jagrag.com will help you plan your web site. This is a very
important step in the process. A well planned web site will bring
visitors to your site and keep them coming back.
There is nothing worse than going to a web site to find some
information you need. Then sifting through page after page of
information you don't need before you finally find want you're
looking for. That is why the planning of your site is so important.
If you plan well your visitors will have a good experience.
Here are just a few things you can do before starting a web site
to make the design process go much smoother.
Domain Name. Your domain name should be unique and one
that is easy to remember. If you want your company name, that's
fine. Try to keep it short. So if your company name is ABC Towing
and Repo Services. See if ABC-Towing.com is available. If your
budget allows try registering additional domain names that have
keywords in them like ABC-Towing-and-Repo-Services.com. All your
domain names can go to a single site. This can help a great deal
with search engines and directories. You can check on domain name
availability by going to Register.com.
The cost to register a domain name is about $70. There are many
places to register a domain name, jagrag.com uses Hosting.com.
Keywords. Keywords and phrases are words and phrases that
you want to be found with if someone is using a search engine to
find what they want (your site). Make a list of keywords and
phrases, go to your favorite search engine (i.e. AltaVista)
or directory (i.e. Yahoo)
and do a search using these keywords and phrases. Make a note
of results that are returned. Are these sites similar to your
business? You should see web sites of some of your competitors.
Web Site Hosting. All web sites are hosting by someone,
usually a third party, jagrag.com uses Alt-Networking.com. You can shop around for a host, hosting
costs are $20 per month (20mb of space) with alt-networking.com. 20mb is
more than enough space for your average web site. If additional
space is needed, the cost is $1 a megabit. You can host your site
yourself, but this would require additional hardware and software
that is costly.
Navigation. Navigation is perhaps the most important. Good
navigation is key to getting the information your visitors want.
Your site should be designed in a logical way. Leading your visitors
to the information they want with the fewest clicks possibly. You
should come up with a simple outline of the sections you would like
at your site. Then what you want in each section. Keep the sections
specific. As a rule of thumb, it shouldn't take more than three
clicks to go from anywhere at a Web site to any other page at that
same site.
Graphics. Graphics are great but you don't really need to
overwhelm your site with them. Use graphics for illustrative
purposes not just to have graphics. Graphics take longer to load.
The faster your pages load the better. If you are having someone
other then the web designers do graphics for you, be sure to get a
graphic artist that is familiar with web design. A good source of
graphic material is any sales brochures that you currently have in
print form. Simply give a clean original copy to the web designer
for them to scan. Photographs are another good source of graphic
materials (film or digital).
Text Copy. You will be supplying all the text copy to the
web designer. You can't expect the web site designer to know your
business and what you want to convey to your visitors as well as you
do. It is best to supply this copy in a simple *.txt document (NotePad).
That way there is no formatting of the text of the document (like
you would get using a word processor like Microsoft Word). This way
the web designer can simply cut and paste the text, then do all the
formatting in HTML.
