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DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

  • Your Competition
  • Computer/Browser Capabilities
  • Type of Web Site
  • Security
    •   
    Your Competition
    Regardless of whether or not you have a new or an existing business, before you start designing your site you need to check out your competition. How many other companies are there out there offering the same or similar products or services?

    Go to one or two search engines, such as yahoo or altavista and do a search using keywords that are relevant to your type of business. For instance, if you are selling watches you might want to do individual searches using the words watch, gift, jewelry, etc.

    Then from the search engine's results, select a few of these sites and evaluate them.

    What was your first impression of each website? What did you like?

    What didn't you like? What needs to improved?

    Is the content useful? Does the site provide the customer with the information they're looking for?

    Is the web site attractive? Is information on the web site easy to find? Is it easy to travel around within the site?

    Then decide what you want your web site to look like, what kind of information you want to provide, and the image     you want to project of your company.

    Computer/Browser Capability
    Your also need to consider your visitor's computer, and their browser's capability. Not everyone views a web site the same. You need to take this into account when designing your site.

    Colors may be viewed differently, and the type of images that can be viewed may be limited by your visitor's browser's capabilities. Or your visitor may have chosen to turn graphics off on their computer, to decrease the time it takes to load images. When you design your site you need to make sure you do not create features essential to the web site, that a large segment of your visitors may not be able to view.

    Download speed is also a critical. This is the time it takes the information from your web site to appear on your visitor's screen. Very large or complex graphics require additional time to download, whereas regular text downloads rather quickly.

    Remember, visitors access the internet at various speeds, and the medium they are using greatly impacts performance. Older modem connections, 28.8 or below are very slow, whereas cable connections are very quick. Because the typical web site visitor is impatient, he probably won't be willing to wait more than 45 seconds before he moves on to his next destination.  So the size and complexity of the graphics are an important consideration.

    Screen size may also be an issue.  If possible, you should keep pages short so you don't have to continually scroll down the page to read the information.  Also if the information is too wide for their screen, they will also have to scroll horizontally.  This makes reading the web page very difficult, and people probably won't be willing to do this too long before they decide to leave.

    Type of Web Site
    The type of web site you  need depends on what you want to do. There are two basic types of sites, informational sites and e-store sites.

    Informational Sites
    If your purpose is to just establish your company's presence on the web and provide information about your company and your products or services, an informational site may be all you need. A basic site of this type would give you 4 or 5 content (text) pages, your company logo, an additional graphic image on each page, and a form for your visitors to contact you.

    E-Store Sites
    If you plan to actually sell your products or services over the internet, you will need an e-store site. In additional to the features included in an informational site, an e-store site usually includes a product listing with a picture of your product, a description, and a price, plus an order form.  E-store sites may also have product search capabilities.

    Security
    Security is especially an issue if you plan to sell your products or services over the internet and accept payments online. This is probably an option you will want to offer though, since the majority of online purchases are made by credit card.

    To be authorized to accept a credit card payment you will need a Merchant Account. Since this account is basically a line of credit, you     will have to provide credit references, and be approved by the Merchant Bank before they will issue an account.

    There is usually an initial charge to set up the account, a monthly statement charge, and monthly discount and transactions charges. Depending on the Merchant Bank, discount charges range between 2-1/2 to 5% of sales, and transaction charges are usually $.20 to $.30 per transaction.  MasterCard and Visa payments are usually set up together under one account.  American Express and Discover require separate accounts, and usually have higher fees.

    You may have noticed a small key symbol when you visited sites that accept credit cards. This means that transactions processed from that site are secure. This requires special software that     encrypts the data while it is being transferred, and blocks access to outsiders while the data is being processed. Th    e cost of the encryption software may be separate from the cost of the Merchant Account.

    Because of special arrangements we have with our affiliate, if you     purchase or lease a web site from us, we can offer you a great  package, and a very affordable price on Merchant Account.

    Please contact us with any questions or comments.

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