So you think you need a web site? Are you sure? Chances are, if you are involved in a business that promotes a product, or a service, than you should have a web site. Another good reason is if you have a product that you know your customers are doing research for online, and that would be most products really. Now if you own a Sandwich shop chances are you won't ever need a web site. How many people do you know look up a sandwich shop on the Internet. You wouldn't, you would just walk to the local shops and find one.

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Digital Storme's Web Site Portfolio

Some obvious reasons for owning a web site are;
* Promote your ideas, hobbies, or beliefs
* To Advertise your company or product
* Provide customer services and support
* To keep your customer base informed
* Give or Sell Information
* Create an 'Extended Business Card' for your company
* Provide internal information and services for your company

That covers a lot of ground, so chances are very good that, being you are here, you need a web site.

So what do you now? Well, if you are not in any hurry you can run down to your local bookstore and pick up something like "Web Design For Dummies", or "Teach Yourself HTML In 10 Minutes". These will give you the basic knowledge for building yourself a brochure or store front online. Problem is you'll most likely end up like millions of sites on the web, a needle in a haystack, a black star, or even worse perhaps, your potential customers will find you and just as quickly go away.

There is a lot of competition out here on the web. Your customers have become savvy net surfers, and they have some pretty strict criteria for you to follow in order to keep them on your web site, and get them to buy or call you. Here are a few basics things you will have to understand to build your web site.

1. 1) Design: Put your design on paper first. Make an outline draft (rough draft).
   
   2) HTML: All information on a web page reflects information as dictated within opening tags <***> and closing tags </***>. In order to see this page in its coded form, right click on the screen and then right click "view source" on the menu that pops up. This will bring up a "code" view of this page. You can view the source of almost any web site using this technique.
   You may require the use of an HTML editor or other program to build your web site.
   
   3) CSS: Cascading Styles Sheets are useful in designing your web pages because they provide all of the basic information for all pages at once. The use of CSS cuts down on the size of your pages, and covers the whole “styling” of your web page design.
   
   4) Host / IP / Domain Name: Decide where your web site will be housed. Your web site has to be available on the internet through a server, which will serve the pages once your “site name” is entered into the address bar. After much trial and error, I use the servers at BlueHost. Here I have access to many advanced features, ready to customize and deploy to my sites.
   
   5) FTP for transfer of files and maintenance: Once you feel that your site is publishable, you will need an FTP program (file transfer protocol) to transfer your files to the server.
   
   6) Contact Page vs. Email Address on site: One area to be wary of is the use of your email address on your web page. If you have a generic email address through hotmail or Netscape, it is less drastic to make this address available to the public. A preferred method of contact is the Contact Page, which requires technical know-how.
   
   7) Meta tags, Search Engines, and Site Submission: When you are developing your pages, take special care to insert valid and proper meta-tags. Many of these tags provide background information for your web site, including the author’s name, date of production, revisions, keywords, a description, etc. These tags are used by search engines to locate term-related data from computers world-wide.
   
   8) Link Validation: If you are providing links in your site to information from the internet, be sure to check frequently that the links are still valid. One of the most irritating points of the internet is the loss of link validity. Sites change, are dropped, become stale, or simply cease to exist.
   
   9) Outline, Content, and Structure: It is important to structure your web site to be "Search Engine Friendly". This concept means that the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Etc.) will not only be able to find your site, but also will be able to read your site and pull relevant content from it's pages. This is also important for your human eyes. Navigation, Font color and size, background color and usability are all critical aspects of your project.

Above are just a few of the basic technical and marketing issues you will need to be aware of when building your web site.

On the other hand, why not let an expert do it? You concentrate on the business at hand, and I will concentrate on putting that business on the internet and generating more sales for you.

If you would like to discuss contracting Digital Storme to build (or re-build) your web site, please fill out as much information as you can on my Web Build Inquiry form. I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks, and good luck with your life on the web.