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A website is a collection of pages on the World Wide Web that is accessed via a particular common URL, or web address (e.g. www.TheComputerCoach.net). The content of the site’s pages may be varied, according to the purpose of the site. It can be informational, sales, public access, collaborative, educational, personal or any number of other purposes.
How do you know if you have a use for a website? The answers to this are as varied as there are businesses and people. If you are thinking of a personal website so that you can communicate with your friends and family, maybe post photos of your family, pets and vacations, you can certainly have a site, but recently the free alternatives provided by such established “social networking” sites such as FaceBook and MySpace provide a free and simple alternative to creating your own web presence.
So lets look at the business end of website development: If you’re only interested in posting information on the Web (such as this site), but not to actually consumate sales on line, that’s easier done and less expensive than creating and maintaining a sales site with an on-line catalog and a shopping cart for taking credit card orders which must be protected with encryption. As you can see from even a cursory surfing of the Web, web sites can range from the simple to the extremely complex. Add to this the increasing use of cell phones like the iPhone, Blackberry and the Droid to view websites, and you will realize that you also have to design your web site to be viewable over these devices as well.
Consequently, the cost of development can range from the relatively inexpensive into tens of thousands of dollars. However, regardless of the complexity of the site, the process for creating a web site is essentially the same. First, you have to obtain a unique name (called a “domain name”) for your site. If you’re lucky enough to obtain the name of your business as your domain, that’s great. If not, you may have to get creative, establishing a memorable name that will link to your business. Once you’ve paid and registered your domain name, you have to create the web pages, then upload them to a hosted server. The host will, for a monthly charge, make your site available on the Internet 24x7x365. This is something you can’t do with your home computer, which isn’t powerful enough to handle the traffic. If you have changes, additions or deletions to the site, you can always upload them to the server immediately.
It’s important to remember, however, that simply having a website on the Web doesn’t mean that anyone is going to visit it. Think of it like this: You may have a car for sale, sitting on your front lawn. Only those few people who drive by and see the sale sign will know about it. But, if you advertise in the local newspaper, telling readers where to find the car and all about the car for sale, you’ll get your message out to thousands of people, not just the few that drive past your house. The common misconception that you can reduce traditional advertising costs because you have a web presence is absolutely incorrect. If anything, at least initially, you will have to increase your advertising. You must make sure that every business card, sales brochure, point-of-sale ad, print or radio/tv ad and the like have a link to your website prominently displayed. You will have to “direct” the traffic to your site, and the easiest way is to add the site reference to your traditional advertising, as well as to inform your existing customers (add it to your billheads, stationery, newsletters, advertised specials, etc.). Also, this is an excellent time, if you don’t already have one, to add a logo to your site that will carry through on your business cards, advertising, uniforms and other descriptors, providing your organization with a cohesive identity.
The second way to direct traffic to your site is through website optimization. This topic is greatly misunderstood by clients. Usually, optimization is not included in the website development process, and is an extra charge. Depending on the extent of optimization desired, it can be quite expensive and must be continuous. Simple optimization involves the creating of the site in such a way that the search bots for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) will find and index the pages in such a way that, when people type in key words, your listing will not only show up, but will show up “above the fold,” that is, on the first screen before the customer has to scroll down on the page to see your listing. This is done using meta-tags, page descriptions, word frequency and some registrations with the major browsers. Complex optimization involves, in addition, the creation and management of the site in such a way that the algorithms that are used by each browser’s search bots will locate your site and accord it high priority. Because these algorithms are proprietary and change constantly, this is an ongoing process. Finally, to assure placement of your site at the top of the screen, you can pay to put an advertisement for your site at the top or side of the search display page, or you can create links to and from other complementary sites, or use pay-per-click or other advertising from other sites or web portals. Each of these optimization techniques will require time and effort and, of course, will involve additional expense.
Assuming you can drive some customers to your website, you have to have a product or service that they’ll want to buy once they get there. The layout, content, style and graphic aspects of the site are very important and have to be customized specifically for you. Everyone knows what the inexpensive “template” sites look like, and you’re not going to get much action from a cookbook site or one which isn’t at a real domain (e.g. www.geocities.com/~jkel19288). Customers who have never met you must necessarily be influenced by solely what you say and how you say it. This includes text and graphics such as pictures, photos and other intangible information such as colors, background, layout, etc.. While you may really know your business, it’s not the same as knowing how to promote it, particularly on the Web. For one thing, keep in mind the focal point of the site - i.e. What do you want your prospective customer to do after viewing the site? Call you? Fill in an e-mail form on the site and submit it? Place an order? Set up an appointment with a rep? Each and every aspect of your site should drive the customer to this task. Also, you should have some idea of the ideal customer “profile” (geography, age, gender, employment, income range, etc.) for your product or service. Does the optimization, language, photo samples and overall web design appeal to this profile? And, if you’re in a high competition area (lots of web sites for your type of business), how have you distinguished yourself from the others? Do you have a “hook” to get your prospective customers to take that final step and come to you?
These are just a few of the considerations for developing and maintaining a web presence. If you stick to these considerations, chances are that you will be successful.
If you think that you would like to have us develop, host or maintain a web site for you, please contact us....
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