First thoughts your Web site

Not sure?

You know you want a Web site, but are not sure how to start from nothing. Here are some questions and our thoughts to start with. First ...

Cost

Isn?t a Web site expensive?

Compared to other types of advertising, a Web site can be a very inexpensive and competitive option. Remember that a Web site is working 24 hours of every day.

Here is a guide to the costs for a brochure level site of 5 pages:

Cost to build

Ongoing costs

Total each year

In the first year expect to pay about $1200 - $23 per week:

In the second year expect to pay about $650 - $12 per week:

These costs are a guide only. We will give you a quote once we either sit down with you; speak to you online or conference call to determine the best course of action and most suitable Web site. We will not change from our quote unless you decide to greatly change the function or design of the Web site.

We look at more options later.

Focus

What are the three most important things we want the Web site to do?

List these and they become the most important items on your welcome page - the focus of your entire site. They are why your site will be famous. The site should always guide visitors to these features.

What are other things we want the Web site to do?

These become services your site offers in addition to your main themes - the extra things that make your site special. We create prompts throughout the site to bring these to the attention of visitors.

Visitors

What groups of people are going to visit the site?

Knowing who your visitors are helps us design the visuals for the site, and perhaps helps us target the prominent features to specific groups of people.

How are visitors going to use the site?

Perhaps your visitors will need to register, search for information, buy things, or contact you. This helps us architect the site, with registration forms, search forms, shopping baskets (and credit card payment), community bulletin boards or contact forms.

Teamwork

Do you have a team?

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Try to have more than one person to help run the web site even if it is to give you a break. What happens when you go on holiday?

If the team is only you, we are happy to offer our management service to help with on-going advice, support, monitoring and changes. This arrangement may be reviewed & renewed every 3 months.

Keep it fresh

How do I get visitors to return?

We like to think of Web sites as living creatures - they need to be cared for and they need to be taught new tricks to keep people coming back to look. Keeping the site fresh means that visitors are more likely to return, and so are more likely to buy from you, or contact you, or be part of your community.

Visitors will send you e-mails. Some may place orders with you. Members will add bulletin board messages. People will complain!

Keeping up with visitor contacts, servicing their orders and adding new information to the site build confidence in you. This means work by you! We can provide you with the framework and tools to keep the site fresh. But only you know what you want to say or what new products or events are coming up.

People may know you only from your Web site.
Make time to keep your site fresh.
Your web site will create extra work for you ? prepare for it.

Step-by-step process of building your Web site

1: First steps

Here are some first steps to thinking about:

2: Communicate

The success of any venture depends upon communication. We document our sites, from initial concepts up to handover to you. We ensure that the work that you want done is completed through an agreed schedule. As pieces of work are completed, we notify you so that you may check our progress.

3: Concepts

Before any work can begin, we all need to know what needs to be done. Sitting around a table with a sketchpad and an Internet connected workstation is a great way to kick around ideas. We will survey sites similar to yours for the ideas used by your competition.

4: Quotation

Once we all have a concept of the work to be done, we shall provide for you a quotation. Most times we can provide a fixed price quotation, however your project may be such that we will give an hourly or daily rate. This is particularly true for site where as a team we aren?t able to finalise all of the site?s function at the start.

5: Agreement

To commence work, we ask for you to send us a letter of acceptance. Then we are set to commence work.

6: Design

Before starting a project, many clients are unsure how their Web site should look. We often provide two or more alternate visual designs to help guide the decision. We look at the colours of your existing marketing, your products, or even your favourite colours! Your new image should match your target audience.

7: Prototype

To help ensure that we are all seeing the same pictures in our mind, we may build a prototype for you - a model of your Web site using Web pages and rough-outs of the image work but no complex workings. Adjustments may be made to how you think the site should work - which is best done before we commence major work.

8: Development

We build! As we complete pieces of our work, we shall release it to you for approval. This way we keep you informed of our progress and check that all is still going to plan. We value your comments during the development.

9: Launch

Once we have completed work and you have approved the site, we shall upload it to the Web host from which the World will use your site. We can manage hosting services for you, or use the Web host of your choice.

10: Publicity

"What if I threw a party and no-one came?" As well as having a great site, visitors must be able to find it. To-date, most web sites are found through other Web sites, either sites from the same field or from search engines. We shall list your sites with the most popular search engines, as well as those sites related to your field.

11: Handover

Many of our clients prefer to maintain their own sites. Some clients prefer if we look after the site for a time. Either way, we create CDs of the source code to the site and a handover document so that you may take control of your site. Once you take control of your site, you may ask us to continue maintenance, upgrades, monitoring or hosting. For many sites, this can be included in our normal hosting fee, though some changes may require additional charges.

12: Payment

In general we ask for payment at the start of the project to cover any cost we have outlaid (such as domain registration, digital certificates and hosting) in getting the site going. The remainder of the development charges are requested at the completion of the project prior to handover to you.

13: Maintenance

If you prefer, we can take over the maintenance chores for your site. We can provide editorial, image work, regular re-listing with search engines, finding other like-minded sites to be connected with, testing, regular monitoring and trouble fixing.

A Web site is a 'living being? and needs tending - we can help with that. We may help you with the editing of text material but we do prefer if you provide the text and data for the site, so that everything is in your own words and with your personality.

Other thoughts

Domain name

A domain name looks like ?www.MyWebSite.com? or ?www.MyWebSite.org? ? they are a unique identity for a site and belong to the site owner. The domain names are registered with registrars who ensure that names are correctly assigned to the correct owner and not pilfered by other people.

Think of a domain name as the address of your home and the registrar as the State Land Office. The SLO keeps the deed registration of your home and stops other people stealing it because it is valuable.

The registrars charge for this service, and we pass this charge on to you if you ask us to register a domain for your site.

Not all Web sites must have a domain name, though we recommend all our clients register a name, as they are not costly. A site without a domain name does not have its own identity.

Free hosting

Some clients ask us why we charge for hosting when a friend tells them they could be hosted for free, perhaps by their Internet Connection Provider or a free Web site service. This is true, but the site will be hosted using the domain name of the Provider or free site.

Such a site will have an address like:

www.InternetProviderName.net/Clients/MyWebSite or
www.ReallyFreeSites.com/Outside/Members/MyWebSite or
MyWebSite.InternetProviderName.com

If this is your site, then it has lost its identity. All of your stationery and advertising would use the address of the free site service ? in effect you are advertising the ReallyFreeSite people each time someone visits your site!

If the ReallyFreeSite or InternetProviderName stops doing business, then your Web site will disappear. Perhaps they will start charging in future. Perhaps they do not provide the services needed for your Web site. Perhaps you will not want to use that free host when you find out they support sites opposed to a people-friendly world.

Here is what happens when you swap from a free host:

Having a domain name and having the site hosted professionally avoids all of these problems. We believe it is worth the small hosting fee, even if our clients arrange their own hosting.

At Tropic Weave we have reviewed web hosts around the world, looking for service at an affordable price that we can pass on to our customers. And we continue that review frequently.

Extra work

The thrill of owning a personal or business web site is often not followed by the logical process for running the site with minimal stress in a user friendly way.

Imagine running a shop. Most of your customers see only the glossy exterior and the good things to buy. They don't see the work that goes into paying the amenities bill, stocking the shelves or keeping records.

Tropic Weave can help you in working the process to reach the happy medium of a successful Web site in a way that matches yours goals.

We ask questions such as ?who minds the e-mail while you are away??

Give-aways

We have a belief that by giving away free or low cost items on a Web site, more people will be attracted to use it, maybe even buy things, and of course tell their friends. The spirit of the Web originally was one of sharing ? though we encourage our clients to make a profit from their site. It is often easier when something is given away first.

Ethics

We support many ethical enterprises and look for ethical and community minded clients. We discourage using the Web for any purpose that harms people or the environment. This includes using bulk e-mails or sharing e-mail addresses outside of the Web site owner?s group.

Design

You need to think, "How user friendly do I want my site to be for my visitors?" Customers turn away from sites that are not well thought out. Only experience can design a site to quickly take viewers to the things they need. Tropic Weave prides itself on helping and guiding our clients through this whole process. We will find a solution to your budget, needs and capabilities. We like to ensure that the sites we build are quick to load, easily used, present information quickly, and act the way people think.

Speed

A web site needs to provide a useful purpose hence the term Information Technology. It also needs to be easy to understand and also quick to download. The current speed for length of time to attract the interest of viewers is 6 seconds and counting down! The public want their knowledge now! For many viewers appearance is not as important as the speed and usefulness of the site. Research shows that most repeat business is not from pretty but not necessarily helpful, animations, photos and art. Most business is done on sites that provide and show information quickly and well.

Tropic Weave advises our clients that the main aims of a successful web site is to provide good, relevant information quickly in a way that is easy to maintain for our clients.

Privacy

If you are collecting any personal details (such as visitor's e-mail addresses), we feel that there is a duty of care to prevent this information being used inappropriately. Unless the visitor has consented to displaying their details to public, all information should be kept under lock and key. We encourage our clients to use a username and password protected administration control panel to prevent unauthorised access.

In Australia (and now many other countries) laws have been created which protect visitors to Web sites and require the site owners to follow certain procedures. We can help guide you through these.

Protection

What about security? Having a digital certificate is a must if you intend to accept on-line credit card payments. The certificate is attached to the payment page and scrambles all information from the visitor's computer to your Web server, preventing unscrupulous people capturing credit card details and using them for fake sales. A certificate is also a good idea where personal details are being entered into a form, or where there is a login system, such as a Web control panel - the certificate stops user names and passwords being stolen.

Add about $150 each year for the encryption certificate to enable secured pages. This cost reduces if the certificate is purchased for more than one year.

E-commerce

Often expenses are hidden from web site owners until the final moment of launch. It is often a surprise to the budget and can lead to a failure. For example, if you choose to add a payment gateway with credit card capture, the web site will then also need a facility for reversal of payment due to sales cancellation or return of goods not wanted.

You also need to be aware of the charges the banks require for this credit card service. Indicative prices could be:

We know of ways to minimise these expenses to prevent them eating your profits and causing you to raise your prices.

Updating

What types of updates are needed?

There are several types of updates to a site, including:

Each has a different level of difficulty and work required. With our hosting and fee, we can often make changes with more charges.

How updates are done?

Not only are some skills necessary (HTML and JavaScript coding, art work creation, and Web publishing) but tools are needed also. A Web site is usually built with a set of programs to speed the process. Here are some of the tools we use day-to-day:

We hand over to our client the entire source code used to build their Web site - after all, they paid for it! This lets them use any other Web studio (or themselves) to further enhance their site.

But we do hope that they retain Tropic Weave to continue their web service!

Where it makes sense, we encourage our clients to use a database for their information. They can update this database through their web based administration control panel and they don't have to call us!