Chapter Nine (Part III): Building the Perfect Website
How to build your dream web site!
(Some of the content below provided by : “bejoy” at www.mouthshut.com )
First, do you really need a Web site?
SO many travel agencies have web sites. So why do you need one?
Well, are you interested in getting the business? That's the question.
As Bowers puts it, we are moving from a selling world to a buying world.
More and more travel consumers are purchasing their travel online.
Companies like Expedia and Travelocity are well known, but it does NOT mean the
smaller agencies are out of the game! Big companies like Expedia and
Travelocity can't service smaller niche markets. The larger companies are
designed to handle volume.
If a
potential travel customer goes online to search for a company that specializes
in (for example) honeymoons.....is your agency web site going to come up in the
initial search? Remember, you can't get the business if you're never in
the "running". If you want the potential travel customer to consider using
you- then you must have an internet presence! It's that simple.
This is the first question that you need to ask yourself before you embark on
realizing your great dream.
What is a good Web site?
I would think of the following aspects to decide whether a site is good or not:
* Loads fast. I don’t have to wait too long to see it.
* No source code appearing on the browser. The site has to be coded properly
* Attractive. I feel like giving a second look.
* Easy on the eye. Good choice of colors, good fonts...
* Easy to use. Moving around is easy and my mouse doesn’t lose its way.
* No dead ends, that is no missing pages, 404 responses and old links.
* Information is regularly and frequently updated. This means return visits are
fruitful and loyal visitors are not disappointed.
Why do you need a Web site?
Your motivation for a web site may be one, or more, of the following:
* To attract customers
* To attract customers
* To
attract customers
Make
sure that your Web site contains information which only you can provide -
information that is unique. That is the only way to create a value for your
site. Remember, LOW PRICES are still important- and you can be unique
through low pricing strategies.
Your Tool Kit:
Web Page Editors: Web pages are written in Hyper Text Markup Language
(HTML), which is not too hard to learn. Even a simple text editor like Notepad
or vi (for Unix fans) will do, if you know HTML. If you are not keen on doing
it the hard way you can go for visual editors like Macromedia DreamWeaver,
Frontpage Express, Netscape Composer, CoffeeCup HTML and HotMeTaL. A host of
free editors (http://www.homeworlds.com/freesoft/editors.htm
or http://www.thefreecountry.com/ecentricity/htmleditors.shtml
) are readily available.
Image Editors: Gone are the days when Web pages had only text. Now we
have pictures in the form of GIFs, JPEGs and Flash and Shockwave animations.
Popular tools are PaintShop Pro (www.jasc.com
), Macromedia Fireworks and Macromedia Flash (www.macromedia.com ), Adobe Photoshop (www.adobe.com ).
Browsers: People use different browsers and devices to access your web
page. So you have to test under as many conditions as you can. As a minimum
requirement, you should test your site with Internet Explorer (version 4, 5,
5.5, 6), Netscape Navigator (version 4.5, 4.7, 6), Opera and Lynx (Lynx is a
text-only browser). One tip is to test with Netscape browsers while coding.
Chances then of your pages rendering gracefully on other browsers are more.
Link Testing: As I said in the beginning a good site ought to have no
dead ends or missing links. Fortunately you don’t have to click at each and
every link on your pages to do this. I have found the free Xenu’s Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
) a good bet for this purpose.
Color Selection Tools: Colors give life and feeling to your site. So a
good color picker is a must in your kitty. I would recommend Headoffice
Spectroscope (http://www.headoffice.co.uk/scope.htm
).
Site add-ons: Besides the basic stuff you may wish to have other
features like a guestbook, search, and a bulletin board for your site. Fully
customizable free search engines are available at www.beseen.com and www.atomz.com . Guest books, hit counters,
forums and other addons are available at sites like www.bravenet.com , www.mycomputer.com , and www.htmlgear.com .
Important Tips
* Spell check your site before you publish it to the whole world.
A page with typing or grammatical errors does not give a professional feel.
* Write in good HTML or XHTML. Do follow standards rigourously.
It will save you a lot a time and pain.
* Design the layout before you start work. Web designers learn
called information architecture. It is all about structuring your information
in the best possible way.
* Use images to enhance, and not to mar, your site. Don’t use
much animations: it’s tough on the eye. Go for right colors. Have your photos
in JPEG format, other images (those with less number of colors) in GIF. Don’t
use any other format, not even BMP). PNG is not so supported yet, so wait.
Flash animations are good, but they also increase the download time.
* Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) along with HTML for
presentation. To learn CSS go to http://www.westciv.com.au/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/
. CSS will reduce the size of the pages significantly and will also give
increased and easier control over site design modifications
* Design for maintenance. Using CSS is a good step in achieving
this. Commenting your HTML code also helps to a great extent.
* Design for extensibility. What I mean that if you need to add
new sections or pages it should not need redesigning the whole site.
Maintaining a proper and well designed directory structure for your site will
also help.
Making your site popular
Web site popularity is measured in terms of eyeballs or hits. The first
important issue is that visitors are not turned away by bad pages or long
download times. Secondly, visitors should get a good experience in using
the site both in terms of content and navigation. The third issue is to get
visitors to come again and also to recommend your site to others.
Search engines are often the reason people turn up at your site. So you have to
submit your site at search engines like Google, Yahoo, Altavista, AskJeeves,
NorthernLight, Lycos, HotSeek and the like. Also you have to ensure that your
site gets a good search engine ranking for common terms. Using meta tags
for specifying keywords will help in better search engines indexing. Do keep in
mind that there is not much point in trying to fool them by using bogus
keywords and spamming. Most often they are much more intelligent than you
think, and might ban your site altogether!
More about meta tags: http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931
About Search Engines:
Submit your site to every single free search engine you can find. Go to sites like www.dogpile.com and www.search.com ...any free search engine and list your site. THEN, decide which larger search engines you want to be a part of. The larger search engines like www.google.com and www.yahoo.com will charge a fee per "hit". You should only pay for the number of "hits" your sites receives. Either way, it's well worth the money to pay to be listed on larger more popular search engine sites.
More about search engines”
Getting your domain name
Find a domain name which is easy to remember. You can check domain name
availability at www.whois.net . Buy a
domain name only through ICANN accredited domain registrars
(http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html
).
Ensure that you domain will be registered in your name. There are free domain
name registrars like NameZero (www.namezero.com
), but the domain won’t be in your name, and you will have to cope up with
banners and ads.
Web Hosting
Free hosting is available from sites like www.tripod.com
, www.geocities.com , www.fortunecity.com and many others.
There are free hosts like www.brinkster.com
which do not put banners on your site.
If you are going for paid hosting, find out a host who has redundant
connections to the Internet backbone to avoid site blackouts. A lot of options
are available for hosting. Choose the best one.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Discussion Questions:
Answer the following questions about the article (above) and the reference websites by typing the questions and the answers on a separate word document to be emailed to the instructor.
- Why is a web site important?
- What makes a site popular?
- What is web hosting?
- What is a domain name?
- What is a “meta tag”? How can meta tags help attract customers?
- How much does it cost to list your business on search engines?
- Has this information been helpful to you?