CREATING YOUR WEB SITE: FOUR EASY STEPS - Finalweb

CREATING YOUR WEB SITE: FOUR EASY STEPS

DECIDE ON YOUR TOPICS

DESIGN THE MENU

DRAFT THE TEXT

DRESS UP THE PAGES

Jamieson Motivation Inc www.JamiesonSpeaks.com


List all the items you want to include in your site. Be brief – just show enough information on your list to make it clear what you have in mind. What you write here will form the basis for the title of each of your web pages. During this first stage you need to let your mind roam freely over the various items that you could possibly want to include. As soon as a topic enters your mind, add it to the list. If you are in doubt, don’t spend time mulling it over – add it to the list. Think freely. Think creatively. Think big. You cannot make mistakes – everything is fair game at this point. If you get stuck, review in your mind why you wanted a web site in the first place. Was it to sell a product? If so, have you described the product? Detailed all the options available? Listed the advantages it has over competing products? Included some testimonials from existing customers? Explained how you will ship your product to buyers? Provided a way for visitors to get more information? For them to ask you questions? This list cannot be too long, but it can be too short. If you have duplicated an item by saying the same thing in two different ways, you will catch that in Step 2. Also in Step 2, you may discard some items. But in Step 1, don’t discard anything. Only when you have exhausted your ideas can you make a decision to throw out any ideas. Don’t try to put your ideas in any special order at this point – just brain storm and write them down. On the “Step 1” form we have included a few to get you started. Remember that on the finished site we will be keeping each page brief – the goal will be to enable visitors to read the page without scrolling. You will succeed in this only if you keep strictly to one topic per page. So for example, if you are creating a church web site “Youth Activities” is probably too broad. Break it down to something like “Sunday School”, “Games night” and “Youth Club” or whatever is appropriate for your circumstances. Your list should reflect this – you are listing details, not broad headings. While this is an important first step in creating your site, it is unlikely that you will cover all the bases right away. Don’t worry. As you move forward with your web design you will think of some things you missed in this first step, and you may discard other items that seemed important at the outset. Making changes and additions or deletions later on will be easy.

___________________________________________________________________ Jamieson Motivation Inc. www.JamiesonSpeaks.com

DESIGN THE MENU

The Purpose of a Menu

All but the simplest web sites use a menu to help visitors find what they are looking for. The menu also serves to draw casual visitors further into the site. A menu can be likened to the directory found in most department stores. You go there to buy socks. The directory tells you that clothing is on the second floor. But as you browse through the directory, “Silverware” catches your eye on floor five. It wasn’t your intention to shop for silverware, but come to think of it you do need to get a wedding present for John and Judy. Now you are browsing through the fifth floor and you see shoes..... So in the end, although you only came to buy socks, you leave the store with socks, silverware and shoes. A well designed menu can do the same for you in the virtual world of web sites. You may not be selling a product, but you are “selling” something – an idea, a philosophy, or the value of your club, association or church. The menu helps you to do this.

Developing the Menu

If you listed more than about half a dozen items in step one, you need to group some of them together. A long list of pages will make it harder for your visitors to find what they are looking for, so we will make a shorter list of headings, under which your pages will be grouped. Look through your “Step One” list, and group similar topics together. Think of some headings which generally describe the pages that you group under each heading. For example, in a church web site you may want headings such as “Missions”, “Church leadership”, “Bible study resources” and so on. If you are selling clothing, your headings may be “Outer Wear”, “Casual Wear” and “Formal Wear”. Now complete the table on the “Step Two” worksheet by first writing down the names of your general headings, then allocating which topics from Step One will appear under each heading. This will create the “skeleton” for your site. You will start to add flesh to the bones in step three. This skeleton will constitute the menu on the finished web site. While the main purpose of the menu is to make the site easy to navigate, the process of creating the menu will help your focus too. You may want to go back and make changes to step one. Make them! It’s all part of the process.


DRAFT THE TEXT

Now you are ready to start writing your pages. You have a choice at this point. Either you can have us do it for you, or you can do it yourself (we give you some pointers below).

If you want us to write your pages

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Tell us what information you want to convey. Just write down each topic from step one as a heading, and then make rough notes on the content you require. You can write in any format – bulleted points (like this), or complete sentences.

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Make sure we understand exactly what you want. For example, one organization we know uses the term “Keen Agers” for their over-fifty group. Since “Keen Agers” isn’t a commonly used term, you would need to define it for us.

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For each topic, make sure to tell us if you need links inserted. o

You can link either to another page on your site, or to an external web page.

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Do you want the linked web page to open in a new window/tab, or to replace the current window/tab? (Replacing the current window/tab will take the visitor away from your site, and if you are linking to an external site, you likely don’t want to do that.)

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In the place where you want the link inserted, use the following format. or perhaps or >

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Your link should be specific as to the page on any external web site. Just linking to the main address for a site will take you to that site’s home page. Instead, copy and paste the URL from the actual page to which you want to link.

Once you have completed the rough notes just send them on to us, and we will make a first draft of the site. You can then review what we have done, and either accept it, or tell us if we haven’t conveyed your message accurately. We will massage the text until you are happy with it.

If you will be writing the pages yourself

We recommend that you complete writing all the pages you need before signing up with Final Web. You have 14 days before you start to pay for their service. During that period you should be able to populate all the pages that are essential to your site. Once you start paying, your site will be live so you need to be ready for that. You can always add pages later on, but when your site goes live it should contain all the elements that are essential for it to accomplish your main goals. Or put another way, visitors to your site should not feel that the site is incomplete, even though there may by pages you would like to add later. You may find our “Web Site Writing Hints” helpful.


DRESS UP THE PAGES

The preparatory work is all done, and now you can actually start to build your web site! Again you have the choice either to do this yourself, or have us do it for you. If you want us to do it for you, all we need is the text for each page, and digital photographs that you would like included. We will be more specific when we know more about your site. If you plan on creating your own pages, you may find our web design hints sheet helpful.

Templates

Finalweb has a selection of templates that you can use. While the one you select will make a big difference to the look and feel of your site, Finalweb has a feature that takes the stress out of the selection process. The templates are obviously displayed using content – text and photographs – other than your own. What if you don’t like the way it looks with your own content? Just change the template, and all the information you have entered will automatically be displayed in the new template. You don’t have to enter it all over again! You can change a template at any time, but it will be better not to make any major formatting changes after the site has been live for more than a couple of months. Returning visitors need to become familiar with your site. Additions are fine, but if they come back to take another look at some feature of the site, it should look the same as it did during their first visit. When we travel in the real world, we find our way by visual clues. Turn right near the big oak tree, the house is the one with blue paint and a cedar shingle roof, etc. It is the same in the virtual world. Visitors will find their way through your site by means of the visual clues they learned during a previous visit. If those clues have changed they could give up on your site. It may not take much.

Consistency

The content of each of the pages on your web site will be different, of course. But the style, the format, the colours will be the same. Each page should be distinctively part of your site. While it is possible to make each page entirely from the next, it is virtually never a good idea. One of the features of Finalweb is the ability to create a separate web site for a distinct division of your organization. For example, in a church you may want a separate site for the youth group. Possibly you reached these notes through www.JamiesonSpeaks.com, where there are separate sites for soft skills training activities, and technical insurance training. Each site can be reached through the same URL, or you can set up a separate address for the sub site using the format www.mainsite.com/subsite. In the case of our site, the main address is www.JamiesonSpeaks.com, but we also have an insurance training division, whose address is www.JamiesonSpeaks.com/Insurance-Training.


If you have a main site and a sub site, we recommend that you use the same template for each site, but in a different colour scheme. That differentiates each site, but maintains a similar look and feel overall. The only exception to this rule would be if you have one sub-site that deals with an entirely separate part of your business. In our case, the main site deals with Jamieson Motivation’s core activity – training services for businesses. Insurance training is related to this, and we have kept the same template for that sub site, using different colours. The web design division of our business was a spin-off that addresses a different need, so we used an entirely different template for that sub site.

Creating an effective web site can be enjoyable and rewarding. Have fun with it, and don’t be afraid to experiment. We hope these notes have been helpful, and that your new web site enhances the profitability of your business or the effectiveness of your non-profit organization.

Rae Jamieson Okotoks, Alberta, Canada February 2010



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How to contact us

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History of the organization

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Management/Leadership

WORKSHEET

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WORKSHEET

DESIGN THE MENU

Heading

Topic numbers from Step One


Web Site Design Hints To help get the most out of your Finalweb template

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Decide on a font and stick to it. Headings can be different from the main body of your text, but they should be somewhat similar in style. So for example, don’t use a “no-nonsense” text such as Arial for the main text, and put your headings in a very casual style like this one.

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Use a sans serif text on your web site, not a serif font. There is a strange anomaly here. In print, a serif font such as Times New Roman has been shown to be easier to read and to maximize comprehension compared to sans serif fonts such as this one – Calibri. Online, the reverse is true. (This document will be read both in print and on line, so either style could be used.)

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Keep your font small. Beginner web site builders tend to use fonts that are too large. This reduces readability and detracts from the visual appeal of the page. On the Finalweb template you have a choice between xx-small, x-small, small, medium, large, x-large and xx-large. For your main blocks of text, small or x-small is normally a good choice.

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Use fonts that are automatically included with Windows operating systems. If you use unusual fonts, it is unlikely that all your visitors will be able to view these fonts on your site. Their computers will substitute fonts that are as similar as they can be – but the site will not look the way you designed it.

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Don’t use flashing text!

Colours o

Don’t use too many colours on each page. Five colours are plenty. Colours should blend together well. For a church web site, light colours will likely represent the mood of your site well. Intense, dark colours would rarely be appropriate. Commercial and professional sites can use more intense colours. Remember that a black and red combination is favoured by some X-rated sites (which we and Finalweb cannot help you with). Finalweb enables you to adjust their built-in colour schemes, but unless you have specialised skills in this area you will probably be more satisfied with the pre-set schemes

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For text, generally use only one main colour and possibly a different colour for headings and/or emphasis. Always ensure that you have a good contrast between text colour and background colour.


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Page Layout o

As with printed documents, white space should be used freely. Too much text/graphics will make the page appear cluttered, and visually unappealing. White space on the other hand will tend to draw visitors in. Leave ample space between blocks of text, and text and graphics; make paragraphs short; consider a left rather than a justified alignment, as this will result in more white space on the right margin of your text.

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Each page should have a main focus to draw the eye into the page. One good size picture is better than several small ones. Make one feature dominant – it doesn’t matter what that feature is, but it should be obviously central to the theme of the page.

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Graphics. Use photographs that depict one subject in a prominent manner. If your picture has a number of components, they will each appear small. Instead, try to use pictures with an obvious dominant subject.

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Carefully align the various elements on the page. If text and graphics look as if they have been dropped on the page at random so they don’t line up with each other, your site will look amateurish and unappealing.

General design comments o

Page counters can be embarrassing if your site is new (do you really want to advertise that only ten people have viewed your site?) and are generally irrelevant to most people. Avoid them. If you want to know how many visits your site has received, use Google Analytics. Go to www.google.com/analytics/. This free service will give you a wealth of information about who is visiting your site, where they come from, how they heard about you, which pages they visited and for how long.

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If you have pages under construction, don’t publish them! Links to blank pages which simply state that the “real” page is under construction are frustrating and will drive visitors away. On the Finalweb template, you can build a new page but not add it to the menu. Although the page will technically be published on the web, without a menu link to it, no one will go there.

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Background music slows down your pages, and many people find it really annoying.

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Give each page the same look and feel.

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Spelling and Grammar are critical. The Finalweb template includes a spell check feature when you are writing pages, but not a grammar check. You may want to write your pages in MS Word to take advantage of these tools, and then paste them into the template once they are complete. Remember that a site that is grammatically incorrect will tend to drive some people away.

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Like most templates, the Finalweb tool into which you type the text of your pages has fewer formatting features than regular word processing programmes. However, you can create your page in MS Word and paste it into the Finalweb template, and often the formatting will carry over into the template.
