There are many considerations involved in creating a successful Web site. Consider the following:
- Whether you want your own domain name or not. This is almost a prerequisite for a business and should be selected as representative of your company's name or nature of business. Make it be easy to remember and visualize how it will look on your business cards. It can contain hyphens.
I obtain domain names for my clientele for $10.00 per year (Network Solutions charges $35.00 per year). I can transfer domain names to my Registrar for my customers for $2.00 per domain which will then run $10.00/year.
Check Domain Name Availability
Go to DomainTools' WHoIs by selecting the "Lookup" button below. The domain name can end in any of the international top level domains (.com, .edu, .gov, .info, .mil, .net, .org), not just those serviced by the InterNIC. - Select a font
Resident fonts (universally present for PC based browsers) are somewhat limited. Take a look at this list of fonts for fonts you can reasonably expect your pages' viewers to have on their systems.
- Determine your objective
Without content you don't have a Web site. You have to understand that your Web site reflects on you; you want to make sure you are putting your best face forward. Content is a big part of what draws people to your Web site. The reason to have a Web site is to say something and if you don't say it well, there is no point to your site. Ask yourself why is this Web site going to be here? For example if you are a corporation, it's not enough to say you need a Web site for marketing. You need to clarify it further (e.g. "We need a Web site because our potential customers are going to want to get this type of information about our products"). Secondly, you should always think of your target audience. Web site owners tend to think in broad strokes that anyone who uses computers is their target audience. You need to get more specific. The Web is a one-to-one experience; people are going on there looking to find customized information. If you put something up that tries to be all things to all people it's probably going to flop.
Once developed and defined, a theme should be established that can be carried throughout the site's content, encompassing your purposes. This usually clarifies the intent or "thrust" of the site in your own mind, ultimately enhancing navagability and focus, e.g. "while your prime objective is to increase your customer base, secondary considerations may be to enhance customer perception of your product, provide "tighter" communication with distributors or field reps, announce product issues or upgrades comprehensively and increase customer awareness of your entire product offering.".
- How your site should be structured You should think about the organization of material on your site. Put the most important information up front. If you have something that would engage your visitors, don't just give it a link, give it some text to show where people would go once they clicked on that link. That way people get an understanding not only of the purpose of your site, but also why they should bother staying.
You should make note of existing websites that you feel have the same appeal and structure you would like your site to have. Get ideas from your competitors' sites and improve on the best aspects of each. Bear in mind that people visit web sites for three reasons: to acquire information, to obtain financial advantage and for the entertainment value. - How to measure your site's success A site's success is measured by how well the original objective is met. It is important to set your goals to a level commensurate with the Internet's ability as a medium to accomplish your objectives. If your site content is not meeting your goals, then the content thrust should be modified correspondingly. It, therefore, becomes desirable to gain some measure of this effectivity. Web statistics can be provided by your webmaster that provide exactly what traffic your site is receiving (I use "Urchin"), the pages they visit and the duration of their visit. This, however, will only show you the number of people visiting your site. Providing a form for their inquiries will furnish a direct measure of site interest. Including a toll free telephone number with a different number that is only furnished in the site's content will show the contact originated at your site. Consider offering a discount via a "web coupon" only available through your site. Keep good records of this contact information...
- Keeping costs down Because no one knows your product or service or the way to best present it better than you do, you should compose your material yourself. The cost of your pages is directly the result of the amount of time we devote to it. Any corrections or changes that are the result of errors on our part will not be billed to you (naturally). Any revisions required as a result of miscommunication on your part, will result in higher costs to you. It becomes obvious that to save money, you should "polish" your content in a word processor before submitting it to us (using the interactive database approach mentioned earlier negates this reiterative word crafting expense). By the same token, if you have images already scanned as files (.jpg or .gif), it will be cheaper than photographs we have to scan. Any animated gifs you find on the Web (that are not copyrighted) that you would like put on your pages, copy (right click and save image as..) and send to us. Custom animated gifs are quite expensive to have created (although we will be thrilled to do it for you).
You should plan in your web budget to add new material to your site at least once a quarter. Because of the dynamic nature of the web, your site will probably need a major revamp about 6 months after construction. This can also be the result of an evolution in your perspective. Come up with a plan that you can support with the resources and time available. Even if that means you can't update your site every day or every week. If you can only update it once a month and still do it well, then go for that. Trying to pursue more updates than you can support will look shoddy and that will reflect poorly on you. - Search Engines, Portals and publicity The best page in the world is of no value if no one knows about it! Search Engines provide the means for people to find web content pertinent to their interest of the moment. It is very difficult to achieve prominence in one of the six major search engines and harder still to maintain the same prominence once successful. We have been quite adept at getting our customers' pages prominent, and this effort is billed based on an hourly rate. It is not cheap! There are other alternatives to this such as on a "per click-through" basis. This is based upon prepaying for 3000 or 4000 click-throughs at around 30¢ a pop. We will be happy to set this up for you as well. Either way will accomplish the desired result: increasing traffic to your site.
Portals are another concept whereby a person customizes a "startup" page in his browser with content specific to his interests: news, financial services, weather, sports, special interest articles and so on (examples are AOL, iGoogle, MSNBC, Netvibes, and Yahoo! and other personalized sites). Included with this setup is an index or search engine of sorts. One can register with this index or buy an advertisement in this index thereby assuring exposure to the portal's users. This approach may or may not be an appropriate solution for your particular market segment.
Publicity is the familiar approach. Have your domain name on your literature, products, signage, business cards, invoices, checks, stationary, advertising (radio, TV, newspaper ads, billboards), press releases, catalogues, where ever possible. Consider purchasing ads in present high volume sites, search engines and indexes (like Yahoo) and look into banner ads (not my favorite). If you don't put anything into the effort, you surely won't get anything out!
Phone: (480) 488-1784 or email me...