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All You Need To Know About Your Website Becoming A Reality

Why have a website?

There are many reasons one might want a website. The obvious reason is to advertise a business or service, but sometimes people like to set up a website for a personal event such as a birth or a wedding.

In 2005, The Office of National Statistics reported that 7 in 10 businesses have a website. The complexity of a website varies from place to place. Some just advertise services, others offer a product to be sold online. Most recently, we have seen social networking take off, with Facebook and MySpace heading up this revolution. The offshoot of this is the online audience expect more from their web experience - a more interactive experience online.

What are the advantages of advertising on the web?

For many, the main advantage is the cheap cost. The web can be as cheap as you like, particularly when you consider that the cost of a URL can be less than £10 over 2 years. Even setting up a way for customers to pay can be done relatively cheaply if you consider using schemes such as Paypal.

So I have my website, how do I get people to view/use it?

Depending on the nature of the site - personal sites tend to be used to share news and media such as digital photographs and therefore are advertised directly by the user in handing out the URL of the website.

For business sites, we can optimise the website so it comes near the top in search engines. This can be done via two methods - one is "natural" search, where the user may type in keywords such as "web design", "liverpool" and a search engine ranks the available information on the internet in order of relevance. The other method is via keywords, so you can bid for a keyword, such as "web design" and you pay a cost when the user clicks through to your site on your link and this "buys" you space at the top of the rankings (in the "Sponsored Links" box directly below Google).

You can also advertise on other web directories if you are offering specialist services such as plumbing or building, or via yell.com. The other avenue is if you are buying and/or selling is to advertise on e-bay and drive traffic that way. One must never forget that you can also use offline methods too to support your website, such as maildrops, and that you should also try to concentrate on your current customers and getting them to repeat visit.

What are the key things I should consider when thinking about having a website?

You should have solid answers to the following before thinking about creating a web presence:

How long will it take?

It depends on the specification of the website. It's not all about page-count - these days the art of using CSS to separate format from content means that the blueprint for a page can be knocked up fairly quickly and is instantly expandable. Consider the differences between a static site to advertise a service, such as holiday rental - versus a brief to supply an online booking facility for an alternative health practictioner. These would take very different times to do.

What's the process that you go through to build a site?

Each project will go through the following main stages


FREE Initial Consultation

A meeting to discuss the brief of the website build you require. Here we will discuss the objectives of your website and any special requirements (e.g. do you want to provide me with images/company logo etc, or do I need to create these?). We will also talk about domain names (the URL) and hosting options. You can choose to arrange the latter yourself if you wish, but I can advise on this also. We may also discuss what is required in terms of upkeep of the website after it is built.

Initial Proposal

I will then contact you with an initial estimate and proposal for the website build. If you are happy with this, I will expect 25% of the cost to be paid and I will then create an initial design for your approval (this may consist of several design options). The design will be discussed and then the final design will be agreed. At this point, it is about the look and feel of the website, not the content/copy.

Website Development

At this stage, a further 50% of the cost will be required. You will also need to provide me with the copy & content for the website, which ideally should be in electronic format. However, I do have scanning facilities should you require them.

Testing

The website will be tested on different browsers (Opera, IE6/7 and Firefox) to ensure it renders on each. Additionally, I will also ensure that the website passes the current web standards in XHTML and CSS.

Final Amendments and Signoff

After testing is complete, we will demo the website to you. Depending on the agreed arrangements made, the website will then go live and the remaining 25% of the cost is due.



© Emma Swift 2007-2009