WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT FOR NEWBIES 1. Take no short cuts or free rides for your new website and register its very own unique domain name (a "dot.com" that is). Although it may seem biased or unfair, many vendors and other online services just don't view websites without a unique domain name as serious as other websites with unique URLs. Even some newsletters and mailing lists require its subscribers to have their own domain type e-mail address these days. So don't sell yourself short - spend a small amount of funds to secure a unique domain name, and you'll gain respect from this perspective in the very beginning. 2. Think about your target market or your typical visitors. How old are they? What kind of music do they listen to? What functions do they mostly attend? What are their hobbies? Answering these questions will help you get a feel for your audience's "taste." Once you can visualize your audience's taste, you can begin to imagine the colors, shapes, and sounds that will match your audience's taste. Together, these colors, shapes, and sounds build a theme. An appropriate theme for a website that sells workbooks for young children for example, would be one that incorporates the colors, sounds, and shapes seen in school buildings and school yards. 3. Just as you visualized your target market or website visitors to develop a theme, you need to do the same as you begin to write the content for your website development. As you type, visualize your audience and speak to them through your fingers. Visualizing your audience while typing will help you set the tone necessary to reach the minds of your website readers. If you're successful, the chances of retaining your current volume of readers (and increasing their return) will grow as your website development continues and continue to think of them as you write.
4. Tie your theme and content together with easy to read fonts and multimedia (images, animation, sounds, & video). The multimedia that you use should demonstrate a product, show a service in action, or further explain a process. Because of its size and demand on server resources, multimedia should never be used as mere decoration. 5. Make the process to purchase products and/or services from your website as easy as possible. Take the time to investigate multiple commerce solutions and select the one that gives both you and your customers a hassle free shopping experience. If necessary, offer more than one method of payment and thoroughly explain each method to your visitors. Include off-line payment methods (check, money order, telephone, fax) to those who are not yet comfortable with shopping online. 6. Give each web page it's own unique title, metatag description, and set of keywords. Make sure that each page instructs your visitors on how to contact you. Include your name, address, and phone number. To prevent visitors from getting lost or confused, place descriptive navigational links (back, forward, first page, last page, etc.) on each page to pertinent areas of the website. 7. Learn about site statistics, where they are offered, and how to use them with your website. Integrate a tracking device onto your website development so that you can gain these site statistics, learn what pages people are visiting, and discover ways to bring pertinent information to the attention of your visitors. 8. Upload your web pages and multimedia into well-organized ftp folders. A simple yet effective organization is a group of HTML, image, sound, video, and/or script folders (also known as the "cgi-bin" folder.) After uploading your pages, check each one to ensure that all elements load. If not, correct the missing links. After these tasks are accomplished, time should be spent improving upon your website development skills. | 
