• Add a new web pageand name it
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Step 3. Columns
• One useful way to organize your site is by using columns.
• This will separate content into two sections on your site.
• Here we will put product pictures on one side and descriptions on the other.
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Step 3. Content in Columns
• Drag and drop the column divider into the site
• Then, use the text and picture components to populate the columns with data
• You can put columns inside columns, and stack them for effect
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Step 3. Utilizing Columns
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Our site plan calls for putting a map on our contact page.
• The way to do this is to incorporate widgets into our website
• A widget takes up minimal space on your website and allows you to customize a popular tool, such as Google Maps or PayPal, to your business
• For our map, we will be using Google Maps
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Common widgets can be found in the content sidebar
• Each needs different inputs
• Many require you to sign-up on partner sites to utilize them
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Add an address and search to focus the map to your location
• Helps customers find you
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Some widgets provide specialized services that can help you
enhance the user experience
• For our sample site, we’ll use
Social Media Badge – Spread the word through different outlets
Google Translator – Accommodate different users
PayPal – Increase revenue
Easy Comments – Allow users to comment on your site
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Some widgets can be added with minimal additional info required
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Some widgets, like PayPal, require you to have accounts created on the parent site
• PayPal is a useful and secure server that you should consider to enable online purchases
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Step 3. Adding Widgets
• Some widgets, like Easy Comments, will look sparse when you add them in the site editor
• Users will add content to these widgets when you go live with your site
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Review our Progress
• Let’s review our progress
• Publish your site by hitting “Update my Site”
• We’ll switch over to a Yola-created website: http://brooklynsamplebakery.yolasite.com/
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Advanced Topics
• Check out the Yola website for information on more advanced topics
http://www.yola.com/support.html
- Some topics worth checking out:
- Getting your own domain name
- Analytics and Optimization
- Picture Galleries
- Linking to PayPal and other merchant tools
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Questions?