General
Site Design Parameters -
I have compiled a list of general designing considerations and you may also use the links further on down on this page to research these in as much depth as you care to pursue. Practical consideration of the steps involved in production are presented in the Mahati worksheet.
Document Requisites: 3 Catagories
Simple, single page documents -
Flyers, invitations, posters, personal web pages and the like need to be carefully constructed if they are to fully manifest the effect the client desires. All the page's elements such as fonts, color, layout, images and text need to be chosen with an eye to how they contribute to the atmosphere. The HTML and CSS languages used in structuring the page need testing for conformity in print and adaption to browsers on the internet.
Complex structured documents -
In addition to the above considerations, more extensive productions such as brochures, bulletin boards, chat rooms or mail order sites will need to be concerned with such things as ease of navigation in-page and out, site page loading speeds and copy that is geared to the algorithms of search engines and the vocabulary of the searcher.
On-line commerce websites
Here we add to the above; scripting to handle shopping cart capabilities, document construction that allows ease in changing product listings and considerable market research to optimize competitive factors.
Getting A Website On-line
Registration -
Once your web site is built and ready to publish on the
internet it will be necessary to pay a registry service
somewhere about $35US/year to assign a unique address and
name for your site. This is what is termed a URL. For
instance, mine is www.mahati.net
Whoever is hosting your site can arrange this for you.
Hosting -
If you are reading this on a computer you already are using an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who is, for a certain fee, making your connection to the internet and providing a space and format to receive and write e-mails. Most ISPs also offer the further but similar service of hosting web pages, providing a space on their computer where you can post your site and access it so that you can make changes to it. They generally charge additional fees for business sites that vary according to the technical servicing requirements. Simplest personal pages may not require any additional fee but they will place your name under their address and may also insert an ad on your page. A small organization that just wishes to display its services and be ad-free and have its own address with a few frills and conveniences will be paying something like $10US/month . Business sites for on-line commerce requiring complex programming and maintenance can run $100US/month and up.You may find that you want one company as an ISP to link to the internet and another that you like better to do the site hosting.
.Promotion -
Fine; you have finally got it together, after all that
work and money, and have your home page sitting there
comfortably in cyberspace. But now who is going to come
for a visit? How will they find you? How will they
discover that you are the very one they have been looking
for?
These questions were answered by your responses to my worksheet we used when your
web site was put together. During its construction, it
was oriented in all possible ways to be appealing and
accessible to your target audience. Now we just need to
make the final connection with them.
What needs to be done? For a small, personal (as opposed
to corporate) site, word-of-mouth is a big factor in
drawing people in. Also, keep referring to your site in
correspondences. Get your URL showing up on notices and
articles on subjects in your area. You can submit it free
to Google.com, the largest search engine and DMOZ.com,
the biggest directory. Yahoo.com, a large directory of
importance, will give a free listing to a non-profit site
but charges $300US else wise. The free listings take a
long time to be reviewed, often many months, with no
guarantee of inclusion. It is important to search around
for any small directories, groups or individual sites
that specialize in your field that will list a link to
your page. Major search engines such as Inktomi and
Google use popularity ranking systems that rate your
pages' listing priority based on how many good quality,
relevant web sites have links to your pages.This would be
true for both personal and corporate promotional
presentations.
For a commerce site, even though it may be well
optimized for search engine results, if your area has a
lot of competition of the same kind, it is chancy whether
you will pull consistently high ranking without paying
for inclusion with the major information
distributors.
Here we jump into the pool of paid advertisement schemes
and advertising budgets which is a large, complex subject
that requires a good bit of researching for the site
owner to be competent and is really too much for this
primer. Suffice it to say that after you have lured
someone to your site through your ads, the bottom line is
whether they are pleased with what they find when they
arrive.
It will take considerable time and patience and good
judgment to access all the publicity venues that will be
pertinent to your case. If it all seems too much, you can
hire professionals from about $50US/year and up (way up),
depending on the depth and extent of service.
So what is the minimum bottom line for all this? Using
my pricing, which is on the low side of mid-market
average, for a single page site you have spent $150US as
a one time expense. You will have to register the site
yearly for about $17-35US and should be paying (if you
aren't already) at least about $300 a year for ad-free
hosting. That's it, assuming you do your own promotion
and use only free submissions. For further information on
this area:
Bruceclay offers many services and excellent explanations.
Spiderfood is a complex but easily digested taste of search engine optimization criteria.
E-COMMERCE -
As mentioned above, the complexities of internet marketing strategies is really going beyond the basic website designing questions and into the realm of what the business can do with this tool once it is optimized for use in web commerce. For the rank novice I include a couple of introductory sites on the subject as well as my own brief overview. You need to know about this stuff before you put a site on line.
Straight-forward info on small businesses by Dr.Ebiz
PAGE DESIGN ELEMENTS:
.- HTML 4.01 Specification:
W3C standards
defined (technical).
Tutorials on aspects
of writing HTML documents.
Validation service's symbol of success!
(Links to CSS validator.) .
- Browser deviants:
Variations as analyzed at WebMonkey. .
- Color and copy strictures:
Color
topics. A great collection of links to good sources of
tutorials, articles and charts.
Color
chart. Well organized presentation with swatches arranged
by hue groupings.
Compatible
color schemes generated by colorschemer.com.
Typography tutorial by Webmonkey. .
- Navigation and searches.
Navigation:
The basics.
Spiderfood is a
complex but easily digested taste of search engine
optimization criteria. .
- Style of writing and design.
Websitetips'
links to many good references.
Mahati Communications General
description of the factors involved in how we do it
here.
.
GENERAL REFERENCES:
Dictionary of
associated terms.
Elements of proper site
design.
WebsiteTips.com
WebMonkey.com
This page validates as error free
Cascading Style Sheets writing.
This page validates as error
free HTML4.01 mark up writing.