www.pagemouse.com

k.i.s.s.

The Pagemouse
Chicagoland Website Design
Website design development and promotion

Design and Creation

Here is a 4 step summary of the website design and development process as a starting point:

1 -Design			Goal, Intent, Design and Development.
2 -Setup			Setup Online. Hosting and domain manes.
3 -Promotion			Search Engines, Web rings, links...
4 -Maintenance			Updates and support.

... and a note on: Do it yourself or professional design...

1 -Design

The first step, of course, is to define or review the intent or goal of your website.

Note: Not only is this the first step, but you must also keep this in mind throughout the entire development process to stay on track!

A few questions in this area may be:

Who am I trying to reach? What information do I intend to provide? What kind of image do I want to project? What is the ultimate goal of this website?

The next step is to design and develop the necessary pages to support your intention or goal.

The design involves a logical and organized plan for presenting your information and producing the expected results.

There are many styles, formats and web site design effects to choose from to accomplish your goals (see the Samples section). It is best, of course, to use the various techniques in moderation, to produce a professional look and to keep the download time fast.

Above all, professional sites must be organized, easy to use and as fast as possible for your intended purpose and audience.

2 -Setup

You will need to choose a domain name for your site (this will be your companyname.com internet address) and choose hosting service to host your site.

One location that you can use to determine if the .com name that you would like to use has already been registered is:

http://www.domainsearch.com/index.htm

Domain name registration and web hosting can be found at very reasonable prices.

Web hosting can even be free. Of course, the free hosting sites typically involve banner ads or some other paid for service (there are a number of free sites listed on the Helpful Links page).

Your current ISP (internet service provider) may even provide you with free web hosting space and services...

3 -Promotion

Once your site has been developed and is online, you will need to make sure that people can find it!

First of all, you have direct referals, from yourself, your customers and/or your family and friends. Tell people about your site! Include your domain name on your business cards and printed materials, refer customers to your site for information, prices, samples, etc.

If you have a logical and easy to remember domain name, people will remember it and know how to find you.

Search Engines:

This is a critical component to getting traffic to your site, of course. The best information that I have found to date on this subject can be found at:

http://searchenginewatch.com

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4 -Maintenance

Some sites, once designed and set up on the internet, may not require additional maintenance (kind of an electronic yellow pages).

Most likely though, you will need to update your site periodically. This is especially true if you intend to attract repeat visitors, or if you have a dynamic site or business.

Keep this in mind when developing your site and/or selecting your site designers, domain registrars and web hosting service.

Do it yourself or professional design...

One final note related to website design and creation...

There are now many tools and options available that make it fairly easy for almost anyone to create a website on the internet, provided that you have the time, patience and some (limited) technical and creative ability.

The Photography Analogy:

This is not entirely unlike photography, in that anyone can pickup a camera and some film and take a picture, yet for important events and high quality photographs you are typically going to choose a professional photographer.

The same is true for website design and creation. You can do it on your own or hire someone to do it for you (although you will still need to supply input and information to whoever is designing your site).

With website design and creation, you may also choose to do some of the work yourself and get help with the tasks for which you need assistance.

If you think that you may need assistance with the your website design and creation or with specific tasks, please feel free to contact me or request the free information package for further information.