SMART CHOICES
Issue 15, December 2000
By Marie Gallagher
Graphic Design & Support

Starting decisions to make when building a website:

1. Domain name: ARQ offers a great program for registering your domain name. $99 for your life at ARQ and $10 a month hosting. We do the paperwork and pay your yearly fee to InterNIC. Have some options handy. Write down a list of wanted and acceptable domain names. It's quite likely that your first choice may be taken. Try different variations and keep your client base in mind. Example: Papa's Pizza Palace might list "papaspizza.com, pizzapalace.com, papaspizzapalace.com, or pizzapizzamorepizza.com".

2. Type of site: There are basically three types of sites, 1. Informational (www.zdnet.com), 2. Sales (www.sparks.com ) and 3. Interaction (www.ebay.com ). The best websites incorporate all three.

3. Content: Gather all the content you want for the site. If possible, gather info in electronic form, best formats being .html, .txt or .doc in that order. No tabs or columns. Always try having a hardcopy available also. Put the content into categories and these will be the pages.

4. Site Design: Colors, logo, graphics, look and feel. Think about these things with the audience in mind, the company mission in mind, the features and limitations of the media in mind. Have some examples, what you might think looks "rich" may look like "Christmas" to your designer. Rich like chocolate pudding, rich like diamond earrings or rich like Mr. Thurston Howell III. Having examples of sites and features you like along with good communication with your designer will transform your vision more accurately to the web.

Remember:
Your goal. (If it's a business, let it be just that, if it's a way to express your creativity for therapeutic reasons, then it is, but don't call it one and treat it like the other.)

Your audience. (You know them best, so what will they expect, what level of computer user are they, what would they like to see in your site to make their lives easier, richer or more fulfilling?)

It's a new world and a new media. (We are not printers, we are not television, we are not newspaper. You don't expect your pizza delivery guy to also deliver your groceries. We design for the web, that's our area of expertise, let us do that for you.)

Just because you can have all the bells and whistles, doesn't mean you should. (When in doubt, refer to 'Your goal".) It takes work, time and effort. Many people are making very good money with their web sites. And many are not. The difference is smart choices.