subject: Tips For Success On Line [print this page] Businesses related to the Internet have not stopped evolving. In the early days of the Internet (and it has only been around for about fifteen years), there was much more specialization in the area of web site design. In essence, there were graphic designers; web site promoters or marketers and the database specialists. Nowadays, these areas of expertise have blurred and most people who work on the Internet will take on all three jobs.
This is partly because the tools that are available to the DIY builders of web sites are so much more effective and because SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are more generally understood. Some of the best web site creation software will not only counsel you on SEO techniques as you are building your web site, but it will also let you write in several languages, without you even having to be conscious of the fact that you are writing in PHP or ASP instead of HTML (which is the language that most web sites are written in).
This ease of web site creation and SEO allows owners of micro businesses to concentrate more on sales than learning programming languages and it also allows professional web site builders to develop high-quality web sites more quickly therefore more economically.
I think that it is preferable to spend, say $250, on good web site creation software than it is to pay someone $250 for a good web site. Web sites have to have maintenance and they need to be modified and up-dated to keep them looking novel and vibrant. You cannot keep going back to the programmers every week for tiny $5 up-dates. They will not be interested unless they work for you in-house, in which case you would probably not be reading this article.
You have to be able to make these modifications yourself and you will want to make them quickly, so you might as well get good HTML editing software in the first place. If you do that, then you may as well build your own web site as well.
When you are designing your first website, try not to over complicate things. The best HTML editors have a range of templates for you to choose from. Pick one of these and just modify the colours, if you decide to. The HTML editor that I use has about a hundred built in templates and they are all fully customizable by several clicks of the mouse.
Your web site should be pleasant on the eye, of course, but it should not take more than a number of seconds to load. You may have 32 MBps, but most of the world is still down around the 256 kbps mark. Keep that in mind when you are adding lavish graphics, music or video links. People will not wait more than a couple of seconds for your site to load, particularly if it starts playing your favourite music at them too.
So, when you are building your web site, remember the objective of the web site. Be clear on that and stay focused. You do not need bells, whistles, music, video and Flash graphics, if you are trying to sell cheap nylons, but you may need them if you are trying to sell your expertise as a web site designer.
Do not have any diversions from your chief objective. For instance, on my first web site, I thought it would be good to keep people amused while they were thinking of buying, so I put sudoku, hangman, crosswords and the like there. People played the games and then clicked through to the sudoku website to play more games. Sales dived. Keep your hard-earned visitors on your web site by not giving them any links to click away on except Google Adsense, for which you will get paid in any case.
