American Webmastery Logo
 

 


 

 

 
 

Website Design Info - Part 1

January 30th, 2010

What Will My Site Do? by Richard F. Hill © 2005 Richard F. Hill - All Rights reserved This is the first of eight articles about website design. Our discussion will deal with some of the issues which need to be considered when developing a new online presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but perhaps there are may be things which you haven't yet considered. The Company The Great American Widget Company is a manufacturer of widgets, that common household item that many find indispensable. Until now, however, Great American has been a 'brick and mortar' business. With the founder's son just out of college, he is looking forward to expanding the company's business on the Internet. What is the new website expected to do? Before doing anything else, before you even consider finding a hosting company, or a designer, or even before you register a domain name, or before putting pen to paper to begin writing content, take time to consider what the site will be about. Is your new site to be an eCommerce site, or will it be an online 'image' site that displays the image of your business? Will you want to show an online catalog and take orders over the Internet, or just have prospective customers call you for more information? Will your customers be able to contact you only by email? (Not a good idea!) Will you accept credit cards online? will you have an online search for products or services? What keywords apply to your business and the way you wish to present it? Why are you better than the competition. What are your strongest virtues in your existing brick and mortar business? How much money are you willing to spend on your Internet presence? Most assuredly, it will be more than you initially estimate. Also, now is a good time to consider a budget ' even a ballpark figure which you think you can afford on registering a domain, design and hosting. This budget can greatly affect what your site will be. For example, if you want an e-commerce enabled website, the costs will be much greater to develop and maintain than a straight HTML site. Next week we look at how important a domain name can be. And in future articles we will discuss some of the hosting considerations, how to research the competition and some tips for writing for search engines. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Richard Hill is the author of the popular, and free, eBook

About the author: Richard Hill is a the President and CEO of US Email Service Inc, a popular autoresponder service located at www.US-Email-Service.com. Richard is also the editor of The eBiz Gazette, a free bi-weekly newsletter dealing with online business issues. The newsletter may be found at www.eBiz-Gazette.com

Author: Richard Hill

 

American Webmastery Logo

Feedback / Report a Post

 

Being a webmaster is a much more important job than most companies would dare admit. Webmasters are responsible for the company web presence on every level, from the website copy to the web and email server administration. Additionally, webmasters are often tasked even more duties that should be considered unrelated responsibilities for the position of webmaster. These extra duties often will include online as well as offline promotion and marketing, search optimization, advertising, application programming, graphic design and/or brand management. The role of the webmaster has grown over the years and webmasters need to grow with the company's expectations or the website will not succeed. For instance, it is easy to get banned from the search engines for not knowing the correct methods to use to optimize a website for a better results ranking from the search engines for any particular search phrase.

This is why Webmastery is here, not just to offer direction and assist webmasters, but to do so masterfully, as you expect of yourself, or as your company expects out of you.
 

Since I am an American and know only American English and SEO methods, I specialize in American Webmastery. Hence the domain name, Webmastery.US.
 

However, please note that often both sides of the coin are presented here. Some webmasters swear by Linux and we offer articles by such authors to give insight to their creativity. Others are die-hard Microsoft software fans and use Windows based servers. Despite the bias, each system has its own advantages, and such articles are reprinted here for their positive contribution to those platforms, not to enforce their bias. It is we that have to make the final analysis.
 

This difference is even more apparent when I am showcasing and promoting white hat SEO (search engine optimization) and a black hat SEO article is published here, which method if followed could get a website banned from the search engines. The reason I allow it a small platform is to showcase its apparent and obvious idiocy in contrast to white hat SEO techniques. And as I cannot edit these articles in order to correct them, I let their illogicality and stupidity stand on their own for a time without any edits. But in case their spaminess is not apparent, I often do not let such articles stand long.
 

 


 

 

Related Webmaster Information & Resource Sites:
Domain Buffs     Parking PPC     PPC Ad Income: Website Monetization     Apache Website Hosting     Design: CSS Websites     foo site: Website Coding     php Web Development     Target: Page 1 Search Result Rankings     Ad Working     Yahooter?