Last update:

02/10/2007

Having your own website can be a very successful way to promote your business or organization; to provide information and resources to current and prospective customers, maintain customers and staff appraised of upcoming events and grow your business. Or it can be an expensive and time-consuming effort of little use.

The difference between one outcome and the other will depend on several factors, among them:

1-   Site design – complexity – ease of navigation – speed of loading – special effects – attractiveness / match to your audience.

2-   Amount of information displayed – frequency of update and relevancy.

3-   Ease of maintenance.

4-   Site familiarity (easy to know/use from first visit)

5-   Site usefulness to different audiences.

6-   Extent of interactivity (a – no interaction; b – feedback forms; c – email, feedback forms, applications, chat rooms, guest book, bulletin boards; d – combinations of c and customer support; e – above plus shopping cart technology; f – full interactivity).

7-   Amount/type of “general stuffing” – stock tickers, joke of the day, animated gifs, other things placed for entertainment but otherwise of no value to the business.

8-   Advertising of the website itself (site submission, web-rings, etc.)

Our Philosophy:

Your organization ought to have a website that advertises the products/services that you offer, provides information, is easy to navigate, intuitive to use, fast to load, provides good interactivity, has a consistent look and feel, is elegant, uncluttered, inspires confidence and exudes professionalism. A well-designed site should be easy to build and maintain.

Unfortunately, many website owners and designers seem intent on displaying their skills and technology rather than achieving their goals. Such websites will be full of special effects, pop-up ads, links to anything and everything, flash animations, navigation that forces you to search for the information that you need, colors and buttons that change with each section, etc. The website itself then becomes the focus of attention and does not promote the business but rather it bores and frustrates the user.

Accordingly, we would suggest the following steps in building your website:

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Set-up

1. Choose website name and register it (minimum is 2 years). Provide a contact person that we can work with during development. Contact person must be able to represent you and make final decisions. 

2. Choose website host. Pay for a year.

3. Should you desire special services, you’d choose a provider of special services at this point (such as guest book, chat room, bulletin board, web-rings, jokes, etc.) This way you don’t maintain them. These types of services provide an elegant solution that is maintainable even by inexperienced webmasters. This is better than using your own Java code to add these services to the site. The choice is between free services with ads, or ad-free services. The services would be contracted for at this stage but not set-up (configured).

4. Set up the site with Webmaster as administrator.

Payments to third parties will be the responsibility of your organization whether you make them or we make them on your behalf after obtaining permission. As a minimum you can expect to pay for website name registration, set-up and hosting. This process takes about 3-4 business days.

Discussion and Definition

E.   Choose sections to have (these can be changed later but this is the skeleton of the site.) Ignore order for now.

1.   Index or homepage

2.   Page listing of all services/products (programs/classes)

3.   One page per services that are related (or more if there is too much info for one page)

4.   Pages for other offerings/ services

5.   Calendar

6.   Special events – highlights mentioned in the home page

7.   Specials, coupons, promotions, discounts

8.   Location/map/hrs of operation – Meeting times

9.   Feedback form(s).

10.  Application/membership form (s).

11.  On-line payment form (needs discussion as this item will increase your costs of website maintenance, hosting, set-up, secure server access, credit card company or bank surcharge, etc.)

12.  Guest book

13.  Bulletin Board

14.  Chat room

15.  Company information, history, human interest

16.  Current staff and qualifications (w/pictures it is friendlier)

17.  General stuffing: joke of the day, Bible verse of the day, recommend-it forms, instant messaging, web-rings.

18.  Advertisers or sponsors page (or throughout the site)

19.  General interest pages: history of the organization, liability statement, policies and procedures, rules, documents of interest, statistics or charts, membership requirements.

20.  Links to other websites, national and state organizations

21.  Tips and Tricks

22.  Frequently asked questions

23.  Jobs at your organization (application, interview form, etc)

24.  Store offerings – pictures, prices

25.  Facility rental or sharing

26.  Schedule of classes – summary page with prices

27.  Thank you page (for submitting a form, application, etc)

28.  Facilities and equipment (with pictures, descriptions)

29.  Endorsements – National, local, BBB, Chamber of Commerce, VIPs

30.  Alumni opportunities for involvement

31.  Gift certificates

32.  Benefits of membership, etc – sell it

33.  Secure area – for staff only, password protected, contains pages on security, schedules, etc.

34.  Visitor program, Bring-a-friend, etc

35.  Newsletters

36.  Mailing list for newsletters / special events / other

37.  Recent events / pictures / etc

38.  What’s new

39.  Polls/Questionnaires

40.  Photo center/Albums (to post and to share)

41.  Activities of the organization, pictures, sign-up sheets

F.   Choose a navigation style (we prefer a very flat navigation so that the user can see at a glance most of the offerings and nothing is hidden.)

G.   Choose a theme – this applies to colors, buttons, lines, overall look and appearance. We use Microsoft Front Page to build sites and have accumulated over 200 themes. Additional themes can be obtained if you don’t like these. All themes can be personalized and all theme colors can be changed. Good chance you’ll find something you like.

The steps above can be done completely by you or by us. We would suggest a collaboration so that you get a website that is truly yours as opposed to our opinion of what you ought to have. We would meet with as much of the actual information as possible (fliers, pictures, documents, old ads, posters, people) so we can represent you properly. We’ll define together what information is needed for each section of the site.

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Building the Website

H.   We will create the website skeleton with all pages selected, forms, applications, theme, colors, buttons, navigation, sections, basic services (un-configured), task list is generated, list of remaining documents/info needed is updated. Real content is minimal at this point. It can be loaded to the Internet for you to get the full experience of this skeleton.

I.     You look at the site and make “final” decisions on theme colors, sections, structure, etc and provide all information for those pages.

Please note that we can type documents, take pictures, interview people, look at your prices, work from fliers, etc. but that will be more expensive to you. Please provide electronic files, pictures, logos, etc to reduce your costs. The more you provide, the cheaper and faster it will be to build your site.

J.   Website building. It will be loaded to the net after every major step. You’ll receive updates of what pages changed, hours worked, next steps and any missing information. Last minute changes can be made. How much progress we are able to make depends on the information you have provided, how many and what type of pages you choose, how much typing we have to do, etc.

K.   Website customization, special effects, pop-up ads, secure areas, service customization, java effects, DHTML, etc. This is Website polishing. How long this step takes depends on the ready availability of information, special effects, services, etc. With close communication surprises should be minimal. Upon final payment, you will receive a copy of all the files on a CD-Rom and website administration and name will be transferred to the person of your choice.

L.   Search Engine Submission. Top 15 manually and other 300 automatically. 

Maintenance

M.   Website maintenance can be done on a per hour basis. How much this costs depends on the frequency of changes, number of pages to change and so on. If we do the maintenance we’ll ask for about 72 hr notice although things will probably be updated before that.

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Other Considerations

Our philosophy is that keeping the website simple is more elegant, easier and faster to do, easier to maintain (by us or others), faster loading and does not wear out the patience of your customers. If you wish to play (special effects, etc.) do so primarily in areas that have low traffic, not in the home page, calendar, schedules and prices, or other important areas. Most people connect to the Internet at an average speed of 36.6 kbps, will view your site on a 15” monitor with a 450 MHz Windows 95/98 PC. Average home page visit is 30 seconds. That means you have 30 seconds to capture their interest or they are gone! Don’t waste that on special effects that impress no one.

For all steps we will use a spreadsheet to calculate how much time/cost has been accumulated. You’ll find that we are methodical and fast, however it is not our intention to give you a “deal” or to take anything from you... we simply seek a balance that should satisfy everyone. We’ll keep you abreast of expenses and progress on the days we work on the site. You will be able to see this progress on the web by visiting your site as it is built. With every email you will receive a link to the website itself while other visitors will be taken to a page that advertises the website under construction but does not allow them to see the actual website. At deployment, this extra page is removed and they’ll be able to see the website.

You can have a good size website, full of information, entertaining to visit and useful as a “recruitment tool” in a very short time. Whether it is for e-commerce or for entertainment we can provide a solution. 

Juan Guerra

President

Website-Techs.Com

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