Why do you need a web site?
We have seen that lot of businesses have such a strong physical clientele that they do not think that they need web presence at all. But they do not understand that now-a-days people do not have time to call or to fax to get information. They just search in local yellow pages directory and go to the web site and get the information they need. So in a long run the business is missing out a huge opportunity.
Your web site can work as a operational headquarter of your business. As printing advertising is getting more and more expensive and "People do not read", a well-functional web site can give you a solid platform to transmit company information, history, full line of your products, coupons, discount with a fractional cost of print advertising to your target customers. You can target a large selections of diversified customers through your web site.
What do you need to put a basic web site?
A well-designed web site :
Web site should be designed with nice, less complicated layout without heavy flash.
Fast load is a key important factor. Always optimize all your images at 72 resolution.
If you have lot of images to put on, decorate your gallery page with small size images for fast downloading than add popup windows to display bigger views.
There is another way to display your product pictures within small space in less downloading
time, is a slide show with flash fade in, fade out feature. There are different ways to create slide shows for easy, fast download.
Your web site can be looking very nice from design point of view but the priority should be easy download with zero broken links, web crawler friendly with site map XML file, ROR file, easy navigation, METATAGS with correct searchable keywords. You need regular search engine submission for 3-4 months after you upload your brand new site to be indexed. For faster ranking the keywords should be strategically positioned in three sections such "title", "keywords", "description" in the HTML body of your web site. Your web site should have some kind of web tracking system to understand results.
Before you start the web site design, it's better to create a FLOWCHART of your navigation systems, products, sub pages, number of images etc. The best way is, accumulate all info, products info, product pictures, contact and e-mail info before you sit down with designers.
Choosing a Designer : Choosing designer is very important. As there are many designers in the industry, you need to check few points: 1. Check designers portfolio, testimonials. 2. Carefully check design skills, integrity of the design of each page, watch download time of his or her client's site. 3. Check his or her marketing back grounds, understanding of marketing in diversified products,
knowledge of target customers. 4. Seek his or her suggestions how to reach your target customers and how to implement the marketing campaigns on both print and online. 5. Take a small test of him or her in different ways asking different marketing questions. 6. If you go to a designer who knows only design and does not have knowledge on
4Ps ( product, price, place or distribution, and promotion) of marketing, your web site will be an ultimate disaster. There are few web designers who understand that web design is not a graphic design- It's a software. Consequently you will get a very nice looking design with lots of effects, drop shadows, animations which will load slowly and is difficult to navigate and end up loosing customers. 7. So it will be wise to choose a designer who knows marketing, market trend of diversified products, understands marketing plans, "Phone rings" concept, able to understand your customer's liking, demography, age, taste etc., full of creative ideas to display your promotion and products on the site, and also he or she knows neat designs with advance level of scripting language.
A Domain Name : You can get free space to host your site, but you will not get your own domain through hosting your site in that free space. So it is wise to get your own domain name with a little cost. Domain Name extension might be .com, .net, .org, .edu, depends how your business is enlisted or registered. You need to be very careful to go to a domain registrant company. There are lot of scams going on. It is better you do some research before you take your domain. Make sure you take your domain from ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers: www.icann.org) accredited domain name registrar for .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO,.BIZ and .US domain extensions.
Hosting : You need a hosting plan to host your site. There different kinds of plans for hosting you site. You need to choose your hosting plan to your business needs.
To choose a plan you need to see " is it a secure server'"?, "How much is disk space", " Does it have unlimited uploading ?", ' What is the information transmitting time", " Does it have Microsoft Front page Server Extension?", " Is there a set up fee?"
There are many good hosting companies that do not charge set up fee. To set up online store you need an inventory database, so it will need more larger space. It is better to have Linux based, MYSQL compatible hosting plans with Security Socket Layer (SSL)
read more on our online store setup page.
POP E-mail Account :
You need POP e-mail account with your ISP server. POP means Post Office Protocol and it is a standard e-mail system used on the Internet. Ideally you want your own domain name and a POP account. For example our domain name is www.designdhaka.com and our POP e-mail account is sales@designdhaka.com.
You need to ask how many free e-mail accounts come with different plans. Also ask how many mail forwarding accounts you will get.
Browser Compatibility :
It is very important that you test your site in different browser after you build your site such as Windows Explore, Netscape, Firefox, Safari etc. It is possible to view your site in all browsers if it is designed with DIV TAG, or any programming language such as ASP, PHP, Advance HTML etc.
FTP access :
You need to have a FTP access to upload all your files to your hosting server from your computer. When you get a hosting plan, the hosting company will give a password and
username for FTP upload. FTP means FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL. There are lot of FTP software in the market or you can get free also.
E-mail us with your inquiries or questions @ sales@designdhaka.com or call us 951-796-6584.
