Scope

We're going to look at the process of creating a Web site from scratch. We'll cover the things you should plan and do to create a commercial "show and tell" site. When we're done, you should be able to do a lot of the legwork of designing the site yourself before calling in a Web site specialist. After all, his time is your money.

If you're not thinking of a commercial site, read on anyway. The principles we will examine can be used for non-profit organizations as well as personal vanity sites. To avoid wasted words, we'll assume a commercial site that sells or advertises products.

We will not cover the actual programming since there are many books out on the various languages used from HTML to PHP. If you want to "roll your own" site, you should start by learning the basics of HTML and possibly acquire and learn a WYSIWYG tool such as Dreamweaver, which produces fairly good HTML code without a lot of waste.

If you want to produce more complicated Web pages, you'll have to learn JAVA Script, Cold Fusion, and/or PHP.

What will your site do?

Your first step may be the toughest. You have to decide what you want the site to do and what you expect from it.

Ask yourself, "Why do I want to have a Web site?" If the answer is "Because everyone else has one," it may be time to reconsider your decision. Think of a Web site as an advertising expense. Where will the money do the most good?

Don't expect a new Web site to drive thousands of buyers to your store and make you an instant "Internet millionaire". Do a Google search for the products or services you intend to sell. If you get just a few "hits" for commercial sites (as opposed to information sites), you may have a chance. However, you'll find that a search for most products will return hundreds of thousands of "hits". Imagine your site lost in that sea of information, say on the 135^th page of results. There are ways around this, but you won't be the only one using the techniques. See the section on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The most successful sites are for a unique product, or to support a "brick and mortar" store or chain. A well considered site is often used as part of a promotional campaign. It's a place to send people for "more information" or to make the actual purchase after you've sold them on your product using other marketing techniques. In other words it's part of a marketing campaign.

For instance, if you're looking for a book and don't want to drive to your local Barnes & Noble, you might look on their Web site and order it delivered through the mail (a lot cheaper than driving, given high gas prices). You found the Web site because you already know about B & N.

Well, what about Amazon you ask? Amazon started out by spending millions of dollars on radio ads; otherwise, they may never have been noticed. Certainly not to the extent they're known today.

First steps

If you still want a site and you have a good idea of the goals of the site, then you can get started on the plan.

First up is a name for the site. To make your site easy to find, you need a URL (Universal Resource Locator). You want a name like "mybusiness.com" for your visitors to type into their browsers.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, stuffing your URL with important keywords won't increase your search popularity for those words. So avoid things like "JimsHotDogsBurgersAndFries.com". Make it easy to remember and something that doesn't require a lot of typing for your customers. If your business is Jim's Burger Barn, then try for something like "jimsburgers.com" or quot;jimsburgerbarn.com". Who knows, it might be available. Personal vanity sites can just be your name, like "kathysmith.us".

If you are a commercial outfit, you probably want a "dot-com" URL. However, there are alternatives:

• .com for commercial
• .bz "business" (for commercial .com overflow)
• .us for U.S. based organizations including commercial
• .gov for government use
• .edu for schools and such
• .mil for the military
• .org for organizations, such as non-profit charities, churches, clubs, etc.
• .net for networks such as Internet service providers, backbone organizations, etc.
• .info for information sites, such as sites devoted to a medical problem, online dictionaries and encyclopedias, and other information disseminating organizations. Even political action committees.
• .int for International organizations
• There are also many two character dot-xx names for various countries (such as .nz for New Zealand).

There are no fast rules for using these names. You may use or mis-use them as you please. For a particular name, the first one there usually gets the name. However, there are rules for stopping people who try to steal a trade name, such as nike or barnsandnoble. If your family name is Disney, you can probably try for a variant of that name, but don't "grab" it to hold Mickey Mouse up for big bucks; you'll lose.

Now, find out if the name is available. Go to a site that registers names with ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), like www.mydiscountdomains.com and do a search for your name. The most common site for searching is www.whois.net but ICANN uses http://www.internic.net/whois.html.

If your name isn't available as a dot-com, you can always try dot-bz or dot-us. If all of them are taken, you can fiddle with your URL name until you find something you like. For instance, if alsmith is taken, alanbsmith might be available. Use your imagination.

Once you find it, register it. You don't have to register it where your Web site lives. You can use a separate service for that. In fact, this can be an advantage. When FeaturePrice stopped operations leaving its customers in the lurch, those who were registered elsewhere were able to get up and running within a day or two, while the others tore their hair out trying unsuccessfully to get FeaturePrice to release their URL.

Flow

Now, you can design the "flow" of your site. Most visitors will land on your home page (usually called "index.htm"). What do you want them to see there? Where will they go next? Do you want some customers to go to one area while a different type of visitor goes somewhere else?

For commercial sites, this is a matter of steering customers from the entry page, possibly past some information or promotional material, then to the sales pages, and finally to purchase and check-out (or call to order service or whatever). This is where your marketing people will be very helpful (assuming they're competent).

Your entry page must tell the visitor that s/he's at the right place. She's found what s/he's looking for. If you've enticed someone here who isn't really a customer, at least s/he can figure it out and leave without wasting her time.

Now that you've told the visitor what you offer, the next step is to entice her into the meat of your site. Customers who know exactly what they want should be able to get it without hunting around. Customers who aren't sure will need to be directed to information that will help them decide. Make your routes obvious. Study similar sites to see how they route visitors. What works? What doesn't?

Remember, the visitor may not be familiar with your industry technical terms. Use language s/he will understand.

Finally, you want to close the sale.

Within this flow, decide what you're going to say and show and where. Keep notes for your Web site expert.

Design

Now, you can create a design for your site. You really wanted to do this first, right? All of your pages should have a similar "look and feel" to tie the site together. The common elements can include company logo, color schemes, placement of information, and so forth.

If you are uncomfortable with creative design work, you may want to hire a design firm to help create your look.

Someone actually did some research on how the average person scans a page. They look in a modified "F" pattern; down the center and across the top starting at the center. Since visitors who are new to a site will scan it in this matter to see if they want to spend time there, you should put your eye catching stuff there. You may have as little as 2 seconds of his time. For instance, your "hooks" should go down the center of the page, perhaps as bullet points and your major internal links can be across the top where they're usually found on most sites. Minor links can live on the bottom or down the left margin.

Your home page is not the place to ramble on about your corporate philosophy and what neat folks you are.

So, create your basic design and then start in on each page. You don't actually create the finished pages at this time. But you do need to know what design elements will be needed and what will appear on each page, especially promotional text.

A word of caution here: Not everyone has DSL or cable Internet access. Some of your customers may be outside the normal high-speed markets (or just don't want to spend the money) and only have dial-up service. So, don't create a site that will take minutes to download. I assure you, those customers will leave before your first page finishes downloading.

The things that can slow down a site are, large pictures or graphics, animations, Flash, and so forth. Even a large picture that's been shrunk down by putting it inside a small box will still take the same time to load. Instead, use a graphics tool to create a picture that's the same size you want to show and has a density of 72 dpi (that's what monitors show).

Remember, your site isn't there to win awards for design; it's there to promote your products.

Construction

Now, you can call in your Web expert. Pick one and ask to see his work. Look at the sites s/he's created and see if they work smoothly and are error free. Is the workmanship what you expect on your baby? If s/he doesn't measure up, find another expert.

Tell him what you want and show him what you have. If s/he's not impressed by your preparation, listen to what s/he has to say. Does s/he have a better idea? Or is s/he trying to pad the bill? Make him explain his viewpoint.

Remember, not every code jockey is a marketing expert. Usually not. Some of us get hung up on producing something spectacular and "neat" rather than something that is "just functional".

If you're confident that your design is the best way to go, by all means insist that it be done your way. After all, it's your money and your business that's on the line here.

If your Web guy isn't fluent in some language that's necessary to the project, don't pay him to learn it (unless it's truly unique and you are insisting on it). S/he's not your employee, s/he's a hired gun and should know how to handle his sidearms. If s/he is willing to learn the new techniques on her own time and then apply them to your job, fine. S/he's made an investment in her own marketability. S/he shouldn't charge you for more time than it would take for someone who is fluent with the technique -or- s/he should do the work at a discounted rate until s/he is fluent.

Unless your expert is "faster than a speeding bullet", s/he should be doing the basic work using some sort of WYSIWYG tool, then adding the custom code as needed. Okay, WYSIWYG is not perfect, but it's faster development and saves you money.

Give the expert the materials you've developed. If they're in digital format, s/he should be able to "cut and paste" a lot of the stuff which will save you money and avoid translation errors. If you've found the pictures you need you'll save the cost of paying the expert to find them. It takes a long time to go through the inventory of a stock photo agency. If you're using your own pictures, get them scanned into a common digital format or take them with a digital camera in the first place.

Search Engine Optimization

If it's important to improve your position in the search engine results (SERPs), you will need the services of an SEO expert. Be careful here. There are two schools of SEO, "white hat" and "black hat".

The "white hat" SEOs do their best to follow the rules and not "push the envelope".

The "black hat" folks will use techniques not approved of by the search engine folks, such as Google, Yahoo!, et al. They are often able to produce rather spectacular results in a short time.

So, why shouldn't you go with the black hat SEO?

Well, some of the techniques they use eventually get "noticed". If the search engine's "spiders" get programmed to look for it, they'll find it. If your competition finds it, they might report you. In either case, your site could be blacklisted because of the overly aggressive attempt to "fool" the search engines. You see, Google, Yahoo!, and the other folks are in the business of providing the best search results they can for the folks that use their service. They want the searcher to find what s/he's looking for rather than being sidetracked to a less desirable (by their definition) site. They resent being "played".

There is nothing more tragic than a Christmas ornament specialty store that's been blacklisted in November.

Do it by the numbers and you'll be able to sleep nights.

If someone guarantees you s/he can get you onto page one of the Google searches for a particular phrase, RUN AWAY as fast as you can. It may happen, but you'll be in trouble shortly after s/he cashes your check, maybe even blacklisted.

An honest SEO may be able to get you onto page one of the SERPs, but it won't happen overnight, and it will cost a fair amount of money unless you have very little competition. And it won't last if your competition fights back while you sit on your laurels. You'll have to work at it every day to maintain your position. Be happy if you get on the first 3 pages of SERPs for your main phrase, especially if you have a lot of competition.

The best SEO I know of in the business is Jill Whalan http://www.highrankings.com. She's expensive, but worth it. The rest of us devour her newsletters and try to measure up.

Your honest SEO will research phrases used by searchers to find what you're selling or doing, then will suggest you rewrite some of your pages to capitalize on these phrases. Don't let the SEO destroy your basic message. Your main job is to convince the people who do land on your site to "convert" into a sale.

Your SEO may spend some time convincing other sites to link to yours. Link popularity used to be a really big thing. It is still important. Every link is a "vote" for your site and the search engines treat it as such. However, not all links are helpful. If you sell water skis, a link from a church site won't mean much and will not "count" for much. Also, if a bunch of links to your site are all surrounded by the same words, they will be discounted as "link farming" (which is what you're doing). If your link is on the same page with a hundred other links, it won't count for much either. It's obviously link farming.

The best way to get quality links is to produce a site that has killer material that other sites will want to link to for the benefit of their own visitors. If you can become the "expert" on something, you'll be able to draw the links with less trouble than getting involved in the link trading game. You may want to do both.

Whatever you do here, don't expect instant results. The big search engines have developed an aging policy whereby a site has to be around for a while before it's considered stable and "real". It could take as long as 8 months for you to get any respect.

If you can't wait 8 months, you might want to consider "pay per click" (PPC). This is an arrangement whereby you bid for a particular search phrase. Every time that phrase gets searched for, the highest bid shows up in the paid area first, followed by the next highest bid and so forth. If someone clicks through to your site, you're charged the amount of your bid. Do a Google search on something. The first two items and the items down the right side of the screen are PPC.

There is a danger here. Some PPC schemes involve a royalty to the outfit that manages your campaign. If you fall afoul of a cheater, you may find your site being clicked on by housewives in India who are paid a few cents for each time they "visit" your site. This will drain your PPC budget in a big hurry while making the cheaters rich without gaining you sales.

The best PPC campaigns are carefully thought out and the results are carefully measured. The phrase you're bidding on should match what you sell as much as possible. The page the visitor lands on should "grab" him immediately and be designed to convince him and lead him through the sales process. After all, it costs him nothing to leave and try another if you don't appeal to him or offer what he's looking for.

Another sales technique is to pay other sites to advertise your product (with a click through). Sometimes with hot links keyed off words that appear on the foreign site, or annoying pop-up ads. The payment methods are varied and can involve volume, monthly charge, or a combination.

The entire PPC industry is in constant flux and new schemes surface regularly.

Shopping sites

Another way of selling products is via shopping sites. The most obvious shopping site is eBay, which started out as an auction site, but now offers eBay "stores" run by its customers. You'll find a lot of stuff on eBay that is fixed priced "Buy it Now".

Google has a great companion site called "Froogle", where you can upload your inventory, descriptions, and pictures. Shoppers on Froogle can hunt for products by category, description, part number, brand name, whatever words they want to use; and then sort by price, relevance, or refine their search.

Froogle and eBay are great places to be if you are price competitive.

Summary

You can save money by doing your homework before calling your Web expert. If you are convinced a Web site will be money well spent and you are well prepared, you can be in control of the process rather than being swept along by the tide of a code jockey that doesn't know your business and may have goals that don't coincide with yours.

There are techniques for improving your search engine standings, but there are no "quick and easy" methods that are safe to use over the long haul.

Allan Kalar is the Director of Technical Services for Viking Waters www.vikingwaters.com. Viking Waters designs, creates, and optimizes Web sites of all types from "show and tell" to online sales.