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What
do I need to consider when I want to get a web site started?
This question is important to consider. Proper planning can provide a
better result and lower expenses by reducing wasted effort.
Ask your self what do you want to do with the website.
- Product Catalogs - You may want to put catalogs of merchandise or
other items on pages or if you have a lot of items in a searchable
database. If you expect enough volume you can justify the resources
to setup online stores where customers can browse and select items to
later purchase with a credit card, e-gold
or other wealth transfer
- Documentation - Do you want to provide online documentation which
can reduce traditional publication costs (like printing and mailing
catalogs or policy updates).
- Profiles - You can offer information about what a company does.
Biographies of the service provider or artists.
- Information Gathering - You may want to setup polling and opinion
gathering through interactive forms.
- Magazines - You may want to make an electronic copy of an exiting
publication or an original version of periodical information.
- Special Interests - You may want to put information about a
special interest and become a destination to find out about it.
- Education - You could setup training information, coursework, and
interactive testing
- And many other ideas are feasible.
Ask yourself what are the objectives and goals.
What is the website to accomplish? For example if you know you want the
website to reduce your postage and printing costs, how many viewers and how many
printed publications do you want it to replace?
Having a set of goals to meet objectives is so important and necessary to
reduce the wasted effort of creating something not necessary or required.
Wasted effort costs time and labor.
- Have you asked an Internet Service Provider about registering and
supporting a domain name? Setting up a domain name requires
choosing a name that makes marketing sense, the potential customer can
remember it, and the name being available. The fees associated
usually are for about 1/2 hour labor and the registration fee which in the
past has been about $70.00 for two years. We recommend you make an
appointment and learn about the details.
- Have you asked an Internet Service Provider about hosting
your web site? To have information available to the world seven
days a week twenty-four hours a day, 7x24, requires having computers on
all the time and expensive leased communications circuits used all the
time. Your website can be economical to operate because it reside on
the Internet Service Provider's premise and share the resources. To
that end arrangements for recurring service fees should be investigated in
advance of your needs.
- Have you considered out sourcing all our part of the web
page creation and publishing to the web pages? You or a
friend can create the pages yourself and publish, or you may want to
obtain the services of someone who does it for a profession. Some
persons would work on their own car others pay the shop even if they know
how to fix it. If your site does not need much complexity doing it
yourself will take time but be educational. If needs only minor
corrections periodically you may want to have a professional set it up and
then you can make the minor changes. You may decide you can better
spend your time generating revenue in your specialty and then pay someone
to make the website and still be ahead. These are things you will
need to decide when budgeting.
- Have you reviewed the potential costs for registering the domain
name, creating the web pages, and hosting the website? You may
want to ask yourself if the costs associated with Internet marketing
return more than they cost. If your goals and objectives can reduce
expenditures for traditional marketing (save postage and printing, answer
7x24, etc...) then you should proceed. If you are depending on the website
to produce new revenue consider whether the costs are acceptable. You can
compare the costs of websites with traditional adverting as a guide.
Gather and organize all the information relevant to the website.
- Gather past publications and electronic copy. You can save a lot
of effort by not reinventing the information that already exists.
Also past effort can help suggest future efforts. Find pictures,
brochures, newspaper articles, advertisements. Find examples of your
competitors. When possible get the electronic version to save the
labor costs of having the information rescanned and typed.
- Break up your information into main topics. Like writing a book
or manual with topics, having the information arranged by topics on the
website makes sense. The time you spend organizing into topics will
make the website better and reduce wasted effort.
- Think about how you would organize and navigate the information.
With the information arranged in topics you may have a good idea how you
would navigate the information.
- Hierarchies - Many web sites are hierarchical. They may
start with a home page which braches out like a tree.
- Linear - Some web sites are in sequence like a book one page
follows another.
- Linear with Alternatives - Some of the pages of a Linear site
could branch of and jump back in.
- Combination of Linear and Hierarchical - This is a popular
way of setting up a website. Its like have the information
descend from the home page like a tree but the top branches connect to
each other.
 Sketch
the layout, storyboard, of your website. This activity is very
important. Without a storyboard it is likely unnecessary labor and
resources will be consumed to make the website!
- Create a rough outline and sketch of what your web site will look
like. A simple approach is that you can draw squares and
arrows linking the squares on a piece of paper. Put some notes in
the squares. The squares could be the topics. Some squares might be:
Introduction, How to Contact Us, Products, Services, Frequently asked
Questions, and About Us. Another way is to use index cards. Or you
could use a presentation application to show the concepts (like power
point).
- Think about what topics will go on what pages
- Think about how you would have the page hyperlink, jump, to each
other
- Think about the introduction, first, page and what it needs to
provide to the viewer (some readers judge whether to read the rest of
the site by the first page).
- Review the goals and objectives of the web site. Go back to
the storyboard and have the storyboard reflect the goals and
objectives of the web site.
Make arrangements to create the web pages and publish them to a website
You or a friend can create the pages yourself and publish, or you may want to
obtain the services of someone who does it for a profession. Some persons
would work on their own car others pay the shop even if they know how to fix
it. If your site does not need much complexity doing it yourself will take
time but be educational. If needs only minor corrections periodically you
may want to have a professional set it up and then you can make the minor
changes. If you can use Microsoft Word and other Office applications you
can use Microsoft FrontPage. It is usually a good idea to get the latest
version and accept that in less than two years you'll need to have budgeted to
upgrade versions.
 If
you want a really good book about designing and writing web pages we
recommend the latest version of the this book:
Web
Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days:
You may decide you can better spend your time generating revenue in your
specialty and then pay someone to make the website and still be ahead. We can
work with you to do all or part of your web site.
Don't forget to make arrangements to promote the web site
Just because you build a better mouse trap does not mean that people will
buy it. They have to know that you built the better mouse trap.
Helping people locate the website, promoting, takes an labor and
resources. A lot of marketing books now have sections devoted to the
Internet. Consider the following:
- Traditional Advertising - Put the address of the website, URL,
on all your publications, business cards, advertising, bill boards,
radio, letter head, send letters and faxes to customers letting them
know about it, and so on.
- Search Engines - Get listed on search engines. Getting a
good listing take effort and time. We have web pages with suggestions
and offer a service to do this.
- Internet Advertising - You may want to consider getting special
interest web sites to advertise and hyperlink your site.
Caution: Be careful about advertising with unsolicited
email, Spam, because it is unwanted and will void almost all contracts
with Internet Service providers:
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Disclaimer: This media is distributed with the understanding that the information
presented is from various sources, from which there can be no warranty or responsibility
by Cocoa Village Publishing, Inc. as to the legality, completeness and accuracy, except when otherwise
stated in writing. Rights to information herein remain the property of their respective owners
and may not be reproduced without appropriate authorization.
Copyright © 2005 Cocoa Village Publishing, P.O.Box 218, Cocoa FL 32923 USA
Phone (321) 633-4990
• Fax (321) 633-4997
• www.cocoavillagepublishing.com
• questions@cocoavillagepublishing.com
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