Posts Tagged ‘Website 1.0 & 2.0’

Essentials of a website – Part 3

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

This third blog post on the essentials of a website continues to share with you our learnings of developing our website. Do read the first and second post

1.    Website Designers

We are assuming here that while you will provide the content, you will ultimately hire a designer to put all that up for you. Do a profile check before getting any designer on board. Luckily in this case the work of the designer would be up already as part of somebody else’s website. Understand who will be working on your site. You could also share the sitemap with them and tell them that you are looking at them to pitch for your website. This works best if you are corporate client.

Before signing, understand and record the terms and conditions. Ensure that you have written down all that is part of the package as you will surprised how your costs have escalated from where you had started. It would be a good idea to surf several your work related sites. That will give you idea on what different features are available as part of HTML language. You could also give out reference screen shots for specific features that you have liked.

2.    Incorporating a Blog

It is common for corporate to have blogs for themselves. Blogs help in sharing recent news and quicker updates. There are two options available in linking the blog with the site. The company can create a blog and provide a link to it – which means that the user will go away from the site once he or she clicks on that link

The other option is to host the blog as part of your website. So technically when the user clicks on the blog link from the website, he or she can still access the links of the website. We have gone ahead with the second option as we would like the user to spend maximum time on our site.

3.    Cost of the website

The costs of the site depend on the number of pages you create. Typically, there is a standard rate for a limited number of pages and then on per page basis after that. Your sitemap will help you in figuring out the number of pages you will have. Remember to account for pages like sitemap, copyrights, disclaimer etc among your other business pages.

If you would like to use online images, you would have to pay for it. Normally companies like Getty Images have sections of free images provided you give them credit for it. Otherwise you would have to buy from them or get them shot yourself. This is where a good designer can come handy. Most of them have good collection of stock images that they could use for you thereby helping you reduce costs.

4.    Testing your site

After your site is ready, do a test run on it to ensure it works beautifully across platforms. First such test you must conduct is on the various browsers. The most used ones are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome among others. There are times when certain special characters don’t appear in the same manner on certain browsers. While IE stills retains highest market share in Indian market, the other browsers are catching up

Check your site also for different resolutions and different screen sizes. That will show the amount of scrolling the guy with smallest size screen will have to do. It is also important to test your site on different platforms like Windows, Macintoch, Linux etc. You can do all the tests at this site CrossBrowserTesting or leave it for your designer to do it.

Share your website with few close friends and take their point of view. We gained immensely by doing this. This is classic case of power of many. Just when you think you have got it all under control, someone gives in a valuable input that missed your mind.

With this, we end the third part of the series. Do continue reading our last and concluding part of the essentials of a website

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Essentials of a Website – Part 1

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

We are starting a series of write ups on what has become one of the most important manifestation’s of a company’s identity – its website. In today’s virtual world, your website has become your visiting card that is up for view 24X7.

Many prospective clients and investors are forming their first impressions about you and your company by that. Just as you would like to look good before meeting anyone, the same applies for your website. We decided to put down our learnings from creating our website and we hope this will help you when you get down to making yours.

1.  Hosting your site

Hosting basically means parking your site on a server. So whenever someone types your site address, that person is taken to that place. So, as the term suggests, your first step would be to buy hosting space for your website.

There are several Indian (Ours was Webwerks) and International vendors available from where you can buy out space. But we have noticed that buying from American vendors directly turns out to be far cheaper. The disadvantage being that you may not get the prompt service levels that your neighbourhood vendor would be able to provide.

There are also several packages available depending upon the amount and duration for which the space is required. It would be safe option to initially go for one year option and if satisfied with the vendor services, you could then extend it for whatever period of like. Know what you would want to put on site first as that will allow you to estimate the amount of space you will require for it. Accordingly, you can select a package from the vendor.

The most critical aspect is to understand the terms and conditions of all the packages of the vendors. Do not rush into this.

2.    Domain registration of website

If you are a startup, then don’t be surprised if the name of your firm is dictated by what domain names are available for registration. Your hosting vendor will tell you whether the name you require is available or not. Thankfully there are alternate domain name extensions available besides ‘.com’ – you also have ‘.net’ or you are from India then ‘.co.in’ or ‘.in’

Registration costs of ‘.com’ are marginally higher than ‘.co.in’ or ‘.in’ Buy your domain name for longer period irrespective of whether you continue to use the same hosting vendor.

3.    Email Ids

Once you have registered your domain name, you can start creating your email IDs. Your email ids will read like ‘yourname@yourcompanyname.com’ There can be restrictions on the number of IDs that a vendor might provide depending on the package you select. Again, estimate your requirement before signing the deal.

4.  Website SiteMap

Sitemap is the most critical document of a website. It’s the blue print which highlights to the search engine about the pages that are available for crawling on your site. It is more like a tree – you start off with root which is the landing page and then move on to the branches which would be other pages that you direct your users to. Prepare a sitemap yourself as you would best have an idea of what you would like to host on your site.

Don’t be surprised if you have make several revisions. We made 6 drafts before we eventually zeroed on the current structure. After you have listed out everything, go through it with your website designer – as that person will definitely be able to value add from a technical perspective.

Hope you are with us till this stage. Move on the next part of Essentials of a Website. Remember website development is very different from that of a blog!!

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Posted in Essential Series, Website 1.0 & 2.0 | 14 Comments »