When planning your web site, it is important to look ahead and plan out what it is your web site should be capable of doing. Are you using your web site to attract foot traffic or are you using the site for attracting online traffic to serve your business needs?

There are different types of web sites as well as web site functions to consider.

What are you using your web site for?

• Portfolio Web Site: Fashion, Art, Design
  • Used to display work online in the form of gallery or slide show
• Brochure Web Site: Restaurants, Small Business
  • Commonly used to attract foot traffic
• Catalogue Web Site: Online Shops, Hosting Services
  • Require E-Commerce software to sell products directly to customers
  • Require PayPal or other payment processor
  • Used to attract online traffic
• Entertainment Web Site: Movie Sites, Music Sites, Game Sites
  • Often offer E-Commerce to sell merchandise to visitors
  • Often require PayPal or other payment processor

Depending on the web site, you most likely will want to add additional functionality to it. The list of items you can add to your web site is endless. You may wish to have one of the following
(This list is some of many additions)

• Newsletter Subscription with HTML template
• E-Commerce
• Blogging
• Online Polls and/or Surveys
• Advanced Contact Forms
• Online Customer Support
• Discussion Forum
• Media Output (Image Galleries, Video Players, etc...)
• And More

Before going ahead with your web site project, it is important to check out the sites of your competition and position your site accordingly.

A domain is your online identity for your business and/or services. It is important to make sure that if you have an existing business, you get a domain that matches your business name word to word. Sometimes you will encounter the problem in which the domain name that matches your business name is already taken. There are steps that you can take to get around this problem.

Researching Your Domain Name

Are you targeting people on a global level? Or are you focusing primarily within your country or province/state? (Canada/USA) *Different terminology in different parts of the world*

There are different domain/url extensions, some of the most common are

.com - Represents the word "Commercial", the majority of web users that purchase a domain prefer using a .com as it is the most recognized symbol for representation.

.net - Represents the word "Network" and is commonly used by Internet service providers, hosting providers and small business linked to the Internets infrastructure

.org - Represents the word "Organization" and is commonly used by non-profit organizations

.biz - Used for small business web sites

.info - Represents the word "Information" and is considered to be a "credible resource" web site. It's the most popular extension beyond .com, .net and .org

.mobi - Is short for "Mobile" and is used on web sites that are designed and optimized to be viewed on mobile devices such as I-Phone and Blackberry.

Additional domain/url extensions, misc. and country specific

.ca - Represents the country code "Canada" typically used for web sites originating in Canada; however this along with every other country specific domain is unrestricted and can be registered by anyone around the world. Other country domains include (.us = United States, .uk = United Kingdom, .cn = China and many more)

.bc.ca - Represents provincial and country code (.bc = British Columbia and .ca = Canada) this domain extension is not the most common, but is available at limited domain registrars. The price of this domain compared to others is significantly higher.

.fm - Represents the country code "Federated States of Micronesia" but is more commonly used for FM Radio Stations

.am - Represents the country code "Armenia" but is more commonly used for AM Radio Stations

Cost of a domain?

You can spend anywhere between $12.00 / Year - $65.00 / Year for a single domain name.

For more domain extensions and information, I suggest going to Godaddy or if you have a personal preference, look into available names as well as costs.

Depending on your site and what you need it to do, you must first know what your site requires in order to run properly and efficiently. Once you know exactly what you need, you can then look into hosting provider services. There are A LOT of hosting companies, cheap, average and expensive companies floating around the net, which one to choose though is the big question.

Don't go cheap, but don't overpay for your hosting service. Usually the cheap "too good to be true" hosting solutions typically are "too good to be true" here is some terminology to help you make your decision.

Shared Hosting:

You along with many other people with web sites are using the same server for hosting. The more people using shared hosting, results in higher risk of technical issues, in a lot of cases resulting in downtime. Almost all hosting providers clearly label that they offer 99.9% Up-time, but there is always a very good chance that you will encounter that odd 0.01% downtime if too many people are stressing the shared server. Of course like all computers, problems occur and sometimes maintenance is required so some downtime is to be expected.

Dedicated Hosting:

Meaning that you are the only person using a single server intended to host your web site. This assures you true quality hosting and a much lower chance of encountering that 0.01% chance of downtime. Typically the only downtime you would experience is server maintenance and upgrades. If you are running an extremely high traffic web site that requires constant connections, this is the hosting solution for you.

Making sure your hosting meets your sites requirements

Hosting providers may appear to have all the same features, but you really have to look carefully. An example of where you might run into problems

Your web site offers a newsletter subscription. You set everything up and prepare your newsletter. You have a few people who have just signed up for your newsletter and you submit an e-mail to your subscribers. Later on you notice that you have a bounced message saying that there was an error in sending your e-mails.

Of course to most people, this "error" won't mean anything except for the fact that something went wrong. The point of that example is to represent a web host that has "Anti-Spam Protection" which means you will not have the ability to use an Auto Responder as well as Mailing List. This lacking feature allows you to only submit e-mails to a very small number of people at one single time. Anything over their limit is considered as spam and will not be sent.

There are few hosting providers that actually have "Anti-Spam Protection" but it is something you need to look into.

Hosting Costs?

Shared Hosting - Between $60.00 / Year and $160.00 / Year

Dedicated Hosting - Between $2088.00 / Year and $4488.00 / Year

Building a web site consists of a few steps

1. Planning Design (Header, menu, body columns, content and footer)
   1. Picking colors (Background, body and text)
   2. Design style(Fluid Vertical and/or Horizontal or fixed width with rounded or square edges)
2. Getting rough copy of the design drawn up (Can use examples of other web sites if you have to)
3. Getting Publishing Quality Design made up by designer
4. Implementing Design into the web site
5. Publishing Content
6. Setting up navigation (Linking of all pages)
7. Final Edit
8. Continue to Stage 05 - Optimize web site for search engines

Search Engine Optimization is the number one tool to having a successful web site. If you do not revise your web site accordingly, you will be left invisible to your competition. It is important to optimize your web site and maintain optimizing for better results.

All web sites that are completed by me will be optimized, for further revising and optimization will either require you to use an actual SEO company or allow me to do it for a small fee, simply for my time.

The simpler your web site is; the less chance of error can occur. Error is defined in a few ways

• Spelling and use of grammar (You don't want sloppy content)
• Hyper Links (Make sure that all your links are working properly)
• Display (To make sure that your web site displays properly, all pages and on common browsers)
• Page Titles, Descriptions and Meta Tags (Make sure all pages are properly and clearly labelled)
• CMS Web Sites (This is for web sites operating on a CMS Platform)
  • All pages, menus, functions work properly both front and back end
• Images (Make sure all images on all pages display properly)
• E-Commerce / Online Payments (Make sure payment processor works properly before going live)

Depending on your budget, you have a variety of promotional methods

• Include Web Site URL in all Printed Material (Business Cards, brochures, letterheads, etc...)
• Search Engine Optimization and Submission
• Submit your site to business directories that apply to your category
• Paid Advertising (Google Ads/Ad Words, banner placement, etc...)
• Facebook Fan Page and Twitter(Free advertising, facebook also features paid ads)

These are some of the many methods to promoting your web site.

Once the web site has been up for some time and traffic is making their way to the web site. It is the responsibility of either you or whoever is managing your web site to analyze web site traffic and revise the web site accordingly which is followed through in "Stage 10"

Analytics allow you to keep track of where people are coming from, how they found you, search terms used to find you and much more in depth details that will help you improve the status of your web site on search engines.

Keep in mind, this service by SEO service providers usually charge fees per revision or include it in their total price which includes a year of reviewing and revising as it is needed. One reason SEO services can be so expensive.

There are a few ways you can obtain customer feedback

Message Board:

Message Boards, also known as Discussion Forum. Forums are open to members to voice their opinions and converse amongst one another about various subjects that are provided within the discussion forum. Setting up and operating a discussion forum does require technical skills, but in the end can be a powerful tool in building up your web site.

Public Survey:

A survey is a useful tool, having full control over the questions you want to ask, will keep your feedback on track and effective. The trick is, keep your survey to the point and don't make it too long. Filling out forms all day long is not everyone's Cup of Tea

Monthly Poll:

A poll is simple and to the point. Name the poll and provide a few different options to choose from, if you have an active site, you will see some decent feedback every month or however long you keep your poll up.

Getting your web site up from behind the scenes to actually launching it to the public is a lot of work. Most people would love to just sit back and leave their site to do the rest of the work. Unfortunately, you're not off the hook that easily. To truly have a successful web site, it will require you to maintain it and update it often. You don't want your web site to go old and stale, it is important that you change a few small graphics, colors and provide some new content, a blog is good as it shows that you are still playing an active role on the web site. Of course a blog doesn't always go with particular web sites.

You don't need to redesign the web site every month, but at least add or change a few small items every now and then just so your regular viewers won't get bored of the same old sight.