Introduction

When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the very many processes involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.I simply hadn’t had any exposure to the planning and build process which I now know to be extensive!

I have a friend who is in the business of SEO web design and website development so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what my requirements were.

I had no idea about the various elements and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learnt about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process particularly if you consider yourself a non computer person and have to get a website built. I have asked my SEO friend to supply the technical information for this article.In case you are wondering ‘SEO’ stands for search engine optimisation, and refers to the practise of getting your website ranked as close to the top of the results for a particular search term in a search engine. You see you’re learning already!

Stages in the Process

Target Audience

Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my potential audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on?

The Objective of the Website

Then I was asked, what was the purpose of my website? Did I want to sell services on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for potential customers? Maybe I would want to use the site as an online brochure to showcase my services. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussions and being supported by advertising on the site. This didn’t really apply to my business, although I did think about offering to advertise allied services!

I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful thought went into the preparation before building a website.

Creating a Site Map

The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.

By creating the sitemap well in advance of building the site will also help with all other aspects of the build and promotion of the site later. Yes even your search engine optimization strategy will benefit from a well thought out site map.

The aim is to make the site as simple to use as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website or making a purchase. For that reason often user name and passwords are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register.

For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding junk email.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided in advance before starting on the construction of the site.

Your Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is often quite a problem because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have probably already been registered. However, you can usually think of some domain name that is available, which is much less time consuming than trying to purchase a previously registered domain name from its existing owner, most of the time just contacting them, and getting a reply is a challenge.

So looking at names with endings such as .net; .org .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you would like to have. When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option. You will no doubt have heard the Hoover/vacuum cleaner story, where Hoover is actually a brand name of a certain type of vacuum cleaner, but these days most people still say they are doing the ‘hoovering’ ! This is an important concept to bear in mind when choosing your domain name as hoovers4u.com might be a much better domain name than discountvaccuumcleaners.com, also vacuum is a tricky word to spell so think about things like that too. Also how easy is it to give out your domain name over the telephone for example? Classic examples of this are paydotcom.com and Slashdot.org confusing or what?

Copy

The next stage is preparing the content. This is not the design of your website - just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages. A good idea before writing the copy is to have created your site map and decided on your SEO keywords, see below sections.

Having gathered all the above information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words.

For each image you could also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation. All images should also have alternative text or alt tags. Alt tags will display the hover text when you position your mouse over the picture, but also they are used by screen readers to assist visually impaired users know what the image is about. See the section below on Accessibility and Compliance.

Website Design

Finally we come to the design of your website.

My friend at the web design company says design is one of the most difficult stages of the website process because everybody has their own tastes.

There are a number of ways to approach website design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for. See the Sitemap section below.

The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware - not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style. It is also worth remembering that design is a personal thing, just because you have used a company before and liked their work, do you know the same person will be doing the work if you use that company again?

If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the preferred graphic designer to work up as the final artwork.

The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before construction of the site begins.

Navigation

Another important aspect when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open or just change the page to the one clicked on. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.

Production

Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be built. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built in.

Work In Progress

The best way to build a website and be able to monitor work in progress is on the web server where the site is ultimately going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide comments throughout the development.

Going live

The moment of excitement comes when your site finally is published to the internet and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process.

We put in a lot of work collaborating on xbox 360 steering wheel and pedals website texts with the design agency and when the site went live it was a real feeling of achievement.

As soon as the site has gone live there is no substitute for real world testing though, so ask as many of your friends and colleagues to view the website from their own offices and give you their thoughts.

Accessibility and Compliance

The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a Braille web browser. To date there has only be one case of an organisation being charged for having an in-accessible website which was the site for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, make sure you are not the second case and get it clear in your mind what this entails and be sure you and your web designer agree the same thing. Accessibility and Compliance are confusingly similar and have different levels, each having potential implications on designs and technology components, and build costs. It is also a good idea to also discuss conformance moving forward, particularly if you have a web content management system, because and accessible of compliant site may become un-accessible after six months of being edited by you if you do not add or edit the website content in an accessible manner.

Unforeseen Items

There are always things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the web developer prepares and asks the right questions, there is bound to be a last minute change of mind or addition to the site. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in at the start and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the site going live.

Reporting and Monitoring

Once your website is up and running, you might like to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of visits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.Using web stats programs is also invaluable for SEO keyword reviews after your site has been live for a while because it tells you what phrases have been typed into the search engines by users before they visited your website.

Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site is not reachable.

Marketing

Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your developer about SEO, remember that’s search engine optimisation.

How to be Found on the Web

One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. He says there are two main types of keywords. The first is the trophy, or generic, keyword for the industry which in my industry is simply ‘demolition’. The second kind of keyword is the long tail keyword. These are not searched for as frequently but if you can get a match then they are much more likely to convert into customers. A good example of this in my industry is ‘factory demolition company Derby’. So it is very important to do a lot of research on keywords to find both those that are the most popular and the most specific. Generally most users only look at the first page of results so you will want to get your website promoted so as to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool such as the keyword lookup in the Google Web Master Tools kit you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.

Conclusion

Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer whizz, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article gives you an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.

Introduction

When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the very many processes involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.

I have a friend who is in the business of web design and website development so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what I wanted to achieve.

I had no idea about the various aspects and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learned about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process and I have asked my friend to supply the technical information for this article.

Stages in the Process

Target Audience

Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my target audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on?

The objective of the website

Then I was asked, what was the objective of my website?
Did I want to sell services on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for possible customers? Maybe I would want to use it as an online brochure to showcase products. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussion and being supported by advertising on the site.

I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful planning went into the preparation before building a website.

How to be Found on the Web

One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. Generally most users only look at the top ten results so you will also want to promote your website to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.

Your Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is often quite a challenge because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have already been registered.

So looking at names with endings such as .net; .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you are after.

We were fortunate with the asbestos removal domain to get advice about registering it quickly and we managed to get one with the word demolition in it, which also happens to be part of our trading name.

When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option.

Creating a Site Map

The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.

The aim is to make the site as user friendly as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website. For that reason often user name and passwordz are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register.

For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding spam.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided on before starting on the construction of the site.

Copy

The next stage is preparing the content. This is not the design of your website - just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages.

Having gathered all the previous information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words.

For each image you should also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation.

Navigation

Another important consideration when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.

Website Design

Finally we come to the design of your website. Ask any web developer like my friend and they will probably tell you that the design stage of building a website is the most difficult bit unless you are an exceptionally talented designer, because people like different things.

What one person might like, another person might not like. If you are setting up a website for yourself alone then you will probably have some idea of what you want to see on the site. But if, as so often happens, the website is for a large corporation there will be inputs from many people or departments and you can be sure that they will never all agree!

There are a number of ways to approach web design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for.

The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware - not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style.

If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the selected graphic designer to work up as the final artwork.

The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before development of the site begins.

Production

Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be constructed. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built.

Accessibility and Compliance

The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a screen reader.

Website Development

The best way to develop a website is on the web Server where the site is going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide feedback throughout the development.

Unforeseen items

There are always some things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the website designer prepares and asks the right questions, there will always be a last minute change or addition. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the website going live.

Going live

The moment of excitement comes when your site finally gets launched and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process. When the demolition company website for my firm eventually went live I was really pleased, but also relieved that it was eventually done!

Reporting and Monitoring

Once your website is up and running, you will want to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of visits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.

Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site goes down. Google Analytics doesn’t yet provide a comparable uptime monitoring service, maybe they just decided it was too much of a headache as it is an intensive service checking a website every 5 minutes to make sure it is still responding and indeed web-stat do promote this difference as one of their unique selling points but it is pretty hard to compete with free. In fact Google Analytics is not quite free, which makes it an even better marketing decision for Google because sometimes it is harder to give things away for free than it is to sell them! Google Analytics is a free service available to Google AdWords advertisers, you don’t actually have to have any AdWords campaigns running but it will cost you a one-time activation fee of £5 (or similar in your local currency) to open your AdWords account, but once you have done that you can go on to use Google Analytics for as many websites as you like.(I am sure there probably is an upper limit to how many websites you can monitor from one account but my web design friend says he has not yet hit that limit and he’s got about 50 sites being tracked in his account!)

Marketing

Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your agency about SEO

Conclusion

Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer buff, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article will give readers an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.

 

 

Dog Training Guide

Has your family chosen where you want to go on your summer vacation?  You are not alone, most families have not yet decided where they want to go.  It can be a very time consuming process to find that perfect vacation escape, so explore the choices for your Rhode Island tourism.  You will discover various options and it certainly will not be a simple choice!

However, if you are thoughtful and take the time to do some planning, it should make your summer vacation fun and one of those “family memories” that you will treasure forever.  The most common mistake people experience is first choosing a “destination.”  The best vacations start when you first choose “what you want to do”!  Do you want to go hiking, tanning on a beach, playing and relaxing at a pool, or touring educational or heritage attractions?  By deciding “what you want to do” first, you are off to the best start of selecting that perfect family tourism destination!

Once you know “what you want to do” – you can sort through the various tourism destination areas and find those appealing attractions that you hope to go see or do.  By taking a little time planning, you can also discover those destinations that have a number of attractions that are of interest to both you and your inclusive family.  Online travel guides are invaluable that can help you find comprehensive information about activities that are more detailed than a short attraction name and address.   Now that you know “what” you want to do and “where” you want to go, a real high quality online Rhode Island destination brochure will provide you a comprehensive article describing each attraction to help you make an informed decision about what you want to do and where you want to go.

Here are 3 Rhode Island vacation locations that you may want to consider:

Idea #1: Located in the Blackstone Valley Region, Kids will Love a Visit to Daggett Farm in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Located on the old grounds of the Slater Park Zoo in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the Daggett Farm and Greenhouse was established in 1999. The proceeds from the Daggett Farm and Greenhouse and Gift Shop support programs to benefit those with developmental disabilities. This means that a visit to the farm and gift shop is more than just fun and educational; it can also make a difference in peoples’ lives.

Idea #2: Fort Adams State Park is a wonderful attraction to visit in Newport, Rhode Island.  Its natural harbor location made Fort Adams an important and heavily armed fort from the Revolutionary War all the way through modern times. In addition to preserving an important historical attraction, Fort Adams State Park is the site of popular annual music festivals. It is also a favorite spot people visit to enjoy a variety of water-based activities, field sports and picnicking.

Idea #3: One of Rhode Island’s most interesting museums also happens to be the only museum of its kind in the state. The Museum of Natural History in Providence is the only museum in Rhode Island dedicated exclusively to natural and cultural history, and it is also the site of the state’s only public planetarium.

As you have discovered, you have a significant variety of options available to you when it is time to select that perfect family vacation escape.  Enjoy your time to plan carefully what you want to do and where you want to go.  Select a professional travel guide to help you discover those perfect Rhode Island attractions.  And you will find that you will experience a wonderful vacation with a lifetime of memories.