Planning your website.
The first thing to think about is what you want your domain name to be.
The domain name is your website address e.g. www.mongolshoebox.co.uk. Also, you
should decide whether you want a .com address or a .co.uk version. There
are a number of other endings but these are the main two for the UK.
In Australia the main ending in use is .com.au but once again, there
are a number of alternatives.
Obviously not every name is available so be creative in finding your
perfect domain. You can either ask us to purchase the domain on your
behalf or you can buy it yourself.
Next decision is how you will host the site. Every website needs to
sit on a server that is online all the time so people can access your
website. You can either arrange you own hosting or, though our partners,
we can provide secure dedicated server hosting in top-specification
London server rooms. When making your decision, bear in mind that not
all hosting packages are equal; there is little point having a website
if the server it is hosted on is regularly busy or down. Included in
the price for our hosting package is an unlimited number of email
address ending in @yourdomian.co.uk and visitor statistics.
Now we can start to think about the site itself so lets begin with the
number of pages. Each page will generally cover one subject. As a rough
rule you would normally have a home page and a contact details or contact
form page. After that it is down to you.
In deciding the number of pages you would like you have also started to
create your menu. Knowing how big your menu will be helps to decide what
form it might take and therefore the cost of developing it. For example,
the menu system at the top of this page is very simple and only has a few
items but the menu system here is more complicated.
Now lets think a bit more about what is going on each of your pages.
Normally this will included text, images and in some cases a form such
as the contact form on this site. Coping text from a paper brochure is
time consuming so the immediate question you will be asked is do you have
the text already written in electronic form and are the images available
in digital format. Also there is your logo, assuming you have one; do you
have it in some sort of image file? If you don't have a logo but
would like us to make you one, make sure you have a clear idea of what
you would like.
So lets assume you have collected together all the things you want to
appear on your site. Next question is how you want your site to look.
A useful tool we often use when people are not totally clear on what
they want is to suggest they just browse the internet for an hour or
so and try to find sites they like the look of. Then by identifying
the element that appeals within each site that has been highlighted
we can start to build a design of how you want your site to look.
Lets now return to what you wanted on each page. Did any of those pages
include a contact form or enquiry form? If they did now is the time to
plan it out by jotting down what information you want to gain from the
customer.
Do you want a shop on your website and if so how many products will
you be selling? Also, do you need to accept credit card payments? A
full, ecommerce solution requires you to have an Internet Merchant's
Account. There are however some other options such as using third
party payment service providers such as PayPal.
Last but most certainly not least, once you have your site up and
running how do you want to keep it updated? If you want to be able
to perform your own website updates and change your website content
as often as you like then we need to build your site with a content
management system (CMS). These cost more to develop in the first
place but are easy to update without special skills and keep your
ongoing costs to a minimum.
However, many people prefer to avoid having to keep their site
updated and would rather have us make their changes. This option
can make your site cheaper in the first place but there is an ongoing
cost, in the form of either a per change fee or a yearly contract,
so its a good idea to decide now how often you expect changes to be
needed. If in doubt, we would recommend going for the CMS system at
the outset as changing to this system once you site is up and running
will always be more expensive.
Well done, that is your site
all planned out. Now when you contact us to obtain a quote make sure
you give us all this information and you will get an accurate quote
in return. Beware anyone that doesn't ask for this sort of detail...
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