RAC Services

Starting a Web Site

Analyzing the type of web site:

When starting a web site, you first need to analyze what type of web site you will be creating. To categorize sites, the basic method we use is to try to determine the intent of the web site. If it’s to make money by selling or offering paid services, then it’s a commercial site, no matter what other angles there are to it. If it’s to promote a particular candidate in an election, then it’s a political site, even it’s made by one individual. If the web site will be all about an organization such as a church, youth camp, etc. then it is an Organizational site. Sites that provide information to it’s visitors are the informational sites, not to be confused with personal sites. Informational sites strictly provide a large amount of information regarding one topic normally. If a web site does not fit in any of the above categories, then chances are it’s a personal site. A personal web site can range from a site all about an individual, photos, a blog, forum or even a chat site. Personal sites do not make money by selling or offering paid services. Personal sites can contain advertisements. For example, a personal site can contain Google Ad sense, which will pay the site owner for each ad that is clicked on by a visitor. Remember that if a web site sales or offers paid services to makes money, then it has to be a commercial site.

Before you start to put your web site together, you have to determine how you are going to approach your intended audience. You must first get your goals and decide how complex your site’s technology will be. Once armed with that knowledge, set a realistic budget.

Focusing on goals:

Your goals must be set by one key rule: The average person visiting your site should walk away happy. The key to making your visitors happy and making them want to come back again and again is to satisfy people’s desires. Most web site designers make the mistake of assuming that people only come for what they really have to have, or more accurately what the designer thinks people really need. That’s a fatal error to make. On the internet, people are still people and as in the outside world, people are driven more by emotions than by logic.

Put yourself in the shoes of your potential site visitors and take a look at what you’re offering. Does your site solve their problems? Does it provide them with the information or products they’re looking for? Does it do it all easily, without making your visitors work to hard to get what they want?

Deciding on technology levels:

How deeply are you going to get involved in internet technology? When we talk about technology, we mean both the hardware and software. Is your web site going to contain a blog? Will it contain forms to be filled out by visitors? Do you want to get involved in working with HTML, JavaScript, Hyperlinks, PHP, XML, MYSQL and other codes and languages? If you are already familiar with programming languages then that’s great. If you are scratching your head, wondering what this guy is talking about., don’t be worried. There are many web design software programs that do not require you to know HTML or any of the programming languages.

Internet technology is constantly changing. This means that you need to make one specific choice. Whether or not to keep your web site on the leading edge of that change. Before you decide that you want your web site to stay on the leading edge of technology, think about this. The leading edge of technology has much higher expenses and nobody can guarantee which of several competing approaches will end up becoming the standard. Our best recommendation is to hang back a little bit and not join the latest rush to the new hot internet thing. But just for a little while. Just long enough to be sure it’s the real thing and not just some fad that won’t pan out in the end.

There are good and solid reasons to deliberately ignore even a well established internet technology in favor of still older approaches. Here are two main reasons: Stability and demographic reach. As new standards for web design and applications emerge, anyone on the leading edge of implementing them will quickly find that the latest web browsers, despite anything their makers say, only partially support the standards when they are first introduced. To further confuse the situation, the average web surfer doesn’t keep up-to-date with the latest web browser. So you will lose the audience that uses old browsers if your site uses the latest ideas.

Establishing a budget:

Whether your site is designed to generate an income or not, it still costs money to run. How much money are you willing to spend on your site? This question, more than any other one sets the practical limitations on what you’re able to do.

If you are starting a personal, organizational, informational or political web site then chances are that all you will need to invest is nothing more than the amount that it will cost to get your web site online. All your needs will probably thoroughly be covered by the basic amount of web space and features that your web host provides.

Commercial web sites, on the other hand will require a larger budget. Commercial sites often sell products or a service. When selling products, there is more that you will need to consider into your budget. You will need of course a web host. Also in some cases shopping cart software, merchant services account, and in some states a business license and sales tax license. Another added cost is for advertising/marketing. Depending on how elaborate you want your site to be, there may be other factors to consider into your budget.

While working on your budget, keep in mind that you may have reoccurring charges to keep your web site running. Most web hosts offer month to month, quarterly and annual plans.