Perhaps the site’s purpose is to provide information to interested visitors, or to sell a produce or service. Other possibilities are that the
site is designed to collect information from targeted visitors, or merely serve as an online “business card” for your company.
Whatever the case,
getting your site online and functioning properly depends on what you’d like to accomplish with the site. Here are some things to consider when
putting together a successful website:
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Design: Design is an important element to the success of any website. There are many programs available that make designing a web page simple, even for those with no coding
or HTML experience. However, hiring a professional to design your site, will ensure that all necessary elements to a web site have been comvered to maximize your sites visibility.
- Navigation: Above all else, and regardless of what your site is designed to do, it’s important that visitors can easily navigate from one page to another in your site.
Make navigation simple and easy to find. Use large text if you can and repeat links to important pages where people expect to find them, i.e. – in the footer, left or right
sidebar and/or in the header (top) of the site’s pages.
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Forms: If you’ll provide a product or service, or collect information from visitors, you’ll need a web form (or forms) to make submission of information (like a
quote request or contact form) as easy as possible.
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Custom Features: Websites have become more than just a glorified business card. Features, like photo galleries, animation and custom contact forms are in most
cases standard in today's websites. Blog's, social media plugins are also common real estate takers on the web. All these features and more can help keep you site current,
up to date and remember, search engines LOVE sites that have constant changes and updates.
Whatever your goals, short term or long term, OOKIE Designs will develope a solution that will grow with your company. Keeping you upto date with immerging technoligies, meeting the needs of tommorrows internet.
Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a
registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the top-level development and architecture of the Internet domain name space. It authorizes domain name
registrars, through which domain names may be registered and reassigned. The use of domain names in commerce may subject strings in them to trademark law. In 2010, the number of
active domains reached 196 million.
Tips for registering a domain:
- Register a domain name that your visitors can easily remember. Keep in mind the fact that not everyone who will visit your site is going bookmark it.
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You can secure your name by registering multiple domain extensions like .net, .com, if you don't want anyone to copy your domain name. This keeps you safe from the copycats.
- Try not to register domain names that are too long and have too many syllables. For instance, thisiswhereyoucancomeandgetcars.com. GetaCarhere.com would be much better.
If your domain name is going to be more than 3 words then use hyphens.
For more information, visit CIRA.
Dynamic Sites
content and design live separately. The content lives in a database that is placed on a webpage only when needed or asked.
The benefit of this is that it allows for quicker page loading and it allows just about anyone, with limited or no web design experience, to update their own website
via an administrative backend. This set up is ideal for those who wish to make frequent changes to their websites including text and image updates. Dynamic sites are also
great for image galleries, online calendars or e-commerce.
- Easy to maintain when a site gets large
- Easy to keep consistent and up to date
- Offers various visitor personalization
- Feature rich experience, eCommerce, support sites
Applications:
- eCommerce, shopping carts, catalogs
- membership, subscription services
- photo galeries
- community sites
Static Sites
Static Sites are Web pages that always comprises the same information in response to all download requests from all users. Contrast with Dynamic web page.
Displaying the same information for all users, from all contexts, providing the classical hypertext, where navigation is performed through "static" documents.
- Difficult to maintain when a site gets large.
- Difficult to keep consistent and up to date.
- Offers little visitor personalization (all would have to be client side).
Applications:
- content that will probably stay consistant
- small number of pages
- advertisement for an event or function
- no special features or content needed
Definition:
Officially, electronic commerce is “Electronic Commerce is the paperless exchange of goods or services through the use of electronic data transfer”.
This term has been in use for dozens of years and was originated to describe the transfer of data between two companies through dedicated or dial up connections.
It wasn’t until the advent of the public Internet that e-commerce became a household word. Today, the more typical definition of e-commerce is
“To sell goods or services on the web.”
This type of e-commerce is definitely here to stay. Growth of Internet based sales is in double digits and the growth of Internet use by the public is still showing dramatic
increases. The ease of placing an order online has brought the buying public to Internet sales. The technology may change but the market will remain.
In fact, if you currently have a retail location and don't have an e-commerce website you are probably loosing sales. Many people are using the Internet to locate and price
products that will eventually be bought locally. Having your products online will also help promote your business locally.
Benefits:
The true benefits of the Internet as an electronic commerce medium are easy to delineate. The web allows almost instant change to your entire business structure, merchandise, pricing,
marketing, promotions and sales process. In fact, the Internet will allow you to change all of this from customer to customer. Unfortunately this is only useful if you have a web site that will
allow it to occur. Static HTML sites cannot give you the ability to let the site customize it’s self to the customer. You need sophisticated computer programs running your e-commerce site.
Market Research:
In the early years the Internet actually helped flatten the playing field between large and small e-commerce businesses. In fact, many customers would rather do business with a small company
rather than a large one because the customer service is more personal and interactive. Today things are a little different. The cost of creating an online store has dropped dramatically over the last
10 years. Today even a small retail store can have a valid online e-commerce site for under $2000.00. The complexity of online credit card payments has been reduced dramatically.
The complexity of finding someone to host your e-commerce site has also been reduced over the years. It is recommended to host your e-commerce solution with the company you purchased the solution
from. When you do this you can rest easy about functionality problems. It will not matter whether it is the software or the hosting solution, the same people are responsible for making it work.