Make a New Website

Website planning
In too many cases organizations develop a web site for the wrong reasons:
Â? Their MD wants one
Â? A web design firm has offered to give them a special deal
Â? They don’t want to be ‘left behind’
Â? They want to provide an electronic version of the organization’s brochure
Really good reasons such as
Â? Making money via sales and customer development
Â? Saving money by cost effective distribution of newsletters and other publications, managing collaboration and best practice
Â? Providing information via searchable databases
Â? Changing attitudes to your organization
are constantly emerging.
Effective web development requires careful thought and deliberation. The opportunities are so vast that they usually stretch the imagination and require rethinking not only of the initial conception of a web site (almost always the electronic brochure) but in some cases a revisit of the organization’s whole strategic plan as well.
But also consider whether you really need a website at all? Not everybody does. Can you explain clearly and briefly why you need a website, and what it will do for you?
A good web plan will pose challenging questions about an organization, its administrative operations, the way it delivers services to its customers and even how it defines customers.
There is no ‘cookie cutter’ approach to website planning and we can’t begin to touch on all the relevant issues here. However, the following website planning guidelines should help you to create a web site that delivers real value – and a site can be successful and deliver real value only when it has been carefully thought through.
Website planning consists of six main areas:
Â? Setting the web site’s goals
Â? Defining the web site’s audience
Â? Creating the web site’s structure
Â? Planning the web site’s content
Â? Generating the web site’s navigation plan
Â? Developing the web site’s visual design
Â? Generating the web site’s development plan
Setting the web site’s goals
Ask yourself about what you hope to accomplish with your target audience.
Write down your goals so that you remember them as you go through the process. Make goals both quantitative and qualitative.
You should be able to summarize your project in a single sentence. If you can’t do that, then you probably need to spend some time focusing your thoughts.
Defining the web site’s audience
To define your audience think expansively. Who are they?
Â? Customers or members?
Â? Potential customers or members?
Â? Colleagues and staff?
Â? Competitors?
Â? Who are you not reaching now?
Â? Do they have computers?
Â? Are they online?
Â? Do they actively use the web?
Design your web site “outside in” and not “inside out” – that is design it from the perspective of your audience(s) and not your organization. It’s often helpful to think of your site as being divided into several sub-sites
Your website has to provide information that fulfils the immediate needs of your site visitors. Capturing their eyeballs requires you to understand their point of view.
Â? What information will they be looking for?
Â? What resources will attract their eye?
Â? What will motivate them to click through different sections of your site?
Your goal may be to get visitors to contact you, but the immediate needs of visitors’ are probably to answer questions like:
Â? Can I trust them?
Â? Are they any good at what they do?
Â? Will they get the job done?
Before the website begins to sell to its site visitors, it has to answer their questions and put their fears to rest. This is fundamentally important, so one more time:
Creating the web site’s structure
Once you have worked out what your site visitors’ immediate needs you need to create path(s) that your site’s visitors will follow. Draw a flow chart to show how you want users to navigate through the content; it should be as simple as possible and focus on the user’s experience — how he or she can navigate through the content.
The flow should address their concerns and needs and gradually take them towards completing your goal.
To create the flow you need to:
Â? Identify the different groups of people who’ll use your website
Â? Work out what you want each of these groups to achieve on your website
Â? Identify the information they need
Â? Work out the ‘best’ flows to help them find and read that information
Planning the web site’s content
Make an outline of all the content that you plan to include – an exhaustive, detailed list of all the media necessary for the project. Make sure you account for factors such as copyright.
Evaluate the administrative implications of each content piece. Whatever you do, don’t wait until your site is launched to start thinking about how you will manage it.
Good websites like beautiful gardens require attention:
Â? Adding new content
Â? Updating and revising old content
Â? Evaluating usage
Â? Responding to information requests and feedback
Think about the right balance between static information (easier to maintain but doesn’t generate repeat traffic) vs. dynamic information (serves as a “carrot” but can add an administrative burden).
Get a handle on the technology challenges and cost factors. Identify special features such as audio or video streaming, web-based conferencing, electronic slideshows, online searchable databases, Geographic Information Services (GIS) mapping, heavy graphics or animations. Here you will need expert advice on the implications for cost, user capacity to handle advanced applications, loading times, and management requirements. Always plan for future growth, even if you can’t afford advanced features at the outset, they can be phased in over time.
Once you know what your content is think about its organization. Computers are logical beasts. Your website will proceed more smoothly if you have a logical document structure and file hierarchy. Decide where to put items such as images and sound files. For example, it’s convenient to place all your images in one location, so that when you want to insert an image into a page, you know where to find it. Any time you have more than one document relating to a particular topic, you should probably consider creating a folder to contain them.
Generating the web site’s navigation plan
Think about the experience you want your visitors to have. Think about how a visitor to your site will be able to move from one area to another. Navigation should be consistent throughout your site. If you place a navigation bar across the top of your home page, try to keep it there for the entire site.
Consider the following points:
Â? One-click navigation to any page (or section in a very large site)
Â? Visitors should know where they are in your site
Â? Search features and indexes make it easier for visitors to find information
Â? Feedback features provide a way for visitors to contact the Webmaster
Understand the unique way that people navigate the web – remember that people “read” the web in a way that is completely different from the way they read print media. According to Jacob Nielson, a guru of web usability, most people don’t read web pages at all, they scan them. Neilson suggests using highlighted keywords, sub-headings, bulleted lists and one idea per paragraph and simple graphics.
Developing the web site’s visual design
Know what you want before designing the site. Ask around. Look at lots of sites. Bookmark a list of favourites as models. Make a commitment to control the web design process. Don’t delegate decision making to outside consultants.
Draw sketches. It’s a good idea to sketch out what you think the layout of your pages should be. Don’t worry about being very precise. Just get the general idea down on paper as a reference. In more detail you can create ‘wireframes’ and ‘explosions’. (Non functional, annotated sketches of key elements and screens with detailed insets of particular areas of detail).
Maintaining consistency in your page layout and design helps to ensure a good user experience. The user should be able to click through the pages in your site without getting confused. If all the pages have a different look, or the navigation is in a different place on each page, it might frustrate the user. Make sure your site provides a consistent look for your user.
Understand that design for the web is different from design for print. Visitors have different computer systems, different browser software, and different screen resolutions. If a designer insists on visitors seeing the site exactly as he or she sees it this can create a lot of disadvantages (e.g. slow page loading) and/or a lack of flexibility. The whole principle of the Web is that users can choose how they want a page displayed. If you try to stop them from doing that, you’ll be closing the door to a lot of potential visitors.
Once the website design has been created, it’s time to test it. This is the most important usability test that needs to be done and the one that will save you the most time and money in the long run. According to IBM, every £1 invested in making your website easy-to-use returns £10 to £1009.
If you don’t do any usability testing you may discover that the structure of the website doesn’t make sense once the website’s up and running. This can and has happened and it leaves you with two choices: redesign the website or make a new website – neither are attractive options.
The most common objections to doing usability testing are:
Â? It’s too expensive!
Â? It’ll take too much time!
Â? I don’t know how to do it!
Wrong, wrong, and wrong! Usability testing, especially at this early stage, is incredibly cheap, quick, informal and easy to do. You just need to show five people the plan/site map of the website and ask them:
Â? What’s the point of this website?
Â? If you were on this page, where you would click?
Â? And where after that?
Â? Is it what you need?
That’s it! As long as these five people roughly fit into your user profile everything should be fine. It’s been shown that using five people for a usability test will uncover 85% of the usability issues of the website.
Generating the web site’s development plan
Now write down a detailed plan to spell out how the above will be delivered, who does what and when. Include schedule and budget information. There is plenty of project management software to help with this or just write it!

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Blogs or Websites. What method is the best choice for you to make legitimate money online? Blogging has become a popular Internet marketing method and a large number of people are focusing on it to help them become financially successful. However, running your own money making website is still the most powerful way to earn a steady flow of income because of it’s strong advantages over blogs. But, before you count them out, blogs can still be used as a very important promotional tool for your online home business.

Blogging is a good way to earn a legitimate income online. The popularity of blogging has increased tremendously ever since the potential money that can be made was realized. Search engines visit blogs frequently because they love fresh content. Unfortunately, if a blog is not updated periodically it can easily tumble in the search engine rankings and lose it’s popularity. Providing fresh content to blogs can be a tedious and non-stop task for any individual to undertake. Posting every single day is necessary for a blog to compete in cyberspace as thousands and thousands of blogs are created daily.

Having your own website is still the preferred method of generating legitimate money online. Blogs will always exist, but even the most experienced bloggers who earn money realize that owning a website becomes a necessary investment. Because blogs depend strongly on new and consistent posts, they can fade away quickly if left neglected. With websites, the traffic you get is not dependent on how frequent you update it. Websites that have not been refreshed with new content in months, even years, can still bring in visitors.

Like fine wine, websites get even better with age. Search engines consistently rank older websites better than newer ones and this means more increased traffic with time. Traffic is the blood of online businesses; without it, they can’t thrive.

Many sites online offer blogging services for free. One major disadvantage of using these services is that you don’t really own the blog. This limits the things that you can do with one. If you have your own website, you have the freedom to change or modify it in any way that you please. A website offers you the ability to be creative in an unlimited number of ways.

Blogs and websites can compliment each other very nicely as well. If your heart is set on blogging, you can still invest in a website and blog about it. Now you are bringing traffic to your blog and to your website at the same time. By combining the two, you can substantially multiply the income potential for your Internet business. If you invest in your own website, then you can put your very own blog on it. Now you have complete control of your blog and website together in one nice tidy package that can effectively generate a powerful stream of income.

For any serious online entrepreneur, owning a money making website is a necessity because it maximizes the potential income that can be earned on the Internet. Though blogging is a great tool for promoting your online business, it shouldn’t be used alone to produce money online. It should be used with your own website to ensure that your business’s profits are being generated at it’s full potential. Money making websites can be surprisingly

affordable. You can invest in a fully functioning one with little or even no money at all. Take advantage of everything a website can offer your home business right now. Good luck to you and your success!

If you’re planning to build a brand new web site for your business, SEO should not be an afterthought; you need to think about it right from the beginning, along with your site’s content. The first and the most important part of an SEO campaign is keyword research. You need to research for keywords which your target audience might use to search for your products or services.

Once you are done with your keyword research, you now need to build your website’s content around it. Keywords really need to be in the body of your content in order to be noticed by the search engines. There are various techniques we need to follow in terms of keyword placement.

The biggest mistake people generally make is putting up “under construction” pages onto the live site. You would never want search engines to index a blank page. Always take your site live when you have real and original content on all the pages.

The next thing is getting a search engine friendly URL structure. Always try to keep the URL structure simple and always try to keep all your website pages closer to the root directory. Search engines like clean and simple static URLs. Try to name your pages according to the keywords targeted on those pages. Search engines really like keywords in URLs.

All websites should have a well defined site navigation that makes it easier for both a visitor and a search engine spider. Try to link your pages from other pages on the website. Ideally you should provide as many ways as possible to search engine robots to spider your website. A textual sitemap containing links to all the pages (or to the important pages) is one thing that every website must have.

In addition to a textual sitemap one other technique that you can use to make sure all your pages are indexed in the search engines is a search engine sitemap (or an XML sitemap). It lists all the pages of your website in XML format. Earlier search engines required you to manually submit these sitemaps but recent changes by the search engines allow you to just mention the location of the XML sitemap in the robots.txt file and then search engines can automatically pick the sitemap from there.

These all are some basic tips but if you really are serious about making it big on the web you will need to consult a good internet marketing company who can provide you all kinds of services which can improve your overall presence on the web.

Olive Global is a website promotion company and search engine optimisation company offering cutting edge web promotion services that offer higher return on investments.

As a principle in a website promotion company for over ten years I have looked at thousands of web pages with an eye to marketing the sites.  Many of these websites have been designed well and were ready for mainstream advertising right from the start.  However, a surprisingly large number of these sites had errors that, if not corrected, would actually prevent potential customers from ever buying anything or contacting anyone.

As a rule, people love the design phase.  It’s creative.  It’s often the beginning of a new venture or a new angle on an existing one.    It is an enjoyable process and can result in a great representation of your company.  However, three factors are often forgotten in the heat of creative passion: Your website is foremost a promotion and marketing tool and must communicate much in the same way as a brochure or advertisement; to keep the interest of visitors and search engines website design and development must be a continuing process; you must not spend all your money on the design and leave nothing left for promoting your site.

Beauty of design will never counteract errors in basic site development.  There is no excuse in going live with a site that has hyperlinks that don’t link, unreadable text, unclear navigation or missing contact information.  Paying to promote such a site is obviously a huge waste of money.  But worse than that it makes it appear Internet marketing does not work when, in fact, with a clear and functioning website it could boom that business.

With regards to the second factor, website design as a continuing process, you must make sure you have a designer you can work with.  If you don’t have an in-house webmaster (or webmistress) ensure the one you pick to design your site is easy to get in contact with, gives you a quick turn-around time, respects what you have to say and does not charge so much you are afraid of making changes or additions to your site.  Do things to your site to keep it interesting, add new products, change descriptions, write articles or newsletters and put them up on the site, create a blog. The more your site changes the more likely people will be to revisit and the more frequently the search engines will crawl your pages. 

One more point regarding the actual design of your site… All sites need not be created equal.  A website designed for an insurance company, law firm or department store will need to be larger and “official” looking than a site for a local landscaper, restaurant or tutoring service.  And, of course, there are sizes and styles of sites that fall in between. 

For instance, a few months ago we started advertising the site of a local chimney sweeping company.  The company owner created the website by using one of the free templates available on the net.  The site looked homespun.  In fact, it looked a whole lot like it had been designed by a chimney sweep.  It did, however, contain all the information a visitor would need to decide to use the service and contact the company.  It had the company’s location, the business owners name, phone number, email address, when he could be reached, the price of the service, and his qualifications.  The site was friendly, completely un-ostentatious, and had all the needed contact info.  With a very inexpensive local advertising campaign in Google and one in Yahoo his business boomed.  His conversion rate was huge and he has had to hire help based solely on his Internet promotion.  I am certain that with an overly designed, less homey site he would not have gotten the results that he has.  The point is, let your site properly reflect your business and its native personality.  This alone can help with the results you get with your online advertising efforts.

Keeping the above factors in mind any enterprise from a small local shop to a multimillion dollar international business can benefit from Internet marketing and promotion.

Have you ever tried to create your own website but ended up banging your head against the wall in frustration after just a few hours?
Well, it’s highly unlikely that the fault is yours – the problem usually rests with the software you are using.
The menus can be numerous and complicated, and the features that you want to include seem incredibly complicated to implement. What’s worse is that the Help Sections and user manual are written in a way that assumes a Computer Science degree is held by the user.
If this has been your experience when you set out to create your own website – banish it to history.
It’s not that you can’t master this technology, and its not that you are missing something.
The reason is that when the group of computer programmers were making that program, they made the mistake of making it for people like themselves.
Fortunately website design has been made much more user-friendly with a new generation in software, created with the man in the street in mind. While ease of use is a key selling point however, don’t make the mistake of believing you are buying second-rate products.
Quality website building products will include valuable tools that can be utilized as your experience warrants it.
When you pick a web design program, look for one that was designed from the ground up with an intuitive interface.
A lot of programs have been gradually evolving for years and are mired in the past and in tradition. But, you can avoid that problem by choosing a web design program that was specifically designed to be used by the average person.
Don’t worry about all those individual lines of code, high quality web design programs are designed with a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) philosophy. What you see on your monitor as you go through the website building process is exactly what will appear on your website.
Good web design programs are as easy to use as a word processor. When you open a new document, you start typing and when you’re done, you know exactly how that document will look when you print it up.
This is the same way a WYSIWYG user interface creates web pages. Should you choose to, it is possible to examine the html code, but its certainly not necessary.
And, the top program comes with a guided tutorial. As soon as you install the program, you can get to work going through the included tutorial. A good tutorial for a comprehensive website building program should take around 2 hours to introduce you to the key features.
So what’s stopping you? Why not create your own website today?

Selecting a domain name – Domain name provides an identity to a website. It confirms your space on the internet as it denotes the name of your website that is entered by a user in search box to land on your site. For instance- yahoo.com, sujivan.org, usa.net and so on. Usually the user should opt for a domain name that ends with .com, .net or, org. These are the most common extensions used by the surfers. Many companies offer domain names at discounted rate, so keep an eye on online discounts if you want to purchase domain name at discounted price.

Web Hosting – Every website that is being launched requires a web hosting for database support and web application. Many service providers offer free web hosting service, this should be avoided and instead go for companies providing this service by taking some nominal monthly fees. Otherwise chances of the host offering free web hosting to put up their banner on your site is there which may prove harmful for your business. If the user does not have much traffic they can go for shared hosting and when increases switch on to solo web hosting traffic.Website design and development – Next step is to hire a professional web designer to design your site. Take a note that the designer should have knowledge of HTML which is basic requirement for web designing. If you desire increased traffic to your site make sure that it is pleasant looking, fast downloadable and dynamic. Once web design part is complete then move for website development. Hire a professional web developer to develop advance functionality of your website.

Content creation – Content management and creation is one of the most important aspects of any website. It can be considered as heart of any site, as relevant information, goals, objectives, discussions, etc fall under the content category. Can you imagine any website without content? Not possible, it’s the backbone of every site whether personal or commercial. The content should be to the point and relevant, devoid of any grammatical errors.

Search engine optimization – To get increased traffic to your website, it is essential that it is visible in first or second page of major search engines like Google, msn and yahoo. This can be done by search engine optimization of certain keywords that the user is likely to enter in the search box. Higher rank in the search engine lands more visitors at your website. You can hire an SEO expert or give this work to your web development company who has this facility.

Thus these were certain essential key steps for starting up a successful website. These are followed by other website enhancing tools like online marketing, multimedia designs, graphics, flash, ecommerce web design, database application, logo design and website maintenance.

Finally, you decided to have your own website. Congrats! For this wise decision, after all you accepted that a website is the vital need for every business. Now you must be planning your further steps in order to build a website for your individual or business use. Your website will create a different identity for your existing business, and will make you more competitive in this cutthroat business environment. Once you have your website, you will be able to brand yourself more effectively.

Your Inputs for Website

To have a website you need to digitize your business plans, and existing information regarding your business, like service offered by you, your specialty products, areas of operation, targeted customers, as well as mode of primary contact with potential customers. Therefore finalize everything from your side you need to have following things:

First two things (Domain Name and Web Space) are very important, because you cannot modify them very often. You can modify your design and contents anytime, but changing a domain or hosting service provider is a bit tough and tricky. Therefore, you need to be cautious while choosing a web hosting service provider.

How to Choose Domain Names

Your domain name is your actual online identity that represents you and your business both. Your existing customers and future prospective customers will know you by this name only, and you need to give extra attention behind choosing a domain name. Remember few things:

[Continued . . .]

It’s because you need to allow time for any corrections and overruns. Launching a site on a Friday usually doesn’t give you the chance to make those final checks, or accommodate last-minute changes. And nobody wants to rush-launch a site full of glitches, no matter how complex the project (from simple blogs to database driven websites).

Flexibility is your friend…

Every experienced designer knows that things change during the course of a project. A client might want to alter the site colour scheme. Maybe they want a new section added in the navigation. Instead of selling t-shirts online, maybe they now want to offer discount cheese.

Whatever the reason, clear communication and adaptability is key. If you’re a client and want something added or removed from the site, then designers should be informed as soon as possible – the job might take longer than you expect.

Similarly, designers need to try and offer honest and accurate estimates on time and cost for any amendments. It’s important to remember that your clients may not understand the technical side of things as much as you do.

Last minute changes take more than a minute…

Here’s a list of a few last minute change requests or delayed info that we’ve received from clients days before the target launch date. If you’re a designer, you can nod your head in sad recognition. If you’re a client, it’s worth bearing these in mind when you ask for final alterations.

- “I hear blogs are all the rage and I know we launch tomorrow, but – can I have one?”

- “Here’s the content for all of the web pages. Can we launch this afternoon now?”

- “I’ve sent you our brochures and leaflets in the mail. That should be enough for you to add content to the site, right?”

- “Here are all the images you wanted. You can choose your favourites from the 3000 in this file.”

- “Can I add these cool new applications to the homepage that I saw online this morning?”

- “Actually, I think we want to have green headers and a red logo.”

- “My boss hasn’t seen the design yet. I’ll just get it signed off before we launch this afternoon.”

- “Is there any chance that you could just quickly write some content for us for the ‘about us’ and ’services’ sections?”

- “We’ve decided we’d like to sell stuff directly online. Could you add a shopping basket?”

Consider this article as a plea for greater communication between all web designers, web design agencies and clients. And don’t get me wrong – designers can be as guilty of bad communication as clients can.

No matter how huge the project, how big the company or how short the timescale, keep the channels of communication wide open to help produce the best possible results. And for the sake of everyone’s sanity, never launch your new site on a Friday.

Today’s Internet is a lot different than it used to be. With new developments such as SEO and web standards, building websites the same old way just won’t cut it anymore. The W3C creates guidelines and regulations that designers strive to follow to make their sites as accessible and functional as possible. Compliance with W3C standards ensures that your site achieves its full potential across a range of systems. creates guidelines and regulations that designers strive to follow to make their sites as accessible and functional as possible. Compliance with W3C standards ensures that your site achieves its full potential across a range of systems. However, the W3C regulations continue to change everyday. Do these new rules and regulations on the Internet mean that your website has to suffer aesthetically? For more help to: www.inside-the-minds-of-winner.com.The answer is NO. With CSS web designers have the ability to do anything on the web, from browser compatibility to full control of all the aesthetics of any web page. CSS also gives a more solid foundation for SEO, usability, and compliance with web standards.

From a development aspect of web design, the first great advantage of cross browser compatibility. Every web designer has sat down at a foreign computer and opened one of their websites only to find that the layout is mangled. Everything is either in a different spot or not present at all. This happens because different Internet browsers, and even different versions of the same Internet browser, display websites slightly differently. Web designers are forced to test their builds on as many browsers as possible to minimize this problem. However, users constantly upgrade their computers and download new features to enhance their experience on the Internet. As a developer, you can never control all the variables, but you can eliminate the majority of the problems by using an extreme advantage when one considers that everything on the Internet is about usability. If the user is at ease and comfortable then they are more likely to return to your site, purchase your product, recommend your service to others, etc. If they get confused because the navigation moves or doesn’t function properly, they are more likely to move on to another site.

A website doesn’t have to be simple or boring to work properly. CSS does not limit the design graphically but instead gives the designer the power to create an aesthetically pleasing and fully functional website. If you took two identical designs and built one with tables and one table-less (CSS), the CSS site would have a higher usability across more platforms, For more information log to:www.dropshipping-made-easy.com. it would rank better with the search engines, and the overall performance of the website would be better. Graphically intense CSS layouts do take more time to think through and build out, but that is why I make custom websites. In the ever-changing online world, CSS-based sites are the most up-to-date and effective way to build W3C compliant websites that push the limits of design and function.