February 2010
Web Site Insights: Basics for Building Your Web Presence
Know yourself; know your audience; know your competition. These three points began Susan Marx and Michael Tanimura's presentation on Website Insights: Basics for Building Your Web Presence.
Potential clients spend only seconds on your web page before moving on to their next search result, so you need to convey a great deal of information on your home page. If you are new to building websites, you may want a website design agency to help you provide pertinent information to your audience in an appealing, memorable way.
Good website design agencies will:
1. Assess your business and marketing goals.
2. Help you to register a domain name.
3. Review the websites of your competitors with you, noting likes, dislikes, and trends.
4. Provide you with potential site architecture and wireframes.
5. Create your home page and its interior pages based on your input.
6. Test your website on various browsers and operating systems. Note: Mozilla Firefox is the best browser, but your website should also be tested on Internet Explorer (PC) and Safari (MAC) because those are the browsers that your clients will probably be using.
7. Tell the hosting service to activate your website. (Your website will go live within 48 hours after activation.)
8. Train you to update the website, preferably with intuitive software like WordPress or Drupal.
Finally, websites don't market themselves. You should add your website address to the contact information on your e-mail signature and business cards. You should also include your website address when you contribute to pertinent blogs or message boards.
Michael and Susan offered the following website-building tips for consideration:
• Privacy issues. Do not put anything on your website that is not yours unless you receive permission from the publisher to do so. Also, do not put anything on your website that you do not want people to steal for their own purposes (because they will).
• Domain Names. Do NOT look to see if a domain name is available on professional domain search-engines (godaddy.com, networksolutions.com) UNLESS you are willing to purchase the domain name on the spot. Otherwise, someone is likely to buy the name and then sell it to you for more money than it was originally worth. If you want to check a domain name’s availability, just type it into your browser.
• File Formats. PDFs are the preferred format for downloadable static content, but you can also use .DOC (MS Word). You should post sounds as .MP3, and videos as .FLV.
Whether you are building a website on your own or with an agency, it is important to analyze yourself, your audience, and your goals before you begin. Once your website is activated, you need to actively promote the site by including your web address in all your correspondence. Of course, you wouldn’t hurt your chances of getting more hits by using a website design agency like Silver Image Creative or Susan Marx Design.
Kim Mackey is currently a part-time freelance editor and a full-time job sleuth who hopes to become part of a Chicago editorial team very soon. She can be reached at kmackey25@gmail.com.