What To Expect When You're Expecting...A Website by John Rossitter

Introduction

If you are reading this guide, then you have probably decided to take the plunge and go ahead and get one of those "interweb" things for your company. You probably don't know exactly what it is you need, but you know you need it... and you need it now. For some companies their website is an integral part of their business that puts them directly in contact with their customer and actually generates revenue. You have seen these sites, the ones where you buy books online or order those argyle socks. Other companies get a website because they think they have to, but would rather not even bother. You have been to these sites too. These are the ones you visit that make you think "I can't believe that someone made this bad of a website for a company…gosh, I hope mine looks better than that"

The cold hard fact is that in today's business world, you absolutely have to have some sort of web presence. People have actually become conditioned to believe that companies that don't have a website are less credible than those who do. Why is that? Is it because in today's world of instant gratification, people are more at ease when they feel they can get in touch with you anytime and anywhere? Or is it because we spend an ever more increasing amount of time online everyday and it's only a natural progression?

For better or worse people use the internet to interact with businesses ALL THE TIME. Phonebook usage is dwindling every day as people now use search engines like Yahoo! and Google to find local businesses. Phonebook usage has gotten so low that many phonebook makers are now using the internet for their primary publishing platform.

This guide was written to help you in the process of getting your company's website online. It will walk you through all of the steps from A to Z, warn you of the pitfalls, and provide practical advice for getting the best website for your money. Most importantly it will arm you with the knowledge you need to succeed online. So take a minute, warm up your coffee, check your email and close the door to your office.

5 Reasons to make a website

If you still have not decided to create a website for your business, then I want to provide you with 5 compelling reasons as to why you should get started on it today.

1) The internet is not going away. It's not a fad or fascination. The internet has transformed they way business is conducted the world around.

2) Your competition is doing it. Whether you sell widgets, gadgets or children's books there is an army of other businesses selling to your customer's online.

3) You will be opening your business to new customers and markets you didn't even know existed around the world.

4) Keep in contact with your customers in ways you have never even dreamed of, with tools like Support Forums, Email-Blasts & Online Newsletters

5) Contrary to what you may have heard about making a website, it's really not that hard to do or expensive.

Why write this guide?

I decided to write this guide for many reasons. The biggest reason being, that I work on a lot of websites for a lot of people, and every time I begin a project I find myself explaining the process of what is going to be happening over the next few weeks to months. I wanted to prepare a comprehensive, informative and down to earth guide for my clients, so they could rest their worried minds, and focus on doing their business, while I focused on making them a fantastic website. This guide was not originally intended to be published or circulated for the general public, but as I kept adding sections to it, I realized that the information it contained was valuable and could be applied to anyone looking to create a website for their business.

Who is this guide for?

This guide was written for a business owner or executive who is looking to improve their internet presence by creating or updating their existing business webpage. While anyone is welcome to read this guide, please remember that the advice given is geared towards business websites looking to gain and retain their web presence. If you are looking for a guidebook to create a website for your family vacation photos, or band website, chances are there may be a better guide out there for you. But I invite you to read it anyway.

By the time you are finished with reading this guide you will be able to talk about the web development process competently and not get taken advantage of by some of the less than principled web designers out there.

What is a business website?

This may seem like a silly question, but fundamentally the answer may surprise you. A website is a living portal into your business. No matter what services and products you offer, or information you share. At the core of it all, your company's website is the single place that your customers, investors, partners, vendors, job candidates, competitors, and even people who accidentally end up there, go to. Whether you realize it or not, people are on your website every day. Now the important question is; what are they seeing there?

Business websites typically fall into one a few of the following camps. In some cases they may share bits and pieces of more than one.

The Interactive Business Card:

These are business websites that offer the basic "Who, What, When, Where, Why" information about a company. These websites are a great way to extend the reach of your marketing effort. Sites like this are inexpensive to create and maintain. They add credibility to your brand, and offer a way for you to reach new customers.

The E-Store:

These are business websites that take it a step further, and take advantage of the new medium by offering products and services to be purchased online. These websites not only help establish a brand, but if done correctly will increase revenue, and do all of the selling for you. These sites are defiantly more expensive to create and maintain and likewise should be treated just like any other business investment.

The Online Application:

These are business websites who have decided to extend their business process into the digital world by allowing users to submit forms online which normally would take weeks to mail back and forth. These sites add value to a business by getting your customers hooked on the convenience of using your tools. These sites can be a little expensive to setup and maintain, but make it up in band loyalty.

The Shared Website:

Oftentimes businesses will join professional networks and or business listing guides which offer them a "web portal" on their network. These are another way to extend your brand online, but should not substitute you own .com name. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and your local chamber of commerce are all great examples of the shared website.

The "I just bought a domain name, but have not setup my website" website:

We have all seen this website before. This is the placeholder site that you see when someone purchased a clever domain name like "woodchippers-of-louisiana-online.com", but didn't follow through with actually branding it. These websites are super cheep, but defiantly hurt your chances of doing business online.

In reality a website can be anything you want it to be. Your imagination is the limit to what you can technically accomplish. Now what your budget can afford is a different story.

Know Thy Visitor:

Just like with planning a business, you need to understand who your online customer is. There are many factors that will play into how you design your website based on who you create it for. If you sell humorous T-Shirts online, you are going to use a much looser format than let's say a legal bookstore. You are actually faced with the difficult process of planning how to best spoon-feed information to the masses, and at the same time make a personal connection with each visitor. You are also faced with a very challenging adversary I like to call "Internet ADD".

Internet ADD is a syndrome that we all suffer from and is probably the fastest spreading disease in the world. Internet ADD is our inability to be satisfied with websites. It's that sense of hyper criticism you feel when a website takes too long to load. It's the feeling of disgust you experience when you go to a website and can't find a customer service phone number. It's the loathing you feel when you have visited the 10th website in a row that had nothing to do with what you were looking for. It's actually a well established fact that you have less than 8 seconds to make a lasting impression with your website.

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Your potential customer (Let's call him Sam) is looking for a company just like yours to sell them the widgets they need. Sam has opened his web browser and started Googling for widgets. The first factor working against you is that search engines like Google are promoting other business willing to pay them for targeted advertising. Sam has now seen 15 ads for companies who sell widgets, and not even opened a single website.

The first website he opens is actually a widget distributor in India, but he doesn't know that yet. He spends a good 3-5 minutes on their site and psychologically commits to purchasing a product from them. It's not until he starts to checkout that he realized that the price is in Rupee and not US Dollars. He immediately returns to Google and furiously types Widgets in the search bar.

Sam, now more leery than before goes onto the next website, which is actually a blog site that only talks about widgets in an article from 4 years ago. He spends a few minutes here before he realizes that there are no widgets to be bought. Now frustrated, Sam returns to Google again and types Widgets in the search bar. He then makes it to your competitor's website that is more than willing to sell him widgets at a fair price. The problem this time is that your competitor's website runs entirely in Flash, and Sam's web browser does not support it.

By the time that Sam has actually made it to your website he's already aggravated. He has spent the last 30 minutes of his life in search of the perfect Widget, but encountered only rejection and confusion. His mental state is delicate, and he's become desperate to find this elusive widget. At this point he's not reading anymore, in fact his eyes are only scanning images, and he's looking for a reason to even stay on your website. His attention span has diminished to the point of making snap decisions of whether your site is just another in a long chain of disappointments.

X= ((N*H) *A)*I

X= Internet ADD Factor

N= Number of websites out there like yours

H=Hours in a day

A=Aggravation Factor

I=Search Invisibility

*Internet ADD Formula

Will Sam actually stay on your site and purchase his Widget from you? The answer to this question all depends on how well you are able to quell the symptoms of his Internet ADD.

Unfortunately your website will be judged like this every day. It's sad and it's unfair, but it's just the way of the world. It's your job to make sure that the information you present on your website clearly and quickly lets people know that they are at the right place. In reality your website is going to have one of 2 effects on visitors. It's either going to help them, or further fuel their Internet ADD.

So we have clearly established that your web visitors are fickle, but there is another prevalent trait commonly displayed called which is called stupidity. Web visitors have been trained since day one, not to think. This is not their fault, as the traditional internet user experience is a passive activity, whereby they are receiving information more than providing it. So you cannot expect them to be at their best when required to "do something". In most cases you have to provide them with "shiny-red-candy-like buttons", and a clear call to action.

In actuality, your visitors are not dumb. They are simply conditioned to expect certain things to be done in certain ways on the internet. For example, we are conditioned to expect the "shopping cart" icon to be at the top right part of the screen. So the best thing you can do is design your website around proven practices and design patterns.

Who is who?

This section will give a brief description of who is who in the big picture of designing your website. Not all of these roles are mutually exclusive. Depending on the size of your business and your web project all of these roles can be shared by one person.

Client

This is you!

End User

This is a composite of your typical website visitor. Every End user composite will be a different demographic and should be accounted for. When designing a website, the most common blunder it to design it to your tastes, when instead you should be designing it to the tastes of your end user or visitor.

Project Manager

This person will be the one who orchestrates everything in your project. They will be the main contact for everyone else, and will make sure that the project is going smoothly, and milestones are met on time.

Web Developer

Your web developer will be the person responsible tying all of the technical aspects of the project together. The web developer will take the graphics and copy and turn them into HTML.

Application Programmer

Often mistaken as the Web Developer, the Application Programmer is the one who makes your website work as an application. They are the ones who write what's called the back end code for a web site that performs all database transactions and e-commerce payments.

Graphic Designer

The Graphics Designer is the one who you will work with on making your site look and feel how you want it. They are usually very talented individuals with creative vision. They will be the one to provide the image files that the web developer will transform into HTML.

Database Administrator

The Database Administrator is the person who makes sure that your business critical information is available to your website. They create application databases that your website will communicate with to retrieve information on customers, orders, invoices, vendors etc…

Systems/Network Administrator

The Systems/Network Administrator is the person or group responsible for making sure that the internet connection and security protocols are in place to protect your website. This is often a role shared with the ISP and Web host.

SEO Professional

The Search Engine Optimization professional is the person who will take your marketing demands and translate those into internet marketing campaigns. They will be responsible for cross promoting your site, elevating brand awareness and protecting your overall online business identity. SEO professionals will also be quite skilled at getting traffic onto your site from many new places.

Web Host

You web host is the person or company who owns the actual server and super high-speed internet connection where you website source code files actually reside. This can be an ISP or your company's own IT department.

How much is this going to cost me?

Let's get down to brass tacks here; making a website isn't cheap. With websites, like most things in life, you get what you pay for. If you spend $300.00 and let a high school student make a website for you, the website you get will be one that a high school student would make. It all really depends on how important you think it is to have a professional looking and functional website. I can't put a price tag on your website, because there are so many factors that go into even quoting a website job. What I can offer you is a guideline as to what to expect for typical products services. This will prepare you for what to expect and hopefully prevent the sticker-shock most people experience when they get a website quote.

Cost of Advertising

As mentioned earlier, traditional advertising venues like phonebooks are going into obscurity. People just don't want to deal with the hassle of lugging a huge book with thousands of pages around to find a phone number for a Widget maker. They would much rather pop open Google and look up Widget makers in your city. In today's online economy it's much better for you to spend an equal portion of advertising dollars for online venues like banner ads and a fantastic website that you would for print ads for phone books. We are not advocating to not advertise in the phonebook, just perhaps downsize from that full-page multi-color monster that's eating away at your revenue every month to something manageable like a 8th page single color advertisement.

What exactly am I paying for?

Most people don't realize all of what goes into making a website. There are lots of things that go on behind the curtains, which may seem superfluous to someone like a CEO or Marketing Exec, but are crucial to the success of a website. Let's discuss a few:

Design

This is the part of the website that you will probably have the most input into. This deals with the logos, colors, copy, touchy-feely, artsy stuff. This portion of your project may be handled by a web programmer or a design firm independently. It all depends on how fantastic you want it to look. It's important to spend a healthy amount of time and money on design. Because it's the first thing that people see, and the last thing that you want to pay to re-do. The stand-alone design portion of a website is often a separate phase in the development lifecycle. You should expect to spend anywhere from $500.00 to $2,000.00 for this by itself. This money will purchase your graphics, Flash animations, basic HTML layout, clean CSS integration, royalties for any stock art and commissions to graphic artists.

Database

This is probably the most easily overlooked, but yet most important aspect of a business website. The database is the nerve center for the information you work with on your website. This is where you will store information about Customers, Vendors, Orders, Invoices, Purchase Orders, Credit Card Transactions, Menus, Support Information, and many more things that there just simply are not to space to print in this guide. Suffice to day that your website's database is an extremely important part of your website. What's also important is that the database be powerful enough to support you and your business needs, as well as keep up with the volume of traffic that will be present on your website.

There is a number of fantastic database server platforms available including: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase DB2 and Access to name a few. Each server platform offers its own strengths and advantages over the others. Price can certainly be prohibitive with database solutions, so if you are planning to use a database for your server, make sure that you understand the ramifications of each one. On the other hand if you are simply using the database for your website, most web hosting companies do offer databases and database connectivity included with their hosting packages.

If your website will require a database on the backend, be ready to spend a fair market price for database programming. While it is a form a programming, not all web developers are great with database programming. Often times web programmers will contract out to a DBA (database administrator) and have them create the database objects. Naturally it will vary depending on the complexity of your website and what information you want to store, but you can expect to spend anywhere from $1,000.00 - $3,000.00 on the database portion of your project.

Programming

The term "Programming" is a very commonly used word in the web design community. Though the definition can seem a bit nebulous at times, what it really means is "Putting it all together". The programming aspect of your project is the part where you tie the database and design into a functional web application. In a way, the web programmer is very akin to the musical conductor. They must know each piece of the orchestra, know what the capabilities of the instruments are, how to layer ensembles, and make it look easy to the audience. This can also be a very time consuming process, as often times a web programmer is in a constant state of waiting, for other players to finish their work. Depending on the skills and experience of your web programmer, you can expect to pay anywhere between $25.00 and $150.00 an hour for their time.

Hosting

Now that you have gotten your website written, you're going to need to put it somewhere. You will need to contact a professional web hosting company and make arrangements for them to host your website on a powerful enough server. In case you are unsure what web hosting means, let me explain. A web host will setup a special computer called a web server, which is a highly specialized computer that shows web pages. When your web browser goes to http://www.google.com, your computer is actually talking to a web server that hosts the google website. So when your customers go to http://www.yoursite.com they will actually be talking to a web server located in the data center of your hosting company. Web hosts also offer many other valuable services like email, domain name registration, file backups, website statistics and analysis, high-speed connectivity and database access. Depending upon the type of website you are making, you can expect to pay from $25.00 to $100.00 a month for hosting alone.!

You can find hosting with some companies for lower prices, but you really need to be aware of the limitations of their services and bandwidth.

Search Engine Optimization

The phrase Search Engine Optimization of S.E.O. really became popular around the year 2005. It basically means making sure that your website is written in such a way that best lends itself to being seen and indexed by the big Search Engines like Google, MSN &Yahoo!. Search Engine Optimization is really split into 2 camps. In camp 1 you have a strategy for making the code on your website as easy to read as possible by search engines. This includes using web standards and weighing keyword density. Web standard is merely a way of authoring web pages where the search engine spiders can quickly understand what your webpage is about. Keyword density is method of summarizing your website's contents for search engines. The other camp of SEO is the advertising and marketing camp. This camp will spend time tuning the way your website is seen by other websites. For example tuning keywords in Google Ad Words, or buying up banners on other websites. The duties of camp 1 should be include!

d in the cost of your website. The duties of camp 2 will be an ongoing investment into the marketing and branding of your website. Simply put, this will be as expensive as you let it get. A practical suggestion is to not go off the deep end with marketing and advertising until a few months have passed since your initial launch. This will give you a chance to work out the bugs of your website and have a good understanding of who is looking at your website already.

Maintenance

So, the good news is that you have finally finished your website. It's perfect in every way, and is going to make you tons upon tons of money. The bad news is that you will never be done with your website. It will actually be under a perpetual state of maintenance from here to eternity. But this is perfectly normal. Websites have the disadvantage of being a living document which is listed on the on demand media of the internet. You will always need to do things like update graphics, change the welcome message of your homepage, or update contact data. These types of changes are normal, and should not be very expensive to make. You should plan for at least one hour a month of maintenance, whereby you can backup your database and files, make changes to your pages or even add new pages. Some web developers offer a bundles maintenance package, where you will get a discounted price for maintenance hours. So be sure to ask.

Transaction Royalties

If you decide to sell items or services on your website, and accept credit card payments, you need to be aware that your payment processor will charge you a fee per online transaction. Be it Authorize.net or PayPal. These fees will vary depending upon the volume of transactions you perform in a month and your ability to negotiate a great deal.

The Typical Process:

Here I want to describe the typical web design process from start to finish (Though, as we learned earlier, your website is never finished.). Though this is not a definitive guide to how your website project will go, it's a good roadmap of what to expect.

You decide you want a website

For whatever reasons, it's finally happened and you have decided to be one of those people who have a website for your business. Or maybe you already have a website and you want to make some big changes to it. Good for you.

You buy a domain name

You will need to go to a website like GoDaddy or Network Solutions to purchase a domain name. Be sure to go ahead and get an SSL certificate too if you plan on selling goods and services with your website.

You pick a web developer

Either your cousin's brother's mechanic knows a guy, your neighbor's teenage son took a class on HTML, or you found a professional web design company in the phonebook. Whatever the case, you have decided to go with your gut, and have picked the best person/company for the job.

You meet and discuss the project

This can be either formal or informal occasion. Basically this is an opportunity to let their team meet with your team and discuss you project at an abstract level. This is the perfect time to do all of that brainstorming you have wanted to do. Don't set anything in stone in this meeting. Focus on the general idea of the site.

They give you a proposal

After some time, perhaps up to a week, your web designer will get back in contact with you and give you a proposed solution. This solution should clearly address every aspect of your website project and set forth objectives and phases. The proposal should also contain an estimate of hours, and cost.

You review the proposal and come to an agreement

Now is your chance to put those negotiation skills to good use and work out a deal. Most professional web developers are willing to work discounts into the price of larger projects. It never hurts to ask. Now is also the time to make last minute changes to the project.

You sign a contract

Once everyone is in agreement on the contract, all parties will sign it and perhaps notarize it.

You provide a down payment

Most web programmers will require some sort of down payment for the projects. This can range anywhere from 10% to 50% depending. If you are paying with a check, you should be prepared to hear back from the web designer that the check has cleared before the work starts.

They begin working

Now the work actually begins. There isn't really any official ribbon cutting or anything, but you can mark your calendar for posterity if you like. At this point a lot of conceptual design work will happen. Don't be alarmed that you don't see anything happening at http://www.yoursite.com just yet. Chances are that your site is being developed on a computer at the web designer's office.

They provide you with a style mockup

After a while (days to a couple of weeks) your web designer will demonstrate a mockup version of your site. This will be a look and feel type of demonstration, so don't go into it with high hopes of the application end of your website working yet. This is your opportunity to offer some creative feedback and express what you like and dislike. Unless you chose to go with a high school student, you should be dealing with professional adults, so don't work about feelings getting hurt, tell them what you really think.

Once you have signed off on the mockup they will begin working on a skeleton version of your website. This has nothing to do with Halloween, but rather it's a functional version of your website that has working links and buttons. The goal here is to provide a working navigation system that is intuitive and non intrusive.

They design a database

Of all of the tasks of your website, this will most likely be the one you have the hardest time wrapping your head around. Basically what's happening in this phase is your web designer is creating a database solution to store information for your website. If you are database savvy, this means they will be creating the tables, views and queries that make up your database.

They design a data layer

This part of the project is akin to the database design, but deals with how to let the website talk to the database in the fastest and most effective way possible.

The long wait

Once you reach this point, the website is under major surgery. Your web designer is hard at work tying everything together. It's a good time for you to step back and not mother hen the project. It's ok to check in once in a while to get progress reports, and even check to see if there is anything you can do to help. It's also a good time to review that you have been keeping up with your payments if you are on a payment plan with your web designer.

They present you with a preview

The long wait is over, and your web design has a preview ready for you to see. This is your 2nd opportunity to make suggestions and express opinions. If the changes you ask for are covered within the original design agreement set forth in the contract, there should be no problem with your web designer making these changes happen for you. If you are asking for something that was not previously mentioned in the contract, you need to be prepared to pay extra for that.

Testing

If you are happy with the design at this phase, you will enter into a testing phase where you have full reign over the website to try to break things. Be methodical, and take good notes. Report any problems you encounter with the site immediately. It's important to make sure that your website works the same way on all common web browsers. (Internet Explorer, Opera, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari)

More testing

After you have reported your bugs and problems, and they have been said to have been fixed, go ahead and test everything again. Once again me methodical and report any problems. Do this as many times as it takes until its right.

Web Host Installation

Once the testing has been completed and your website is ready to go live, you need to choose where you are going to host your website. Most web developers offer some sort of hosting along with their design services. Once you choose the hosting company, you will need to install your website on their web server and database server.

DNS Propagation

This is often one of the trickiest things to explain to people, but very important to understand. In a nutshell, DNS is like a phone book that maps domain names to IP addresses. Every computer on the internet uses an IP address of some sort. Once you register your domain name it takes about 72 hours for that name registration to take effect throughout the world.

The site goes live

At this point, sit development phase of your website is over with, and you should be able to go to your website at http://www.yoursite.com and browse until your heart is content.

The site is released to you

At this point legal possession and ownership of the site should be transferred to you from the web developer.

You are lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills

Just kidding...

This is where you take over, and let all those years of business experience kick in. It's up to you now.

How do I know if my web guy or gal can do what they say?

Web programmers can be a rather slippery bunch. They don't have the best reputation out there, and have often ended up causing more damage on a project then good. This is not to say that all web programmers are scoundrels and should not be trusted, but more accurately, there are a lot of scoundrels out there who call themselves web programmers. Often times what happens is someone who has some skills with Photoshop or FrontPage has a friend ask them to make a webpage for them. Before you know it, they are in business for themselves and have more projects than they know what to do with. This does not make them a good web programmer. A good web programmer will have MANY years of applied experience with internet software in general.

When you are talking with a potential web programmer consider the following:

How long have they been doing web programming?

Can they handle a project the size of yours?

Will they be handling everything on their own, or hiring out sub-contractors?

If those sub-contractors were to quit mid stream will they be able to take over?

Will they provide you with a written contract? (ALWAYS GET A CONTRACT!!!)

Do they provide XHTML compliant code?

Do they provide valid CSS markup?

You would not believe what people look at online.

If you publish it anywhere on your website, people will look at it. Internet users are funny that way, maybe it's because their board and have nothing better to do than read every single article on your website. Maybe you just have that fantastic of a website. Whatever the reason, you must always be mindful that people are looking at your site, and whatever content you have on it, good or bad. If you have an old price sheet lingering on your website from 6 years ago, someone will see it, and expect you to uphold it.

There is an expression used on the internet called a drive-by website. This is a website that you accidentally land upon, but enjoy looking at anyway. I'm sure you have done it, mistyped something in the address bar, and ended up on a really interesting website. So be sure that your website offers good information for both intentional and unintentional visitors.

Get it in writing!

If you are serious about creating a website, you need to make a contract with your web developer. A contract will define the boundaries, roles, responsibilities, timelines, costs and liabilities of your project. A good contract offers protection and clarity for all parties involved. A typical web design contract will define:

Who are the parties involved

What is the project

How many pages will be written

What the project will cost

How many man hours are expected to complete the project

An estimated timeline until completion

Payment schedule

Non disclosure clauses

Binding Arbitration Clauses

Definition of Late Payment Penalties

Definition of Late Delivery Penalties

Who owns the rights to the website after it's finished and paid for

Who will pay for materials, stock-photos, Royalties, etc…?

If the web developer you have chosen does not want to sign a contract, you need to think long and hard about if they are the right person to use. This is usually an early indicator of a problem. Likewise, don't be hesitant to sign a contract if your web developer offers one.

Don't sign a contact you are not comfortable with or don't understand! If the contract you are looking at has terms and expressions you don't know, have them change it to a more clear definition.

Don't sign a one sided contract either. Make sure that your interests are covered and protected. If you have an attorney who owes you a favor, now would be a good time to call it in.

Words of wisdom

Here are some words of wisdom to help you on your way with your website. This list has been compiled over years of experience with projects and if followed will greatly reduce the stress that comes with making a website.

Work with a local company

When it comes time to pick a web design company to work with, there are a lot of choices to weed though. It seems you can't swing a cat and not hit someone who knows something about websites. I recommend that find someone local to work with. There are a few reasons for this. The best reason is because it makes communications easier. There is nothing like the ability to walk into your web designer's office and talk with them face to face about your website. Another important reason to work with someone in your region is cost of living differences. A web programmer in a smaller community is likely to charge significantly less for your project than one located in New York City where the hourly rate for projects is higher because the cost of living is just higher there.

Understand regional boundaries

If you are a making a website to sell widgets all over the country, you need to be careful not to make yourself appear to be too local of a company. Don't litter your page with links to local institutions like the local Chamber of Commerce, or B.B.B. Instead show a list of testimonials from all over the country.

Know when to listen to your web designer and when to take over

When you decide to place the fate of your website in the hands of a professional web designer, you need to trust their instincts. If they tell you that a graphic is too gaudy, chances are that it is. If they tell you that you are trying to put too much information into a space that just will not hold it, you need to listen. They spend all day looking at web pages with a critical eye, and know what makes for good web design. A good designer will work with your ideas and meld them into something sleek and professional.

If the design just isn't going the way you want it to, and you have gotten a 2nd and 3rd opinion on it, you may need to intervene on the project. Don't be afraid to express your opinions, after all you are the boss.

Pay your bills on time

Nothing will derail your project quicker than not paying the web developer what you agreed to pay when you agreed to pay it. Let's not kid ourselves here, websites can get expensive and you may not realize the amount of time that web designers put into creating your website. If you can't afford to make a payment on time for your website, let your web developer know A.S.A.P. Chances are they will meet you half way and work it out. Or if you have some other professional service you can barter with, you may want to offer to trade out the remaining balance. It never hurts to ask. The important thing to keep in mind is, be open and honest about your payments. If you take the route of not answering your phone, returning emails, making payments, or just dodging the issue of payments in general, there is a good chance your web designer will take out a mechanic's lien on your website. Or worse report you to a collections agency.

Do your part to get materials and copy turned in as fast as you can

Don't become the reason your website is taking so long to finish. If you are responsible for getting materials like graphics, or copy material over to your web designer, get it done as soon as you can. If you have an executive assistant, this is a great opportunity to let them assist.

Tell your friends and other professional acquaintances

If your website designer does a great job with your website, reward them by spreading the word. Sometimes you may get an unexpected referral bonus.

Don't use Microsoft Word, Publisher or FrontPage

While programs like Word, Publisher and FrontPage will let you create and save web pages, you need to be very careful of using them when you publish your pages online. The applications have a nasty habit of inserting and embedding invalid HTML code into your web pages. This will cause you major heartache later down the road when you find out that your website does not work with the latest version of FireFox or Safari. On a technical note, they also rely heavily on the use of HTML tables for formatting, which has been an outdated way of creating HTML for over 5 years. If you need an application to create web pages with, look into a free program that Microsoft offers called Visual Web Developer. This is a free professional grade application that Microsoft provides to web developers. It will help you create valid web standard based XHTML.

And if you do decide to work with a professional web deigner down the line, the work you did in FrontPage will most likely be unable to be re-used as it would take more time to undo all of the junk code embeddedded.

The low down on S.E.O.:

Along with clever acronyms like TCP/IP, TLC, TCB and ASAP, we have been recently gifted with the term S.E.O., which stands for Search Engine Optimization. There is actually quite a hot debate out there about the true definition and effectiveness of S.E.O. Some believe that S.E.O. is a way of creating websites whereby search engine spiders can more easily access the content of your website. This is accomplished by using clean website development techniques like programming with valid XHTML and using external Cascading Style Sheets to build your website's style with. On the other hand, there is an equally vocal majority who say that S.E.O. is a way of marketing your website and brand on the internet. This includes things like paying for ads on sponsor driven websites, or paying people to chat about your website on forums and blogs.

There is sort of a "holy-grail" of a myth out there about S.E.O., that you can pay some company $250.00 a month to publish your site into the Search Engines and boost your internet exposure 10000% in the first month. This myth usually involves you giving your credit card information to a company you have never heard of, and is often times located out of the country you live in. It also usually involves using techniques like spam and other clandestine activities to get any sort of traffic onto your site. I'm not going to go out of my way and call these types of services a scam, but I will tell you that you can do everything that these companies want to charge you for on your own for free, and will get you the traffic you want on your website.

Search Engine's are smart pieces of software. They can do everything they need to do in order to categorize and index your website. If you are willing to play by the rules and can live with organic growth of your website, you will be much better off in the long run and get high quality Search Engine visibility vs. hi concentration of lo low quality visibility.

There are few things you can do on your own to boost your internet visibility, outside of simply making a Search Engine friendly website to begin with. You can create a blog on a popular blog site like "blogger.com", get professional organizations you are a member of to link to you, list your website on the Google local business search, or get an online news outlet to talk about you. These are all examples of good organic growth, which will pay off in the long run.

So, what do all of these web browsers mean to me?

It seems that every other week another web browser is popping up out there. You have your Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera, FireFox, Safari, Chrome and many others. The question you may be asking yourself at this point is; why are there so many web browsers out there? I have often asked myself the same question, and usually come up with the same answer. It's because they can. Companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google are into the web browser making business because it reinforces their branding. Think about it, when was the last time you paid for a web browser?

While a little competition never hurt anyone, there are a few issues you need to be aware of when making a website that will be viewed by many different web browsers. The main thing you need to be aware of is the fact that they all render web pages differently. One example that happens all of the time is how HTML tables will act on different web browsers. Some browsers will put them at one location on a page, and others will put it in a different place altogether.

To really understand why this happens, you have to take a trip with me down memory lane. We will visit a more innocent time, a time when the word internet was just a buzz word, a time when there was no JavaScript or Flash, a time called 1996. The world's first web browsers were making their debuts along with thousands of fledgling websites. When the internet became popular, there was a massive push to make a website for everything. Unfortunately, at the time there wasn't really a mature programming language ready to handle what the world was about to ask of it. The language that ended up making the cut was HTML. HyperText Markup Language, as it's called, was smart enough to show some basic words and picture on the computer screen, but was not equipped to handle the burden it was about to be put under. HTML was not outfitted to handle things like animations, or changing data.

As time went on, the things people wanted to do with web pages grew, and thus the technology for those things grew. The problem was, that there was no industry standardization happening. Each web browser manufacturer had its own ideas and solutions to the problems at hand and thus the browser wars were started. You may remember the infamous Microsoft vs. Netscape lawsuit.

Fast forward to today. We have over a decade's worth of non-standardized technology growth. You have different web browsers fighting each other, you have animation technologies like Flash and Silverlight fighting each other, you have Scripting languages like VBScript and JavaScript fighting each other and to top it off, you have programming camps like PHP fighting ASP.NET for the back end side of things.

So, you may now be asking yourself, which web browser is the right one?

The answer is: All and none of them! Unfortunately since there is no standard, there is no right or wrong. Actually, things are getting better these days. There are standardized versions of HTML coming out, which if followed will render the same on all browsers. Some web browsers are already on board.

What can you do to make sure that your website looks the same on all web browsers?

The main thing you can do is write your web pages in XHTML. You also need to use external CSS documents, to make sure that there is no ambiguity in the page markup itself. You also have to install all web browsers you want to support and test your page on them. The best thing you can do to make sure that your website looks great on all web browsers is to, work with a professional web designer who knows how to make websites that work on all browsers.

If you are unsure if your web designer is using web standards, you can ask them the following questions. If they answer no to any of them, there is a problem.

Are you using either XHTML or HTML4

Are you using CSS to style the pages?

Are you using External CSS documents

Are you using External JavaScript and or VBScript documents?

Are you using Tables for design purposes?

Are you testing the pages on all versions of IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari and Chrome?

Are you using PNG graphics format yet?

Go Easy on the Flash

While there is no question about how beautiful Flash animations look, you need to be very aware of the ramifications of heavy flash usage on your website. Flash animations are a great way of making fun and interactive websites, but you have to realize that any information presented in those animations are completely invisible to search engines. So if you show 3 pages worth of information about how your company can custom make widgets, search engines will not see that information, as they ignore flash documents. You should also consider that not everyone has the flash player installed on their computer, so you limit your website's audience to only people who use Flash.

Another fundamental problem with Flash style websites is the bandwidth/connection speeds required in order to effectively download them.

The same can actually be said for the following:

Flash Animations

Silverlight Animations

Windows Media Player sounds and video

Real Player sound and video

Tiff Images

PowerPoint Presentations

Adobe Acrobat files

JavaScript

AJAX

It's ok to offer these types of media files on your website, but just be sure that your website is not dependent upon these technologies in order to function. If your careful, you can strike the perfect balance of XHTML, CSS and Flash, and have a fantastic website that will work across all browsers.

Why it's important to Blog

Blogging is a great way to boost your website's popularity in the big search engines. Since the advent of web 2.0, the word blog has been abuzz like a hummingbird. Actually an abbreviation of the term "Web Log", blogs have been around for quite some time in one form or another. One of the early adopters of blogging was actually the website Live Journal. In a lot of respects, they pioneered and perfected blogging back in the late 90s.

Blogging is simply a method of self publication for the masses. A blog is a collection of short journal entries, which catalog any subject you would like them to. Some people blog about their jobs, some people blog about their relationships. Many businesses have taken to blogging as a tool for keeping their customers and clients up to date with day to day changes to the business. In fact some CEOs maintain personal blogs.

In the early part of 2007 search engines really started to take notice of blogs, and began using them as a resource for their indexes. To this day, search engines like Google, who actually own blogger.com, use the data on blogs to fill in the gaps in their search engine indexes.

If you have the discipline, you should publish a blog. You should get into the habit of writing something meaningful into it at least once a week. Before you know it, people will be subscribing to your blog, and looking to you for advice. On top of that, it will boost your visibility in the big search engines.

What in the heck is a domain name?

So, you've seen the GoDaddy commercials trying to sell you domain names for $1.99, but what does that mean, what IS a domain name? A domain name is simply one of those http://www.yourcompany.com names. Without getting too technical, your website will actually be hosted on a server owned by your web hosting company. This server will have one or many IP addresses assigned to it, which will need to be configured by your host to translate to your www name. This is managed via an elaborate internet naming system called DNS (Domain Name System).

When you buy a domain name, you are actually leasing the rights to use that name for a specific period of time from a company called a domain registrar. It's important to understand that you never actually own anything. There are companies like GoDaddy; Network Solutions & NameJuice who can help you register these names for a fair price. Once you have registered a name, you can then configure it to go where you want it to. 99% of the time, you are going to point the name to your web hosting company, so they can make sure that when someone types in http://www.yourcompany.com in their web browser, it shows your website.

If you are upgrading your website, or moving from one hosting company to another, there is a pitfall you should be aware of. In some cases when you first created your website, your developer or hosting company may have registered the domain name under their company name on your behalf. This means that only they can make changes to the account, and under a worst case scenario, could point your website to another server without your knowledge or consent. It is always in your best interest to have your domain name registration under your company's account. If you are unsure of who owns the lease for your domain name, don't hesitate to ask the people who setup your website. There may be a small fee associated with the transfer of the domain name to you, but in the long run it's worth the trouble.

What is Web 2.0?

No internet term has been named as cleverly as web 2.0. The term web 2.0 became popular back in about 2004. It refers to a way of making the internet, and specifically websites, more user-friendly and uniform in presentation. Since the ideas of web 2.0 surfaced, web designers have been working together more in order to provide a consistent internet experience. Web 2.0 allows internet users to interact with the internet more easily and share more information than ever before. A few good examples of web 2.0 websites are MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Google Maps. All of these websites offer their users a clear and easy user interface, allow their users to interact with every element of the website, lets users self publish their own information, and interact with other users.

When developing a business website, you should consider the overall user experience that people have become accustom to on the internet. While you don't have to clone go and MySpace, you should try to use their experience to your advantage, and incorporate as many web 2.0 elements into your website as you can.

Email and Webmail

Along with any great business website, there should be a great email system to back it.

Most modern web designers and web hosts will also offer an inexpensive email system for you to access. In most cases you can setup dozens of individual email accounts and store tens of thousands of emails. You should always be able to access these email systems from your mail programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Entourage etc…, but most web hosts will allow you to access your email via a webpage (called webmail) as well.

If you are moving to another web design company or web host, there is a potential pitfall you can avoid with email if you catch it early. You must transfer or copy all of you email data from one provider to the other if you want to keep all of your existing accounts and messages. Also be aware that not all hosts use the same email system, and there may be a considerable amount of work and fees involved with transferring your accounts.

Web Caching

>From time to time you are going to need to check out the progress of your website as its being worked on. One of the most common things I hear when I have my clients check in on the work I have done is "it looks just like it did yesterday". This usually happens because of the fact that their computers cache web page data on their local hard drives. Caching is a way of speeding up your internet surfing experience by saving things like pictures, sound files and flash animations on your hard drive after the first time you download them. The next time you visit that webpage, you don't have to get a fresh copy of the images and sounds, instead your web browser will load up the copy that is already saved on your hard drive. In most circumstances, this is a great way of speeding up your surfing experience.

In the cases of wanting to track changes to your website, caching will be a problem. You will need to learn how to clear your web cache in the browser(s) you use, so you are able to get a fresh copy of all of the content of your site. Below are some quick descriptions of how to clear your cache on some popular web browsers.

Internet Explorer:

Open Internet Explorer

Select Tools->Internet Options from the menu bar.

Under the Browsing history section, click the delete button.

When presented with the new window, click "Delete Files".

Close all open windows

Refresh your webpage.

Safari:

Open Safari

Select Edit->Empty Cache… from the menu bar.

Click the Delete button.

Refresh your webpage

Firefox:

Open FireFox

Select Tools->Clear Private Data from the menu bar.

Place a check in "cache"

Click Clear Private Data Now

Refresh your webpage

Opera:

Open Opera

Select Tools->Delete Private Data from the menu bar.

Place a check in "delete entire cache"

Click Delete

Refresh your webpage

Chrome:

Open Chrome

Select Tools->Clear Browsing Data from the menu bar.

Place a check in "empty the cache"

Click Clear Browsing Data

Refresh your webpage

Graphics & Formats

When you develop a webpage, chances are that you are going to want to use some pictures along with those words. There are a few various types of graphics you need to be familiar with on the internet. Mainly .jpg,.gif,.bmp & .png. There are other formats out there, but these are the most common.

.jpeg/.jpg:

Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group is a compressed computer graphics format used early on in the internet. Jpg allows you to use a large number of colors within a single image, but the image sized tend to be large.

.gif:

Short for Graphics Interchange Format is another common internet graphics format. It offers a smaller pallet of on screen colors, but supports transparent backgrounds along with animations

.bmp:

Short for Bitmap is another form of graphic used on the internet, but not as common as gif and jpg. Bitmap uses a large pallet, but does not offer any compression. It's not really that great of an internet based graphics format. Typically it's used when developers just don't know any better.

.png:

Short for Portable Network Graphics is a newer image format. It offers high compression and transparent backgrounds along with a large color pallet. It's a true hybrid of gif and jpg. The only think that it lacks is support for animation.

Along with different graphic formats, you also need to be aware of the various Dots Per Inch resolution. Dots Per Inch is a printers term used to gauge how detailed a print job should be. The most common DPI resolution for internet usage is 72 DPI.

What Is HTML

So you've probably heard these 4 letters uttered together more than once over the last decade. But what do they mean? HTML, stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which is a programming language used by web developers to create web pages. It's actually the one thing that all web pages have in common. No matter what web page you go to, under the hood it's based upon some form of HTML. In fact you can see for yourself by clicking the "view" and then "source" menu items in Internet Explorer. This will show you the raw HTML code that constitutes any web page you look at.

Web developers use HTML to describe what a page should look and act like. The language itself contains commands used to layout paragraphs, display images, play sounds, link to other pages, submit data and align page elements. This is where the term Hypertext comes into play. Hypertext is a type of document which displays interactive words and pictures.

Though HTML is the most commonly used programming language in the world, it's also quite limited in what it can do. In fact, HTML really isn't all that great of a programming language to use. It was designed in the early days of the internet as a tool to let document archivists better link related documents. However when the internet exploded into popularity in the 90s, HTML was chosen to as the de facto language of choice for web pages. Since then, web developers have tried to milk HTML for every possible drop of functionality. Unfortunately, HTML just doesn't offer the features that we want from a web page creation language today.

In today's web programming environment, we are forced to use other languages to fulfill the shortcoming of HTML. We use languages like JavaScript, VBScript, Flash and Silverlight to make up for what HTML just can't do.

There are new versions of HTML coming out which offer extended functionality and are less easily abused than prior versions. HTML4 and XHTML are the 2 most ubiquitous versions in recent years.

What Is CSS

The use of Cascading Style Sheets is a method web developers use to write cleaner HTML. CSS allows web developers to apply style information to web pages without actually placing the styles commands in the HTML. For example if you wanted to make the background color of your webpage blue, you could write commands into the HTML itself and set the background to blue. Or you could write the commands in CSS, and tell your HTML page to use the CSS settings instead.

Generally speaking CSS greatly reduces the networking bandwidth required to download web pages and also makes web pages a lot easier to read for Search Engine Spiders. But the greatest benefit of using CSS in your HTML is the way in which you can change the look and feel of your entire website in seconds with a simple change to a CSS file.

If your web designer is not using CSS for your project, halt your project immediately and discuss with them why they are not.

What Is JavaScript

Not too long after the internet explosion began, a new breed of web page was forming. A webpage that could perform marginal computational tasks on your local computer had arisen, and a platform to do it with was all that was missing. There were actually 2 main contenders for this battle, JavaScript and the less popular VBScript. JavaScript wan in sweeping popularity thanks to web site developers who insisted upon the browser independence which JavaScript worked. In a nutshell, JavaScript allows a web programmer to write little programs (often called applets) to run on your local computer. These applets would do things like validate information in forms you were submitting, or provide real time slideshow animations. JavaScript did this by manipulating the HTML elements created on a webpage in real time.

The down side to both scripting languages was the requirement that the client web browser had the runtime installed. A runtime was a separate program which housed the applets, and made sure they didn't harm the computer.

What is ASP.NET

ASP.NET is short for Active Server Pages for the .Net Framework. ASP.NET is the current version of ASP, which is a web server programming language used by Microsoft since 1998. It uses a programming methodology called Server Side Rendering, which dynamically generates HTML code every time a page is requested. ASP.NET is a very popular web programming platform, and probably the easiest to find professional developers for.

What is PHP

PHP is short for Personal Home Page or Pre Hypertext Parser depending upon who you ask. What's important to know about PHP is that it is a very powerful and ubiquitous web server programming platform. PHP started out in 1994 as a personal project of a Danish computer programmer who needed a way to quickly generate web pages. It has grown to be one of the worlds most popular web programming back ends and runs on both Linux and Windows computing platforms.

What is Cold Fusion

The third spoke in the trinity web server programming platforms is Adobe's Cold Fusion. Created in 1995 by 2 brothers it offers many of the same features available in ASP and PHP. Cold Fusion was purchased by Adobe in 2007 and has become a very popular back end for websites.

About The Author

John Rossitter is a web designer and software developer and founder of the Shreveport Louisiana based Rossitter Consulting. He has been creating internet software for over 13 years.

http://www.rossitterconsulting.com