What Will My Site Do? by Richard F. Hill ? 2005 Richard F. Hill
- All Rights reserved This is the first of eight articles about
website design. Our discussion will deal with some of the issues
which need to be considered when developing a new online
presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but
perhaps there are may be things which you haven?t yet
considered. The Company The Great American Widget Company is a
manufacturer of widgets, that common household item that many
find indispensable. Until now, however, Great American has been
a 'brick and mortar' business. With the founder's son just out
of college, he is looking forward to expanding the company's
business on the Internet. What is the new website expected to
do? Before doing anything else, before you even consider finding
a hosting company, or a designer, or even before you register a
domain name, or before putting pen to paper to begin writing
content, take time to consider what the site will be about. Is
your new site to be an eCommerce site, or will it be an online
'image' site that displays the image of your business? Will you
want to show an online catalog and take orders over the
Internet, or just have prospective customers call you for more
information? Will your customers be able to contact you only by
email? (Not a good idea!) Will you accept credit cards online?
will you have an online search for products or services? What
keywords apply to your business and the way you wish to present
it? Why are you better than the competition. What are your
strongest virtues in your existing brick and mortar business?
How much money are you willing to spend on your Internet
presence? Most assuredly, it will be more than you initially
estimate. Also, now is a good time to consider a budget ? even a
ballpark figure which you think you can afford on registering a
domain, design and hosting. This budget can greatly affect what
your site will be. For example, if you want an e-commerce
enabled website, the costs will be much greater to develop and
maintain than a straight HTML site. Next week we look at how
important a domain name can be. And in future articles we will
discuss some of the hosting considerations, how to research the
competition and some tips for writing for search engines.
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Richard Hill is the author of the popular, and free, eBook
About the author:
Richard Hill is a the President and CEO of US Email Service Inc,
a popular autoresponder service located at
www.US-Email-Service.com. Richard is also the editor of The eBiz
Gazette, a free bi-weekly newsletter dealing with online
business issues. The newsletter may be found at
www.eBiz-Gazette.com
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