How do I go about building my website ?
We are on hand at all times to help you prepare your website,
but the list below should help.
1. Choose a domain name
2. At the earliest stage possible think about taking any pictures
that could help your site. Pictures of you are normally better showing you
interacting with clients or staff rather than the usual frozen passport
photo look. One client sent me a photo of him on the ski slopes as he thought
he looked good. Please!
3. Look at other websites in your sector to get some ideas
about what works for you and what doesn't. This is a good way of getting
good ideas from your competitors, and after all, who's interested in re-inventing
the wheel !?
4. Now your website is starting to take shape, map out your home
page with links to the other pages. A basic website should have
a home page, contact us, and product pages. If you want to promote your
site a links page is a must, and its a good idea to have some helpful pages
such as FAQs (frequently asked questions).
5. Think about how your customers see you. If credibility
is important then you'll need pages such as 'About us', 'Our philosopy'
& 'Mission statement'. If you are customer oriented it might be a good
idea to have printer friendly pages. If you want to show your technical
or design expertise it might be an idea to have some tasteful pop-ups or
design features.
6 . Think about which key phrases you want to use in your
site, then when you write your text make sure thay are present in the text.
7 . Write out your home page text, as well as text for
each of your pages, on your word processor or any digital format. Think
about what information you want to solicit from your contact forms and write
that out as well. Check your text for spelling mistakes and grammar, as
badly written copy will give a poor impression to your readers, and search
engines tend to penalise badly presented sites.
8 . If you are providing the photos for your site you'll
need to either take them with a digital camera, or scan them in. For sharpest
resolution take them with manual focus rather than auto, and watch out for
shadows. If possible take them outside agaist a white background. Best results
for the website are obtained if you make all the photos the same size. Once
you have done this they need to be optimised for the web. Thumbnails should
be about 5k, and large pics no more than 40k. Remember, your total page
size should not exceed 60k.
9 . Send your text and photos either by email attachment
or by disk, and that's that !