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Right so you have a product that you are wanting to promote or your next great business idea. You are ready to get started and call up a hosting provider and all you get is this techno garbage that you just don't understand. Worse still, you feel that you are being told to buy this and to buy that, this will go great with your domain name. That will be excellent. Gee you have to have this. The Person that you speak to on the other end of the line seems to be talking at a million words per second and you finish up thinking that you did something right but the gut wrenching feeling you get is screaming at you... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE !!!! You want to understand everything but realise that hey you know nothing about domain names other than you believe that you need one. Once you have decided that you need a domain name you need to be aware of a few things. Keep It Short If you are going to get a domain name it is always a good idea to keep the name short and concise. If you were to tell other people what your website address is you don't want them yawning by the time you get to geeyouhaveareallybigmouth.com. If you disagree then try this, record your self or listen to yourself spelling out the above domain name. Try even repeating it 3 or 4 times. Most people will turn off before you are halfway through. don't even bother considering placing it on a business card. People will have trouble spelling it correctly as it is. Work Out What You Need A website is similar to a Billboard except that you have have multiple pages. One for each product that you are wanting to sell. Describing the product. Or you could have one page for each catagory that you deal in and have multiple products in that same catagory. That said you don't have to go overboard.You probably know which products are your best sellers as it is. If not then get some feed back. Run a survey. Do some further research into what you are going to sell. If you are starting out then you might like to start with the basics and then build it up. Keep your page easy to read. Get 5 people or trusted customers that you know to have a look and get their feedback. YOU DONT HAVE TO MAKE THE CHANGES THAT THEY STATE. Just take on board their feedback then take a break and think about it. After an hour or 5 have a look at your site again then consider what they said. If their suggestions have merit then use it. Avoide images that take too long to load. Use a 56k dial up modem then access your completed site... from any other computer than your own. If it takes too long (15 to 20 Seconds per image then this could be considered too long) to load up then chances are that your customers will not stick around to see it. For example: A starting page: This is the first point of contact in most instances. This needs to be kept to the point. This page should be used to direct customers to the products that you have to offer/sell. Tell your customers what you deal in and provide links to the products and pages on your site. Each link should end up at a completed page. Not a page that is a work in progress. A Contact Page: This can be a form that you can fill out or a straight text field. This provides confidence as people then know how to contact you. The About page: This page provides information to your customer about you or your company. You can place this information on your starting page.... or contact page.... I do not recommend this. You dont need to have this page in place but most people like to know a little bit of information. This page can also be used to supply information about new upcoming products of industry awards etc. Only place information on this page or any other page on your site that you want people to see. If you don't want people to see it then it is best not to place the information up on the website. Product Pages: This page or group of pages should detail your products and what they do. How they are useful to the customer. You can have one page per product or multiple products per page. If you go for the latte then it is a good idea to have them listed in relevant catagories. Purchase page: For this page if you are needing online transactions then you will need to make this as secure as possible. Thus a Digital Certificate will be needed. This encrypts or if you will scrambles the Credit Card data to stop internet theives from using your customers Credit cards without authority. Another option to this is to have a Form contact page. This is similar except that you are not asking for Credit Card details. You are asking for the customers Contact information so that you will be able to take their order either via email or via telepone.......... yup.... these days it still pays to have one. It also allows you to make use of your silver tongue and find out more about your customers needs and sell them more products. A Site Map page: This page essentially is a map of your site. It will help people locate where they are wanting to go quickly if your website is quite large. This page contains links to each and every page on yoursite that you want people to be able to locate. |