Website Design Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The questions in the FAQ are:
If you have any other questions about web sites, contact Zwolf
at 512/231-1984 or send us
email.
What is a web site?
A "web site" is a page, or more accurately, a
collection of documents, available for public viewing on the
Internet.
A web site can include HTML documents, PDF-file format documents,
pictures, multimedia (music, films, and animation), and anything
else that can be seen or transmitted over the Internet.
In terms of how you might perceive a web site, think of what
you would do if you were able to design a radio commercial, a
multipage full-color Yellow Pages advertisement, or a brochure
with as many pages as you wished. You can also create a web site
that allows people to order products on-line, fill out forms
or surveys, or even send email to you to ask about your business.
Web sites are very versatile. If you have an idea of something
you want to do with a web site for your business, or even for
personal reasons, Zwolf can help.
Why should my business have a web site?
The Internet is used by many people each day - over 100
million people all over the world are online.
In America, there are over 100 million people who surf the web.
That's a HUGE advertising audience. And, unlike the Yellow
Pages, you do not have to pay for additional saturation: one
cost to create your web site, a place to put it, and you have
effectively advertised your business to people all over the
planet. In addition, establishing your business' web site
and Internet presence gives you added status in this region of
the country.
Do I have to have email to have a web site?
No, you do not; though it is useful to have email access
if you have a business web site.
If you have an email address, it allows people who view your
site to directly ask you questions about your products and services.
While this may require that you take time to answer the questions
on a regular basis - such as once a week for an hour or two,
or more often depending on email volume - it reinforces the impression
that you care about your clients and potential clients enough
to respond to them directly. This may urge them to stay with
your business, or switch from using another service to using
yours.
Answering customer email is also something that can be done
in the evening or on the weekends, when your clients might not
be available at their business phone numbers.
Do I have to have an Internet account (Internet
access) to have a web site?
No, you do not, though it is very helpful.
It is possible to have someone else host your site while you
yourself do not have personal access to the Internet. Web space
providers exist especially for this purpose. They provide space
for a web site without direct dialup, personal Internet access,
or email accounts.
Zwolf offers site hosting for as low as $10 per month for a
basic site.
How do I get a web site?
You can create one yourself, or you can hire a web designer
to create one for you.
If you choose to make your own web site, you will have to
maintain it, promote it to all search engines, create the graphics
and write the text; many skills that take time to learn, resources
it takes time to find and learn about, and money spent on training,
books, and software. It is possible to do for the smallest businesses,
if you or a family member already possesses these skills.
By contrast, you can hire Zwolf to design, create, and promote
your web site. Average yearly expenses for site updating,
additional site design, and statistics reporting (optional),
run to about $600, depending on how much you change your web site.
Amortized over a year, this is exposure to over a million people
locally - to over 100 million globally - at $50 a month.
A web site seems very expensive - what am
I getting for the money I am spending?
Zwolf provides site design, creation, hosting, and
promotion.
Zwolf also offers 10% discounts on scheduled site maintenance,
such as regular content changes or updates. This means that if
you plan to update your web site every month, and schedule a
time for your work to be done, then you will receive a 10% discount
on your cost for each session scheduled more than two months
in advance. This helps you prepare any information that you want
on your site to give to the designer, as well as allowing Zwolf
to plan for your project to have ample time to be completed thoroughly
and well, without having to delay either your project or other
clients'.
Do I need to create my own web site layout
and designs, and choose the colors and write the words?
No, you do not have to supply the text or layout ideas,
though you may if you wish.
The web designer writes the text and does site layout, using
either any suggestions from you or creating completely from scratch.
If you have any ideas of how you want your site to look or what
you want it to say, then be sure and write the information down
to give to the designer, and discuss it with the designer before
work is begun on your web site.
You might want to give a short presentation to the web designer
about your business. This will increase the designer's knowledge
of what you provide, and how to best sell it on a web page. Also
take in a business card, any brochures, or any other flyers,
papers, or advertisements for your business. This way, the designer
can also work to make a web site that coordinates with your other
business stationery and information.
How will other people find my web site?
Keywords are placed into the code of the web pages for
indexing programs to read, and your site information will display
when someone queries a search engine using specific keywords.
People find things on the Internet either by knowing the URL
or by using search engines. Search engines like Excite, Infoseek,
and Alta Vista, along with Internet directories such as Yahoo,
let people type in some keywords, push a button, and then see
all the sites having those keywords. It is a little like looking
up something in a regular library's card catalog.
Problems - and low exposure - happen when people either don't
submit their sites to these search engines, don't use the right
keywords, or don't tailor the descriptions in search engines
to make viewers want to go to their site.
Zwolf offers site promotion to the top search engines as part
of its web site packages. In addition, if you want your site
to be listed in more than five or ten search engines (always
a smart choice), you can request additional site promotion.
Once you have a web site, you should put your URL on your
business cards, flyers, signs, forms, anything on which you would
put your business phone number. This will further promote your
site.
I want my web site to be located at http://www.mycompany.com.
What do I need to do?
You will need to get your own domain.
This involves choosing a domain name, registering it, and
arranging for an ISP to host your domain. Once you have your
own domain, you will be able to receive email at that domain:
bob@BobsIceCream.com, timmy@dickens.com,
and so forth. A domain costs $35 a year to InterNIC, the agency
that handles all domain names in America; and usually an extra
$10 a month to whomever hosts your domain. That last cost can
be more or less, though - be sure to find out the total cost
before you commit to having a domain hosted.
I want to receive email for my business
at myname@mycompany.com. What do I need to do?
There are now two ways to do this: getting your own domain,
and using one of the email rerouting services available.
Getting a unique domain for your business is explained a little
more in the answer to the question above this one. There are
also services that will allow you to receive and send mail from
any specified "address" - for example, queenofsheba@palace.com
- even if you don't have your own domain. Frankly, with the ease
of obtaining a domain name and this being the twenty-first century,
there's no excuse for not having your own domain name.
Do I have to get a domain for my business
web site?
No, you do not have to get a unique domain if you do not
wish to do so.
You do not have to have a unique domain for your business
web site. You could just use the web space provided with a standard
dial-up account from an ISP, or you could have a dedicated web
space provider host your web site. If you use the space provided
by an ISP, there is no extra charge, as the web space is included
in your monthly costs. The disadvantage of this is that, as more
and more businesses of all sizes invest in their own domain,
this can be seen by some as unprofessional.
Another choice available is to sign up for a virtual domain,
a service that is provided by some web space providers and independent
companies. The advantage to this is that it usually costs a little
bit less than a unique domain, which costs $170 a year ($50 to
InterNIC, and usually $10 monthly to whomever is hosting your
domain.) People will still be able to find your web site by entering
your company's URL into their browser, and in some cases you
will be able to receive email at your virtual domain address.
However, once your site is displayed, the URL in the browser
will not display your unique URL - it will display the URL of
the machine to which the virtual domain is directed. This can
confuse people, and again, some web surfers think that this looks
unprofessional. A real-life example might be if your business
address was in the back room of another store, and people came
into your store or office through whatever business was out front.
How will I know how effective my web site
is?
There are two main ways to do this: hit counters, and statistics
tracking.
Many personal pages have hit counters. They track how many
times a web page is looked at by an Internet browser (such as
Netscape or Internet Explorer). They usually appear as white
numbers on a black background, though many allow different colors
and fonts to be used. Counters are inexpensive, and it is easy
to get information from your hit counter: simply look at your
page, and see what number the hit counter displays. However,
counters only tell you how many times a page has been viewed
- a straight numbers game. In addition, when you first install
the counter, the low number might give the wrong impression to
other visitors to your site.
Statistics tracking is used by most, if not all, large companies
who have web sites. The information that you can get from statistics
tracking software varies according to the individual package,
but usually includes: how many times a page has been viewed;
what kind of browser was used to view the page; how many times
the same individual browser and computer viewed a single page;
average number of daily hits. Statistics tracking is more expensive
than hit counters, and it takes more effort to see and interpret
the information provided. However, it gives you more comprehensive
details on how well your site is working as an advertising tool.
If I don't like my web site, what can I
do?
Like any other advertising project, campaign, or device,
if you don't like the way it looks or the message that it contains,
you can either stop using it, or you can change it.
Get feedback from friends, relatives, or others in your business.
Look at other web sites for ideas. Then talk with the designer
about the changes that you want to make, whether it is changing
some text, adding or changing graphics, or remodeling the site
structure.
You should always discuss your needs and expectations with
the designer before work is begun on your site, and have the
designer outline their ideas as well. By doing this, you can
be sure to veto any ideas or suggestions that you truly do not
like before any work is started.
Do you use FrontPage, or other web page
generators?
These applications generate imperfect to "dirty"
code, and as such the finished work is not of sufficient quality
to meet Zwolf's standards. While Wolf will use one of these applications
if requested, all other pages are done using "raw"
code.
There are several "WYSIWYG" - What You See Is What You Get -
applications available to make web pages. Microsoft's FrontPage
is currently the best-known due to the company's high visibility
and specific marketing. These applications do generate web pages,
but they do not generate code that is in conformance with global
standards. This means that the pages don't look the same through
all browsers, can't be viewed through some browsers, download
slower, or require updating as HTML, the language used to write
web pages, changes. Specific examples are: FrontPage-generated
documents only viewing properly through Microsoft's Internet
Explorer browser; Adobe's PageMill not recognizing some HTML
information used to speed download time; and all of them generating
pieces of unnecessary code that is still downloaded and read
by the viewer's browser.
Zwolf writes the HTML code manually using in-house templates and a
text editor (Homesite). This allows for code to be individually
entered, as well as supplying several macros for some of the most
common functions such as specific text formatting. Because of the
many years of experience in programming in HTML, this process takes
little longer than it would to generate a similar, lower-quality
HTML document using a WYSIWYG editor.
This document written and used by permission
of Lesli Schauf, © TLM Webworks, January 1998.
Updated 06/06/2002
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