article: web 101: what you need for a website

What do you need for a fully working website?

You need four essentials:

• Web Pages: we design and create these for you
• Commercial Web Space: we provide this, too: it's also called Web Hosting
• A web name (domain name): we can provide this as part of your overall design package
• An e-mail address: we can provide one or more e-mail addresses, or forward e-mail to an existing address as part of your hosting package.

That’s it.
And we can provide it all!

Getting Started

This can be intimidating: you don't know where to start, what you need to provide, or what will be done for you. It can all be like one big cloud of vapour.

What I'll describe here is how Web Pages R Us works.

We find that there are three main categories of clients:

• Minimal information or input provided
• Lots of information and input provided
• Project based assignments.

Many people are in the first category and, as a result, they put off getting a website because they are not sure how to go about it, or feel they haven't done enough themselves yet to enable a website to be created (but don't know what to do about that--a Catch 22).

Let's highlight something right at the start: getting a website is not a technical project, it is a business project. You are getting a website because you have a business aim. We recognise this and treat all of our designs as business projects supporting your business aims.

You will find that your ills will spring from employing a web designer who sees it as a technical project, and who may not have the business skill or experience to view it in any other way. It is never a matter of just pure technical execution. Web Pages R Us never operates like that. We have decades of IT and business experience gained if retail, manufacturing and financial services.

Here are some features we apply to all of our sites:

• Design the site to match your company image, stationery etc
• All sites must look professional
• Design the navigation so that your visitors are not confused about where they are, where they have been, or where they can still go to on your site
• Optimise you site for the web: for example, ensure pages download quickly, and that images are optimised for the web. Our design target is for pages to load in less than ten seconds on a dial up line: we invariably achieve this
• Do not include pointless animation: all animation must support a business purpose
• Structure page content in a sensible way
• Make your site is search engine friendly
• Test your site before requesting you to review it
• Ensure that only web browser friendly fonts are used
• Do not use features which are browser specific: a common feature of 'home made' sites is that they use features only available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, thus making the site inaccessible to the large number of Netscape users
• Submit your site manually to Google.

In all cases you review the site on our test server before it is transferred to the live Internet.

Starting From Next To Nothing

You will have a reason for wanting a website. Often this is all you need to make a start.

Based on this we agree the approximate size of the web site and use the images, such as photographs, that you have available. If you already have a letterhead, a business card, logo, or a brochure we can work from that. We will quote a cost to you.

Your site will have a professional image regardless of what you pay: that's the only way we know how to work.

If you decide to go forward with us we will then work with you to refine your requirements and give you guidance on the content of your site. You will find it straightforward given this guidance to produce any further content required.

Our clients in this category are often thrilled when they see their site for the first time on the web: what started out as being very woolly has become a professional website visible worldwide. Just think, your brochure can't do that for you without a massive cost.

Starting From A Position Of Very Clear Ideas and Content

Typically you will have

• a clear idea of what the site will contain
• all the information already prepared
• a clear idea of the outline structure of the site
• photographs and graphics already available
• some idea of what the site may look like (or not look like!)

You may already have an existing site which you either want to replace completely, or one which will stay broadly the same in terms of content but needs a make over to maintain your image (or to get it working properly!)

You should aim to have as much of your information as you can in in electronic form: documents and images. Often good quality images can be scanned from existing literature, including your logo if you do not have the artwork in electronic form. When the text is to come from a variety of literature, such as brochures and sales fliers, we can assemble the text from these sources.

A Website As A Project

This usually applies to large websites for medium or large organisations where there are a lot of people involved in the approval and design of the website, and the project takes many months to complete. Here formal project management techniques are essential.

In this case we create the site as a formal project with very visible, documented, formally approved plans, project phases, and deliverables.