Hi Greg,
It all depends which platform you use. But to bring some clarity:
click to email/phone - This is super easy, when you need it, feel free to PM me, I'll show you how to do it on whatever platform you'll use. And you'll be able to always do it on your own.
Here's how these two features can be achieved with HTML, simple:
<a href="tel:YOURNUMBERHERE">Tap this and let's talk!</a>
<a href="mailto:YOUREMAILHERE">Would rather write? Email me!</a>
payment options - Same as scheduling. Check if the platform of your choice supports it out of the box, or if you need to additionally implement it.
cell phone compatible - It's pretty much standard today that themes for whatever platform come mobile friendly. Simplest thing you could do is access the demo from your mobile phone and see how it looks like.
And to avoid getting overwhelmed, it could be a good idea to start with that. Just make sure it's advertised as mobile friendly, see if it works on your phone, and jump into it.
That's part of the story though. On projects of my team, our clients and my own, I require much more from a website to call it smartphone friendly. Especially:
1. Speed. Who wants their phone to choke trying to load some clunky page? This can result in lost sales. I insist on speed and we do a lot of things to make our websites load as promptly as possible.
2. Layout. I see many websites where layout does indeed change to adjust to mobile screen, but is completely awful, sometimes broken too. Basically looking like an afterthought.
Personally, I create mobile and computer layouts with equal dedication, and often separately. Each has to be perfectly adjusted to the users.
E.g.if you have a slideshow on mobiles, you don't want to click some tiny arrows to browse to it, you want the ability to swipe through. While on computer you want the opposite.
This goes other way around too, I've seen people focus so much on mobile that they neglect the computer layout, and then I'm trying to swipe through things with a mouse - sucks
3. Cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. I like to make sure my layouts work and look how they should on all the most popular and relevant phones and mobile browsers. And then some. Literally going through every click and scenario manually.
Different browsers, phones and operating systems have different capabilities and features. I always assure than nothing will be broken or dysfunctional for the users.
Since I can't test for ALL phones that exist, I select this way:
a) Currently most popular and most used phones.
b) Most relevant phones of my users, based on analytics.
c) Making sure that things work down to a certain version of browser/operating system, so that I can reasonably expect it will work on all phones in those versions and above.
scheduling - Some platforms have this built in, on others you can get it as a plugin. WP has a bunch of both free and paid plugins, so likely this too.
SEO - This is something you do, or have someone do it for you. So that would be extra. Although it can happen spontaneously too, to an extent. I know some people who had just put their content out there, without any technical knowledge and consideration, and it ranks well.
And it's not the only way to get visitors to your website. You could also use paid advertising.
Hi Fast, (you really are awsome) When the time comes I'd like to ask for your recommendations (yourself?) on how to find someone w/ your experience. I know that could break the bank but I've had dismal luck w/ Fiver.
One of the ideas that I've seen here makes good sense to me. It consists of getting someone to subscribe/buy-into future sales from the get-go. That might work w/ my product. It seems to me that if a website w/ all the bells and whistles also could get that stream of revenue, it would be worth the cost of development.
Wouldn't that add a level of complexity re payment/credit cards/receipts/cancellation mechanism/tax pmt./...? I'm thinking that w/ my product, even having the best SEO in the world wouldn't amount to much w/out that repeat business dimension.
So Fast, would that repeat sales dimension quadruple the cost of the website work you outlined?
Thanks again,
Greg
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