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Introduction

When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the planning involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.
I have a friend who is in the business of web design and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what my requirements were.

I had no idea about the various aspects and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learned about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process and I have asked my friend to supply the technical information for this article.

Stages in the Process

Target Audience

Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my target audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on?

The objective of the website

Then I was asked, what was the purpose of my website? Did I want to sell products on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for possible customers? Maybe I would want to use it as an online brochure to showcase products. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussion and being supported by advertising on the site.

I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful thought went into the preparation before building a website.

How to be Found on the Web

One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. Generally most users only look at the top ten results so you will also want to promote your website to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.

Your Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is often quite a challenge because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have already been registered.
So looking at names with endings such as .net; .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you want.

We weren’t fortunate enough to have the keyword in our business name but the keyword damp treatment as part of the domain happened once we identified our major products and services, but if you are registering a domain name now try to find one that includes one of your keywords.When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option.

Creating a Site Map

As with any project you must have a plan, the better the plan the better the project turns out. A site map for a web site is part of the plan for the site. The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.

The aim is to make the site as user friendly as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website. For that reason often user name and passwordz are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register.
For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding spam.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided on before starting on the construction of the site.

Copy

The next stage is preparing the content. This is not the design of your website – just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages.Having gathered all the previous information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words.For each image you should also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation.

Navigation

Another important aspect when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.

Website Design

Finally we come to the design of your website. According to my guaranteed SEO contact the design stage is the most difficult because everyone has different tastes.

What one person might like, another person might not like. If you are setting up a website for yourself alone then you will probably have some idea of what you want to see on the site. But if, as so often happens, the website is for a large corporation there will be inputs from many people or departments and you can be sure that they will never all agree!

There are a number of ways to approach web design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for.

The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware – not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style.

If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the selected graphic designer to work up as the final artwork.

The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before development of the site begins.

Production

Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be built. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built.

Accessibility and Compliance

The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a screen reader.

Website Development

The best way to develop a website is on the web Server where the site is going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide comments throughout the development.

Unforeseen items

There are always some things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the web designer prepares and asks the right questions, there will always be a last minute change or addition. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the web site going live.

Going live

The moment of excitement comes when your site finally is published to the internet and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process. When we got our site live I was really pleased with it, and quite relieved the process was over, click here to see it.

Reporting and Monitoring

Once your website is up and running, you will want to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of visits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.

Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site is offline. Google Analytics doesn’t yet provide a comparable uptime monitoring service, maybe they just decided it was too much of a headache as it is an intensive service checking a website every 5 minutes to make sure it is still responding and indeed web-stat do promote this difference as one of their unique selling points but it is pretty hard to compete with free. In fact Google Analytics is not quite free, which makes it an even better marketing decision for Google because sometimes it is harder to give things away for free than it is to sell them! Google Analytics is a free service available to Google AdWords advertisers, you don’t actually have to have any AdWords campaigns running but it will cost you a one-time activation fee of £5 (or similar in your local currency) to open your AdWords account, but once you have done that you can go on to use Google Analytics for as many websites as you like.(I am sure there probably is an upper limit to how many websites you can monitor from one account but my web design friend says he has not yet hit that limit and he’s got about 50 sites being tracked in his account!)

Marketing

Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your designer about SEO

Conclusion

Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer buff, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article will give readers an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.

Preparing your company for 2010 trade show venue the do and don’t. 2009 was a challenge we all have been thought a trying year. The resection have has left most companies trying to save more than ever to help set back their overall cost. The trade show industry has seen many cut backs, cancellations and mergers of different trade shows. Many companies have ever tried doing virtual trade shows, which in some cases they work, but most they do not. Restaurant show or hands on events cannot be done with virtual trade show.

In preparing yourself for the 2010 trade show venue there are few different ways one can approach the trade show industry. We found that cutting back on show just does not work. After all this only postpone the inevitable .,lost of sales. The best and most efferent way to approach trade show is by sensible picking the best shows for your product. See where your competitors are exhibiting and pick the best venue based on that. The second cost saving effort should be in your overall trade show budget. Keeping a reasonable budget and hitting it sometimes is hard to do, however you should always plan for the unexpected mishaps that can blow your budget. Below is a simplified contents list for your basic trade show budget.

1. Trade show venue
2. Shipping cost
3. Trade show Display
4. Hand outs for the show
5. New brochure etc
6. Trade show graphics
7. Preshow campaign

One of the most important item mentions above is your trade show exhibit booth. This item tells a story about your company and its capabilities. A terrific looking trade show display can make or break your trade show campaign. Trade show displays do not have the blow your budget. There are many ways one can keep on budget and get the exact look you wish. One can, rent a customized trade show displays with will certainly keep you in budget. Trade show booth rentals that is customized can produced and rented to you at a fraction of the cost of a customized trade show booth you purchase. In Most cases your completion never have any idea that your trade show booth was rented. Never look like typical rental trade show booth that you rent from the show management. There are but a few trade show fabricators that provided fully customized trade show displays. One trade show booth fabricator that not only provide customized trade show display rental but all so provide complete show services is ELDS, INC. They may be contacted at (626) 969-3399.

All inclusive trade show display rental package are the way to save big in 2010. This means having more time to concentrate on selling or presenting your product or services to potential client.

So here is to a good trade show venue and year

Absolutely yes! With the advancement in technology, now-a-days, it is possible for you to get your website adorned with the most contemporary techniques. It was really the thing of the past when the websites were used to display the information about some company. Now, the question emerges is there any other category of the website which affects the website design prices? Well, answer to this question is yes! There are several types of websites which hold their own characteristics and obviously prices too. Therefore, it is essential for you to get familiar with each of them.

First of all, let’s consider the traditional brochure websites which possess no dynamic content which means reduced web traffic. Usually, these websites are created using a perfect combination of HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS). However, you can get such a website designed at a mere cost of $1000 but get a website design quote first. In case you wish to add some dynamic appeal to your website such as moving pictures or animations, then undoubtedly you have to pay extra bucks for it.

Seek for a quote: Once you have decided your budget, invite quotes from various web designing companies and narrow down your search by finding the cheapest ones out of them. Here, it is also worth to note that there is no shortage of scammers over the internet. Therefore, you must be conscious while dealing with so called cheapest web designing companies as most of them requires you to deposit half of the amount in advance.

Last but the most important type of website is an interactive one. Such a website allows you to come back to your visitors hourly by the means of latest news, gossips etc. Now, when it comes to the approximate cost of such websites, they require you to spend around $10000 to get them designed.

Has your family chosen wherethey want to go on your summer vacation?  You are not alone, most families have not yet decided where they want to go.  It can be a very time consuming activity to discover that ideal vacation getaway, so explore the choices for your Nebraska tourism.  You will discover various alternatives and it may not be an easy decision!

However, if you are careful and appreciate the time to do some planning, it should make your summer vacation fun and one of those “family events” that you will treasure forever.  The most frequent mistake people make is first selecting a “destination.”  The perfect vacations occur when you first choose “what you want to do”!  Do you want to go hiking, surfing on a beach, playing and relaxing at a park, or touring informational or historical locations?  By choosing “what you want to do” to start with, you are off to the best start of choosing that perfect family tourism destination!

Now that you know “what you want to do” – you can think through the various tourism destination areas and find those perfect attractions that you hope to go see or do.  By spending a short time planning, you can also discover those destinations that include a number of attractions that are interesting to both you and your whole family.  Online destination guides are useful that can help you choose detailed information about activities that are more detailed than a simple attraction name and address.   Now that you know “what” you want to do and “where” you want to go, a legitimate high quality online Nebraska destination brochure will provide you a comprehensive article detailing each attraction to assist you making an educated decision about what you want to do and where you want to go.

Here are three Nebraska vacation alternatives that you might want to consider:

Idea #1: Off Road Ranch – Norfolk, Nebraska. Have you always wondered just how good you really are on your off road vehicle?  Do you wonder how far you can jump your motorcycle?  How fast you are?  Can you win in a drag race?  All of these things can be put to the test at the Off Road Ranch in Norfolk.

Idea #2: Omaha is the largest city in Nebraska, and as such is a major center of the tourist activity in the state. The “Gateway to the West” as it is often called, is situated along the Missouri River.  One of its attractions is the Henry Doorly Zoo.

Idea #3: Lincoln, Nebraska is the home of the National Museum of Roller Skating. This museum is dedicated to preserving the history and the future of this all-American pastime. Located at 4730 South Street, the museum is filled with photographs, memorabilia, artifacts and historical materials that give visitors a fun and interesting look at the sport of roller skating from its humble beginnings to the current roller skating craze of today.

As you have discovered, you have a significant choice of options available to you when it is time to select that perfect family vacation escape.  Take advantage of your time to plan carefully what you want to do and where you want to go.  Select a quality travel guide to help you find those perfect Nebraska vacations.  And you will find that you will experience a family vacation with a lifetime of memories.