Website Tips

Why have a website? ~ Do YOU really need one? (YES)

There are many reasons. Do you break out in a sweat just thinking about it? Here's help...

Where do you start?

Here are some questions you should ask yourself, along with some possible answers. By all means, right down your answers as you go along. Now is as good a time as any to do some brainstorming and preplanning.

1. What do you want from your web site?

2. What type of web site do you want or need?

3. What kinds of people do you expect to visit your site? We're talking demographics here.

4. What type of content do you want on your site?

5. Do you already have a logo, color scheme, graphics, photos etc. that can be used on your web site?

6. Do you feel you can update the information on your web site by yourself to keep it current, or will you need help with website maintenance?

This will entail the use of software of some sort to access your web site files in order to edit the content. You need to keep your content fresh, so visitors have a reason to come back.

7. Are you willing to find your own host for your web site, or do you need your designer to do that?

A host is a company that allows you to upload your website to their servers, so it can be accessed on the internet. There are many of them out there, and they have different benefits and pricing structures.

What to expect.......

First of all, you should be asked for your budget, and you should be prepared to give it! Don't let this turn you off about a web designer. They need to know going into the project what your budget is, so they don't spend a lot of time working up a proposal for something you can't afford.

This is really important for those of you who don't really 'know' what you want or need. If you can tell your designer what an approximate budget is, they will be able to tell you up front before you go any further, what you can expect to receive for your investment.


Secondly, don't be surprised when you are handed a contract. It's pretty standard, and in fact you should expect one. A contract not only protects the designer, it protects you. You should know what to expect going in, and this should eliminate, or at least minimize, surprises as the project progresses.

Speaking of progress, you should also be given some idea of the steps that will be involved, and the time frame to completion. It usually involves an information gathering session, some roughing out of the site and info, (at this point you might see a story board or a flow chart showing the proposed layout and navigation of your site) a chance for you to make revisions, a temporary site on the internet for you to review, a chance to make revisions, and then the final site.


Depending on the complexity of your site, you may expect to make a deposit up front, and periodic payments at specified points of the process. If it's a small site, it'll probably just be a deposit and final payment.

And be prepared to pay more than your initial proposed costs if you make changes to the original contracted web site plan.

More = More! If you owned a store, and a customer finished checking out, and then came back in and decided they needed a couple more things, are you going to give it to them for free, or are you going to charge them? That's what I thought.


Listen to your web designer, please! You are paying for his or her expertise, and if there is something you don't agree with or don't understand, ask him/her to either explain it to you, or to show you. Do keep in mind that on the other side of the coin you do have some responsibility to educate yourself.

You're not paying for a crash course in website design. If you want a web site, you don't need access to a computer, and you don't even need to know how to use one. However it does help, and in the event you do know how to use one and have access to one, there's a ton of free information out there.

If you don't know where to look, your designer more than likely can give you a couple places to get you started. You are paying for a web site design, not a web design education. It's really no different than hiring a mechanic or lawyer. You may have questions and want some things explained, but I doubt you're going to tell them how to do their jobs, or you may end up looking for another one.

Be sure to ask your designer if any site maintenance is included in the price you are quoted. This site maintenance, if provided, usually is for minor changes or updates to the site during an introductory period, fine tuning you might say.

Best advice..... Keep It Simple!!

You can add to your site as time goes on. However, if you expect to have a rather large retail or similar site before it's all over, you need to plan for that from the beginning. You'll save time, money and hair in the long run. Just one more reason to be up front with your designer.

So how do you get visitors to your site?

The first thing you should do, is get your website address on all of your printed material, such as business cards, brochures, print advertising, and also on any TV advertising you do, and on your answering machine. If you have a customer mailing list, by all means send out a postcard or special announcement about your new website!

Next you need to get your site ready for the search engines. Then you submit your site.

This is called Search Engine Optimization. When you want to find something on the internet, you go to a search site, and type in what you are looking for, and the 'search engine' tries to find it for you.

Search Engine Optimization

In a nutshell, Search Engine Optimization (SEO as it's generally called) means preparing your site by various means so the search engines will be favorable in ranking your site and people can find you.

Check out the glossary link in the upper right column to get an explanation of these foreign words, and probably more than you ever wanted to know. Then come back and let's talk.

Basically what ranking means, is when someone does a search for something, a search engine may come up with 25,000 hits. Depending on how they ranked your site, you may get a link on page one, or on page 200, or even farther down. And not too many people are going to surf on down to page 200. So you want a good ranking. (A smaller number means better ranking. We'd all like to be #1 on page 1 )

Why you should care:

A lot of it is technical mumbo jumbo that you don't really need to concern yourself with. But it's good to know the basics about SEO, so you at least have an idea of what you are getting.

There are several search engines and robots that crawl, index and scan your site. They are basically looking for your URL, your page title, headings, keywords in your content etc. If these things are consistent within your page, and throughout your site, you get a higher ranking.

Search engines are getting smarter and smarter, so don't try to fool them. If they catch you using false pretext, they may not only give you a low rank, they may completely de-list you.

There are free listings, and you can also pay to get a guaranteed listing much sooner. You can even pay to have your site reviewed sooner, but get no guarantee you'll be listed. Free listings can take anywhere from weeks to months, and you may not get listed at all! Your designer will ( should ) be happy to help you with this if you don't want to take on the whole process.

There are also sites on the internet that appear to specialize in this area, as well as software which claims to submit your site to several search engines and directories. I have no experience with any of the pay for listings or submission software, so I have no recommendations there, other than to say it's generally better to have your site submitted individually.





Getting your business website up and running will hands down be the best advertising investment you could make this year. It's the gift (so to speak) that keeps on giving.