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Website 101

Technology is a wonderous thing. Not more than 10 years ago, it would take weeks for letters to go overseas, today because of technology (thank you Bill Gates) within seconds a letter can be fired off and sent to someone clear across the globe.

Do you remember the days when a buyer would come to your home after seeing your site in front of your farm, or they heard about you from Farmer Jones down the road?

With a website, you are able to communicate to buyers and sellers all over the globe. However, there are some things that you may want to consider when having a website built.

What is a URL?

A URL is basically your address on the World Wide Web. It can take the form of your farm name, goat herdname, or any other combination of words that you put together. A domain name is a specific URL that you buy to use. An example of this would be www.goattalk.net.

How to Buy a Domain?

A domain name is purchased from a company called a Registrar. There are many of these companies who buy and sell domain names on the WWW kindof like buying up real estate. A Registrar will set a price, and the buyer (you) will pay the money to use the domain name for each year you pay for.

Some Registrars charge a lot more money than other companies do. Paying more money does not mean that the company is providing more of a service. In my experience, the expensive domain companies usually have poor customer service!

I recommend a company called Godaddy. This company charges $8.95 a year (unless they are running a special) for .com domain names. This is an annual payment, and when you order you can pay for more than one year at a time.

What is Hosting?

Hosting is the service required to view your new domain name on the world wide web. You can think of it as property, and your domain name as your address. You need to have property in order for your address to work.

There are many different companies that offer a hosting service. Each company offers different services. The prices can range from free on up to $40-50.00 per month. For most websites, the free and very inexpensive hosting works just fine.

Hosting is going to be a requirement for your website, so be sure to budget for that.

A few free hosting companies are: (This is not a recommendation)

Geocities
Freewebs
Freeservers

A few inexpensive hosting companies that I have worked with in the past:

GoDaddy.com
Freeservers
Linksky osting

The design:

Once you have ordered your domain name and hosting, you can either get to work on designing your own website or you can hire someone to create a website for you. Please see my article on choosing a web designer for tips on selecting the right designer.

Many of the web hosting companies that you will find have a page builder program built in so you can design your website without having to know the HTML language. If you are a beginner that is a great way to get started. There also are programs available such as Frontpage that you can get started with. I don't recommend Frontpage for people with elaborate websites because there are gliches in the program itself that enables hacking.

There are a few things you need to keep in mind when designing your own website:

Graphics and Photos: You need to make sure that the graphics and photos you use are not copyright protected by anyone other than yourself, or you have permission to use. Credit should be given for photos and graphics. If you are using graphics designed by a company, most require a link on each page for using their graphics. Be sure you follow the graphic artists Terms of Service prior to use.

You do not want to have too many photos per page because that will slow down the loading process of the page. Try testing the load time before committing to using a number of photos. I would start out with 5 or 6 photos. If you keep the size to rougly 250 pixels, you should not have a problem with load time.

Text: You should always use common fonts because not everyone can view the fancy fonts. Make sure that your text is a color that is easily read with the background you have chosen. Check out your website on other browsers such as Internet Explorer, AOL, and Netscape before publishing to make sure that it views the same. When building your site on a program, the site may look different than when it is actually uploaded to the web.

Contact info: You always want to make sure your contact information is on the front page of your website. Most people who access your website are going to want to find out where you are located quickly. If you do not feel comfortable having your telephone number and address listed, an email address link and the city and state where you live would be appropriate.

Navigation: Navigation on a website is one of my pet peeves. I like websites to be very easy to navigate through. Pop up ads, cluttered front pages, and buttons you have to hunt around to are big no nos. A nice simple website with navigation buttons or pull down menus are going to bring you more business than a complex website.

Keep in mind that most people visit a website with a mission to look for something, and if they cannot find it right away, they leave. Average time on a website is a minute or less, unless the person can find what they are looking for.

Backgrounds and animations: Backgrounds should be pleasing to the eye, with chosen colors that will work well with the text coloring. You should try to avoid having a lot of animated graphics on your site because that will slow down load time.

Selling products: When selling products on your website, you want to make sure that you clearly describe the item, and provide an avenue for people to contact you.

Shopping Carts: Installing shopping carts on a website can be very expensive. When using a shopping cart feature (other than Paypal) you are paying merchant account fees which can seriously cut into the profits of your business. You will want to check prices before you commit to a specific shopping cart program. The price paid for using the shopping cart is not a guarantee of a quality service!

Paypal: Paypal has a shopping cart feature that is free to use! The coding is fairly simple, and can be installed the same way the Buy it Now buttons are. The payments from buyers can be made via credit card, Paypal balance, or E-check. This is a great service because not everyone wants to use their credit card online. Having these options available help with what they call 'Point of Purchase' sales.

If you have questions about web design, or about how to get started. Feel free to send me an. I'd be happy to answer your questions.

© 2004-2008 Danielle Westvang :: All Rights Reserved