Let Spank Interactive
create that very Special
Website design for you!
How to Plan out a Website.
After you have acquired a Domain Name and a place to
Host your Website you need to Plan out how your Website is going to look and what it is
going to do. |
- Some useful hints on Planning your Website -
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1. First get a clear Website objective in your mind. To sell cars, sell flowers, support your software, an information site for a travel destination, extra sales, less support calls etc. Get a clear picture of what you want your Website to achieve for you. Lay out some A4 sheets of paper on a desk and each of these becomes a page. Sketch out a rough Flowchart diagram of how you want each page of you site to link to one another. Title each one eg. Company Profile, Staff Profile, Feedback Page, Products, Order Page, Contact Info, Support, etc. This will give you some indication of how many pages you will need to complete your objective. Have a good look at your oppositions' Websites, see what you like or dislike about theirs. Look at overseas Websites that are in a similar business to yours, they may give you some good ideas. Search for similar "keywords" on a Search engine eg. www.yahoo.com no matter what it is you want to do, odds are someone has tried it before. Have a look at theirs, learn from their mistakes and make your Website better, brighter and smarter. |
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2. Your first page is your Window to the World. We all judge a book by its cover, otherwise they would not have covers on books. The first impressions are the most important and people will judge your entire Company by the first page of your Website and everything they see after that will only be a modification up or down of that very important first impression. The first page IS your Website's window to the World. Yes content is King, yes information is the true value of your Website on the Internet but if your first page is poor they won't even come in to find out what content or information it is you have. Think of your favourite book, I rip the cover off it and hand it to you. Yes its the same book but without is pretty cover. Yes the information is the same but it is now a plain book with its pages hanging out , the content or story hasn't changed which is the true value of the book. But you would still rather have it whole with its useless but pretty cover. This first page or cover page on a Website is called a Tunnel Page. This is an old retailing term, as shops try to attract your attention with flashing lights, loud music, a well designed and impressive window display, good Specials near the inviting open front door. Which has the promise of even better specials and more interesting things just inside. They have created a customer "Tunnel". They caught your attention, impressed you, and led you into their (web) shop without you even knowing it. The front "Tunnel" Page of a Website must do exactly all these things. Here is where you put your wow, your music, your Flash and Java spectaculars. Give them the impression that everything they are looking for is inside, all they have to do is { Click here to Enter }. |
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3. Easy Navigation for Information and Products. The "Tunnel Page" can have all the bells and whistles and can be slower to load, as first time users or people who want to see it will wait to see it and those who don't or have seen it before can {Click here to Enter} and get straight past it into you Web without being slowed down by it. The "Tunnel Page" should lead you straight into the "Homepage" or "Navigation Page". This should load fast and give quick and easy access to your information and products. This is the central page, the Hub that all your other pages radiate from. There should be a very brief description of what your Website has and wants to achieve. Easy old fashioned Contact information like Phone and Fax numbers and Postal address. There is nothing more frustrating than hunting through an entire Website looking for the phone number or e-mail and NOT being able to contact these people!!! This page should have easy navigation to all your other pages and information. Time is money, Internet users want to get it FAST and get on with something else. Navigation Buttons on top, Nav Buttons to the left, Buttons below. If you make it easy and fast to navigate around your website and to get your information and buy your products people WILL use it. Try to keep a central theme or colour throughout your Website. If every page is different it is very confusing and they might NOT now if they are still in your website or somewhere else. Keep it friendly, keep it simple, with lots of help and explanations. Give them a real name to call on the Phone to place an Order or a Picture of who they will be dealing with, treat your customers as you would like to be treated yourself. |
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4. So lets Build my award wining Wesite NOW! So gather all your A4 Pages together draw a square where some text will go, mark it Text T1 etc. Draw a square where the photos should go mark this Photo P1 etc.. Go through all you pages until you have an overall plan. Try to keep your pages A4 pages vertically ( NOT horizontally ), with big writing, this is a pretty good indication of what it will look like on the Internet. Type any text to be inserted in your Website in Notepad or Wordpad and save it in .txt format. Fancy fonts and page formatting are not available on the Internet, so don't even try. Just "save as" in standard .txt format. Photos should be saved in .gif or .jpg PC format. Spank Interactive charges $199 for a tunnel
page and $99 Australian per A4 page to Design for you. I've done all this NOW what do I do??? Copy your text and Pictures to a floppy or include your original Photos if you do not have a scanner, and Post to Attention: Michael Richardson, Spank Interactive, A Division of MRPC, P.O. Box 65, Baulkham Hills, NSW, Australia, 1755 Or call for friendly Information,
prices or advice. |
