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Deciding How to Build a Web Site

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Deciding How to Build a Web Site

If you build it will they come? It depends on how easy it is to find your Web site and how easy it is to navigate. There are companies on the Internet that will set up a four-page, full-color site with a limited amount of graphics and photos, up to fifty links, your own e-mail site, and navigation buttons for several hundred dollars. Typing service may be extra as will additional pages.

Most of their basic designs can be viewed on their Web site. They walk you through the process by asking you a series of questions about choosing color, images, text, and other options. Many of these companies will also host your site for a monthly fee and will update the site several times a month. If you do this, be sure to read everything carefully and ask questions before you begin. Ask for references so you can check other sites they created.

Web pages and product catalogs are intense undertakings. It took Amazon.com a year and millions of dollars to set up its Web site catalogs of two million books. To build a catalog of your inventory with Adobe Pagemaker and Photoshop, start simple. For example, use black-and-white photos and text and add color later. For a one-time cost of around $1,000 you can set up a catalog.

Here are some choices for establishing a Web site for your business.

  • Do it yourself by learning HTML—hypertext markup language—and translating your word-processed documents to the Web. There are many books available—some with CD-ROM—about how to do this, and your own computer software system may have the tools you need.
  • Search free Web pages at Yahoo.com and you may find some that are relevant to your business.
  • Use a software program like Front Page.
  • Ask your online service provider to help you. Some offer to help you set up a Web site for free by downloading a program. Call the provider’s customer service representative.
  • Establish free Web pages through services like GeoCities, which hosts more than a million home pages. They will give you a certain amount of disk space so long as you carry a GeoCities banner on your Web site.
  • Internet services, such as Web Wizard, Halcyon, and others, will lead you through the process of setting up a site.
  • Hire a professional Web site designer or design firm.

    What to Think About Before You Begin

    Whichever way you decide to set up a Web site, you need to devote a considerable amount of time and thought to planning before you begin. First browse through other business Web sites. With a critical eye, study the ones you like, those that you use yourself as well as those that you hate. And most important, check out the sites of your competitors or those in a similar business.

    When you look at these sites, think about what makes them attractive or unattractive, what makes them easy or difficult to navigate. Do the sites encourage you to dig deeper, or do they confuse you so that you want to get away? Then give yourself the retention test. Think about those sites the next day. Which ones do you remember? And what is it about them do you remember?

    The business owner needs to walk in his customer’s shoes. Before you build your Web site, consider what the site should accomplish and how it can do that. Your business Web site should instruct the visitor in a friendly way about how to use your site and how to read it. Here are some of the things to consider before you design the site.

  • How will your Web site look on a small or large screen? There are many screen sizes, from little fourteen-inch screens to the giant screens more than nineteen inches. It’s a good idea to design your site for a midsize screen.
  • How fast will it load into your customer’s computer? There are different connection speeds and if your site contains lots of complex graphics, some people will not be able to download the site, or they may have to wait so long for the site to appear on their computer screen that they will lose patience and leave.
  • Will all of the Web browsers be able to accommodate your site? There are many Web browsers and not all are compatible. Your site may not look the same on all of them.
  • How easy will it be to modify the Web site? Consider the time and cost involved in keeping your site up to date. This is another critical point: the site needs to remain interesting. Your customers want to know that your site was not last modified in 1996!
  • There should be something useful on every page.

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