Planning Guide
Preparation | What
You Provide | What Site-Maker Provides
About Search Engines | About
E-Commerce
Planning your website is a process that
will have a tremendous effect on how it turns out. How well you
have planned will effect how your new website will look, how well
it will function, how completely it meets your needs and expectations,
and how much it will cost! In this section we will try to address
every question you may have about planning and creating your perfect
website. There is a great deal you can do to reduce the total
cost of your site. By planning thoroughly and providing the information
we need in the form that we need, you can help us build your site
quickly and to your expectations. This will save you money and
possibly a few headaches!
Easy Step
Preparation Guidelines
1. Decide purpose of site. Do you want
to provide information for clients and customers, or sell products
directly (Do you need a Shopping Cart, Merchant Account?)
2. Do you need to register a Domain
Name? (ie: www.yourname.com) If so, we can help you check
availability and register your domain for you.
3. Do you need hosting? High quality
hosting at very reasonable prices is available with Site-Maker,
or you may choose another company to host your website.
4. Plan out the number of pages and
their titles. The name of your homepage might be your company
name and whatever product you are offering. Titles/links to other
pages might be "About Company", "Products",
"Services", "Contact", "FAQ", "Guestbook",
"Order Form", etc.
5. Get a copy of company logo, letterhead,
(hard copy or digital format) brochures, catalog,etc. and mail or
email them to Site-Maker.
6. Decide specifically what graphics/photos
you would like on your site and which pages your want them on. Label
them by name and where they will be located on your site. Send the
photos for scanning or send digitized images on a diskette or CD-Rom.
7. Compose and format text to be
on each page of site. All text and information is to be provided
by the client and provided via floppy disk or CD Rom, or sent to
Site-Maker by e-mail on Microsoft Word. Otherwise, there will be
a small charge for typing.
8. Decide if you want any additional
options for your site: Shopping Cart, Site-Map, Guestbook, Links
to Related Sites, Sound or Music, Animation, Additional Forms, Java
Scollers & Effects, Autoresponders, Password Protection, Bulletin
Boards, Database
9. Do some research on the www. Using
various search engines, do a number of searches using keywords that
you think are best for a site like yours. Bookmark the sites that
come up in the top 2 or 3 positions when the keywords you have used
bring up a lot of relevant websites. This will give you important
keyword knowledge, ideas for the layout and content of your site,
and examples of sites that rank high with search engines for Site-Maker
to work from to design effective meta tags and keyword content.
10. Browse the links below or at the
top of this page for answers to questions and for ideas about
planning and building a successful website with Site-Maker as your
partner.
