Home Page Basics
So, you are ready to build your dream web site. Yes, it is an exciting time for you, and it should be.
You are setting out on one of the most important tasks you will ever undertake in your business. I say this for many reasons.
First of all, your web site may be the first (and possibly the last) impression you will make on people who are interested in what you do or sell.
In addition, the experience they have at your web site in communicating with you or buying from you will determine if they return to your business again or not. In addition, your customer will either pass on the good news about your company to others, if they have an enjoyable experience.
YOUR MAIN GOALS:
Make it easy for people to get the information they need from you and and make it easy to buy from you!
How do you make sure you make it easy for people to find you, get information from you and and then buy from you? Well, as in any business task, it is always best to research a topic, and to explore all of your options before you jump right in. This is especially true when you plan the layout, graphics, functionality and marketing tools for your web site.
So, before you start building your new web site, you need a game plan and an mock-up or outline for the web site. You’ll save time, probably money too, and you’ll end up with the best web site possible. A site that is easy for users to navigate and provides a compelling reason to buy from you, and provides an easy way for them to give you their money.
Where do you start? You have two goals to start. First, decide what you want to do with the website. Then you decide if you can do it yourself or if you need to hire someone to help you with parts of the web site or if they will do all of the tasks required for you.
All of these options are good choices, depending on you skills, time availability and cost, among other issues we will address below.
In any case…
Start with a mock up of your dream web site on paper.
Here is a simple trick to simplify the process of making your new dream web site and save money.
Start by taking 5-10 legal size pieces of paper, label each page as page 1-15, then go back and label each page, as Home, About us, Our products, Ordering Information, and such, until you have all the pages named and laid out in the order you want them.
Of course you can use more than 10 pages if necessary, but keep it simple.To keep it simple, you can even cut pictures out of your existing brochures or newspapers or magazines and paste them on each respective page to get an idea of how the site will look.
More importantly, you will know how it will work for you and the customer.
You should do this now before you even start reading this book, so you will see how much your expectations for your new web site change while you read the book. It will also save you time and money, no matter if you decide to build the web site yourself or if you hire a webmaster to build it for you.
Next, take the time to evaluate the web sites of the competition.
To get additional ideas for what belongs on your web site, you certainly should go out on the Internet and look at web sites that are similar to yours before you start.
You’ll see what others have done, learn from them and improve on their ideas. My advice is to take the best ideas and leave the rest.
Here is one of the best ideas I have for you for building your web site.
Time saving Templates:
I also want to recommend that you review your options for using templates and other time and money saving tools for your website. Web site templates are simply web sites that a web master creates with the intention of selling to you so that you don’t need to do all the work involved with making a layout for your web site or making the graphics for your web site.
Here are a few examples templates I used to build web sites.
http://www.bucketriders.com
http://www.howtobuildanonlinebusiness.com
It worked quite well for them and saved me many hours (time is money!) developing the site.
Well, there you have the first few pages of my free e-book, ready for you to request. Simply fill out the form on the right, and you’ll be reading it in a few minutes!
My best business ideas to you,
John Davin
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