Internet 101

Research

Before making the leap into Internet commerce, put some time and energy into researching the Internet. Become familiar with the popular terms and your current competition. Get your own Internet access account, or make use of one at the local library. Visit the more popular search engines and see who is already out there, notice how they are advertising, and how they have designed their sites. Look for several sites, not necessarily in your industry, whose design you really like. Visit commercial sites and pay attention to features that catch your interest, as well as those that discourage you from your visit. Keep these features in mind when designing your own site outline.

Outline

Next comes the basic outline of your site. Remember that it will take time, sometimes many months, to begin to develop a flow of traffic to your site. For this reason it is best to begin with a simple site, one that you can get online quickly so traffic is being generated, then build the site up over a period of months. This also helps by spreading the expense out over a period of time.

When outlining your site, think of all the various options that are available. Are you going to provide information for free public education? This is where the Internet began, and this is what keeps it alive, not general commerce. Give them something free, and they will come back and buy later!

Will you need an extensive library of images? Images take a lot of storage space, require quality processing, and are slow to download, which can discourage visitors to your site. On the other hand, it’s been said that one picture is worth a thousand words...

Will you want to have interactive forms that visitors can fill out and send in? Perhaps a guest book where visitors can comment? Will you be processing orders right over the Internet? Or would you prefer to have direct contact with the customer before accepting an order? Secure servers require a higher level of expertise in web design, as well as greater expense in web service.

Before contacting the designer, spend some time with paper and pencil and outline the way you want your site to be laid out. If you have the ability and software, use a program such as Microsoft Word to layout each of the pages, with each page being a separate file. You can even insert your pictures in here, or just draw in an outline of each picture with the relative size and style of word wrapping. This will give the designer a much better idea of what you expect the page to look like.

Use paper and pencil to create an outline. An outline will begin with the opening page, known as a welcome page, which is the first page that visitors will see. This page should contain the most important and concise description of who you are, what you offer, and what you can do for the consumer. Why you? From this page, draw out how you want the various other pages connected and interconnected.

Keywords

Next you will need to build a list of keywords. These are search terms that prospective customers may use to locate sites similar to yours on the Internet. For example, if you are selling furniture, some keywords would be: furniture, dresser, sofa, interior design. Remember that variations of a word count as separate keywords: furnish, furnishings, furniture.. Think of as many as possible. When you are creating the text that will be used on the site, use as many of these keywords as possible, particularly on the primary, or welcome, page.

Images

Once you have the layout roughed in, the text written, and a list of keywords, it's time to consider the images you will be using. If you plan to use photographs, you will want the highest quality possible. If you do not already have these images, then consider hiring a professional photographer. High quality images require far less manipulation to prepare them for the Internet! Use caution when having the designer manipulate your images. Given free rein, a designer can spend countless hours tinkering with an image, although the results will be exciting, the cost may be prohibitive!

Publicity

Once your site is up on the net, you need to let the world know it is there, and how to get to it. This involves notifying the hundreds of search engines that your site exists and letting them know what your site is about, so it can be cataloged and then located by customers. Without linking, your site is merely a vanity plug. Most designers will submit your site to a certain number of search engines, but that is all they will do. Search engines require far more upkeep than most people are willing to do, which is why there are a number of companies that now provide this service. Again, you will want to shop around for the best deal you can get. Remember that there are hundreds of search engines, but most of them are content specific - health, research, etc. If your business doesn't fit, you won't benefit from being in them.

Reciprocal Linking

There is another side to linking that is often neglected. This involves locating complimentary sites that you would like to have linked to your site. They, in turn, will link back to yours. To understand this concept, consider the site of an interior designer. This site would benefit by being linked to furniture manufacturers, carpeting suppliers, drapery and upholstery, etc. Shoppers looking at furniture will be inclined to visit the designer's site, even if just on a whim. Once potential customers are at your site, you have the opportunity to convince them that they need your services!

How do all these interconnected links get set up? This is done by locating sites to be linked to, and contacting each webmaster, letting them know that you want to setup reciprocal linking. Once they agree, you place a link on your site, usually on a page called "Links of Interest", that goes to their site, then check back at their site in a week to make sure they have done their part! This also means that from time to time, you will need to make sure they are still linking to your site!! And speaking of having to keep up on things, the same is true of the search engines. The time it takes for a search engine to make your listing available will vary from immediate to as much as 8 weeks! You will want to keep good records of each search engine and when they list your site. Make sure they listing is correct! And check back from time to time to make sure you are still in the listing, as occasionally search engines will drop sites, for various reasons. More importantly, you will want to notice how your site ranks in the listing. To get the attention of prospective visitors, your site will need to be in the first 10-30 results that are returned.

How can the results be affected? This depends upon the search engine in question. Some will count the times that a keyword is used on a page, the more often it is used, the higher the ranking. Some will look at the title of the page, and rank it alphabetically. Keep this in mind when creating your Site title! A title of "All about Interior Design" will rank far higher than will "Interior Design Secrets". Each search engine ranks differently, so it pays to spend some time studying the primary (top 10) search engines to learn how they rank, and then do what you can to change the ranking of your web site.

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