Establishing your Internet PresenceWritten by Frank Voorburg
Introduction This article shows you what is involved to get your own website up and running. This information can help you with preparing requirements for your website. Having well defined requirements will result in a better website while making it easier for both you and web designer to whom you outsourced your project.Outsourcing your web development project You are planning on outsourcing your web development project, right? A mistake commonly made by small businesses is to think that they can simply throw together their own website by using basic knowledge of HTML, language in which webpages are written. I agree that having a basic understanding of HTML or tools such as Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver can lower your costs in long run. This allows you to do maintenance on website contents yourself. However, please don't make mistake of setting up your webpage yourself. Trust me that outsourcing your web development project will save you a significant amount of time and frustration. Making preparations Before outsourcing your project, collect information as written in this section. - Domain name. Your website requires an Internet address such as http://www.yourname.com. Brainstorm a few domain names that are short and descriptive for your type of business. You can check availability yourself or ask your web designer to take care of registration.
- Images. Most businesses have digital versions of their logo and products. Collect these and pass them on to your web designer.
- Content. Don't expect your web designer to copy write all contents of your website. He doesn't know your business as well as you. Create a simple document with: your mission statement, history of your business, customer testimonials, contact information, and an introduction to your company.
- Layout. A good logo can spark creativity of web designer. If you want to further steer this creativity, provide your web designer with your preferred color scheme. It's even better if you can provide a list with Internet addresses of websites that you like.
What to ask for After collecting all this information, you are ready to contact your web designer. Here is a good hint: request your web designer to first deliver a design of your website for your approval before he starts implementing website. Ask for at least following tasks to be completed:
| | Are your SEO efforts going to waste?Written by Derek Croote
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesn’t appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme? Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed.As I arrive from your high position in search engines looking for your product, I want to be able to trust company I am buying from. People are very leery with making purchases on Internet, and even more so from sites they don’t know a great deal about. You want to gain trust from visitor with guarantees, a professional design and color scheme, testimonials and by any other way. If your site doesn’t boast its trustworthiness and make me feel secure, do you think I will purchase your product? No. Visitors are especially leery when they are required to give credit card information. Make them feel protected, boast about your privacy policy, encrypted servers and whatever else you have set up. Be enthusiastic about your site’s security. I need to be able to find what I want and navigate to where I need to go FAST after I arrive at your site via search engines. Some visitors get lost and frustrated with poor navigation and will leave your site without a second thought. Do not leave your visitor with a bad taste in their mouth! Allow them to flow through your site with ease and comfort. If your navigation is confusing your potential customer will likely leave and travel to one of other three billion web sites on Internet. Speed is also a factor in navigation. Visitors don’t want to sit there for twenty or thirty seconds while your page loads. Don’t make them wait. Cut down on size of your pages and graphics.
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