Web Site Development and Web Site Design

What You'll Need:

• Domain Name - the web address/url for your web site
• Web Host - a place to put your site on the internet
• Email Address at Your Domain (set this up yourself using the directions on this web site, have me do it, or have your computer technician do it for you)
• A Web Site - choose a professional developer or do it yourself
• For an ecommerce site, you'll also need:
  • a shopping cart
  • an internet merchant account
  • a gateway processor (online credit card processor)
• A Way to Drive Traffic to Your Site 
  (offline and/or internet marketing)

 
How to Get Started:

1. Determine the goal/purpose of your web site 

For example, do you want it to be a web site for the purpose of providing a business presence, customer service, ecommerce or some combination of things.  This is a very important step because you will save yourself time and money up-front by building a site in accordance with your goal/purpose.

2. Identify your target market

Are you selling to kids?  To business professionals?  Women only?  A certain age range?  To college students?  To athletes?

3. Brainstorm Content Ideas

Make a list of items/content you would like to have on your web site.  A standard web site will generally have, at minimum, the following pages:

• Home
• About Us
• Products (and/or Services)
• Resources (for link partners)
• Some photos and/or graphics

Other good pages to have on your site include:

• Email Opt-In Form (for permission based marketing)
• Testimonials

4. Prioritize your list

This will make things easier when you have to make time and money decisions about your site.

5. Design Preferences

Think about any desired look-and-feel aspects you might like on your site.  Do you have specific color preferences, do you want it to be bubbly and light-hearted, or sophisticated and business-like.  The answers depend on what you’re selling and your target audience.  Do you already have a business logo or corporate colors?

6. Gather Print Materials

Gather up anything you have which will supply the written content for your site and/or design preferences (e.g. brochures, forms, flyers, articles you’ve written, articles written about your business, testimonials, etc.)

7. Gather Photos

Gather any existing digital or paper photos you want to have on your site.  Take new photos as necessary.  You may want to hire a professional photographer to take photos.  There are photographers who specialize in "object" shots, "people" shots, "micro" shots, "moving" shots, etc.  Some business owners like to hire a professional photographer if they are building an online catalog of their products or an ecommerce site.

8. Hire a professional web developer to build your site. 

While you could quickly learn a software tool to construct a web site, unless you do some studying, you won’t know the first thing about usability issues, proper site structure, proper navigational flow, site design, page layout, search engine optimization, etc.

When you hire an ethical web developer to build a web site for you, the design ownership rights are transferred to you when you pay the bill.  However, some developers will try to retain the rights to the design of your web site, so read the development contract carefully.  In addition, if you buy a "web template" then you will not have the rights to the design (legal ownership of the design) of the web site that you build.

Realize you can do your business reputation more harm than good by putting a sloppy and/or homespun looking web site out there for people to see.  It’s better to have no web site than to have a detrimental one.

9.  Hire a professional to drive traffic to your web site.

If you want potential customers or clients to find you through your web site, then you need to get those people to your site.  Putting your web address on all of your print materials and other offline marketing is good, but to really drive traffic to your web site, you either need a big offline (traditional) marketing campaign (which is generally very expensive) or you need some internet (web) marketing.  A good internet marketing strategy can drive more traffic to your site than a traditional marketing campaign.