Web Site Planning

To give you an good idea of what goes into web page design, we've provided information about site organization, page elements, and site domains.

There is a substantial amount of work that goes into the preparation and designing of web pages. In looking over this planning information, you'll have an understanding of how we can work together to bring you a web site you'll be proud of.

This page features:

Reason For A Web Site
Site Organization
Web Page Elements
Response & Order Forms
Web Domains & Web Hosts
Web Site Maintenance
Web Site Marketing

1. Reason For A Web Site

The first thing you want to consider is the purpose of your web site.

Do you want to sell product or services from the web site?

Do you want to promote your product or services?

Would you like to have your company information available to customers or potential customers?

Whatever your purpose, by writing it down, this will give you a focal point in which to start planning from.

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2. Site Organization

In deciding what pages will be included in your web site, an organization chart is most useful to map out the structure of it. The chart below will give you an overview of a site's basic components.

site organization chart

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3. Web Page Elements

Your homepage is your "storefront" on the world wide web. It should make a an impact upon arrival, with a display of sections that will draw people in.

Layout of navigational text links, buttons, and "image maps" can be on the bottom of a page, top, and/or side of a page. Often times, a combination of a couple methods is useful.

Graphics, photographs, animated images, sound, and video clips enchance a web site. While it is good to have some, we are careful not to put too many images, or too big in size, that would cause longer download times for visitors.

At the bottom of every page should have copyright and trademark information. At the top of the homepage would include metatags of keywords and description for search engine "spiders."

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4. Response and Order Forms

Response Forms are powerful features for business development on the internet. Visitors to your web site can provide you with their contact information, as well as details that will be useful to you. Below are some examples of the various types of forms:

Guest book sign in
Feedback or Survey form
Enrollment form
Request for Information form
Order form

For order forms requesting credit card information, you'll need a secure server.

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5. Web publishing

You'll want a Web domain name for your web site, as the name will give your site its own identity. At InterNIC, you can check to see if your chosen name is available. We suggest that you register a domain name well enough in advance, if you're planning to do this.

A Web Hosting service varies and it is important to find one that fits your specialized business needs. Please let us recommend a Web Host for you.

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6. Web site maintenance

If you're brand new to the Net you'll want us to do the updating on your site for a while. We include in our fee minor updating over the first six months, up to one hour per Web page. This includes price changes, adding or deleting a sentence or paragraph, that sort of thing.

We can continue to do updating for a modest fee, if you wish.

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7. Web site marketing

Web promotion is important and will help your potential customers find you. Part of our service includes advertising the address of your Web site to all the major Web search engines and directories -- Yahoo, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Lycos, Infoseek, Excite, HotBot. We'll include at least 15 of the most important ones.

Let us recommend a Web marketing service to help you further your success in getting visitors to your site.

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