Business Essentials: Building a Great Website

It wasn’t all that long ago that for a business to have a website seemed a novel thing. The tipping point has long past, and for a start up company to not prioritize their website as a major arm of their business seems sophomoric. The hurdles that confronted the early pioneers of website building (technical complexity, cost, technological limitations) have disappeared and there is now no excuse not to have a website. There is, however, one basic rule that has not changed – nor will it ever – and that is: the better and more effective you want your website to be, the greater the investment it will represent. Below are a few handy tips that will hopefully give you greater insight into what steps are involved in building your website and allay any concerns that it might represent.

The Anatomy of a Website

There are essentially two vital parts to any website that businesses need to consider: the code and the server.

The Code: Everything you see and read on the internet is nothing more than a series of binary codes – a seemingly endless stream of 1’s and 0’s. It’s like the DNA of your website. And as your DNA eventually becomes the you that others can see and interact with, so the code is what will become the part of your website that others see and interact with.

The Server: The code, in order to be seen and read by others, needs a place to be stored and easily accessed. The place where these codes are stored, or hosted, are on servers owned by companies that continuously allow the transfer of information. These hosting companies pay for their servers, and to transfer all those billions of bytes of information, and they make their money by your renting space for your website on their server in the form of a “domain”.

A website thus becomes a website when your code occupies the domain space that you have rented.

What You Pay For

Renting space with a hosting company is a piece of cake and can be done for as little as a few dollars a month. A simple Google search will likely bring up a myriad of companies that offer hosting with different options. Most have a help line that you can call and simply knowing a little bit about what you want your website to do will easily give them a sense of what option is best for you. Most often it comes down to whether or not you plan to have a lot of data-heavy bells and whistles like streaming audio and video. These things take up space, which means you may need to rent more server space.

Once you’ve rented the space, you need your space to have a name. This is how people will remember your website. Ideally, you’ll want your domain name to reflect the essentials of what your business is about and it should be snappy and easy to remember. Acquiring a domain name is somewhat of an art. It’s quite possible that your perfect domain name is something no one has yet thought of, at which point it’s easily acquired through your hosting company at no charge. However, if your perfect website name is owned it can be a challenge to acquire. There are entire companies that purchase domain names with the sole purpose of brokering them to people who want the name for their business. At this point you have to decide what the domain is worth to you. If someone has already beat you to it and has built a whole site around that domain name it might be best to explore other options. If it is available for purchase, then it all comes down to what you’re willing to pay.

The code you can also pay for, but most hosting sites now come with their own website builder which can handle the code for you. Although these website builders are rudimentary, they can easily handle a variety of different website formats and give the user several different style sheets to choose from. If you have time, building your own website can be fun.

WordPress

Stepping it up a notch, WordPress has become the gold standard in website design. WordPress takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master. Ultimately, it is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool for building websites. The program (or code, since technically it’s not a program) is free, but you’ll definitely be investing your time to learn how to use it. It can be as simple as downloading the code for a template, or completely building your own style sheet and code right from scratch. Scouring the web there all kinds of add-ons that are available that are simple enough to add to your website’s code and that can make your website all the more engaging to the visitor.

Website Design

Website design has become a niche all unto itself and there are plenty of companies and freelancers out in the marketplace who are happy to do the legwork of building the code for your website for you. This is essentially the code that you can pay for and although prices can vary substantially, so can the quality of the workmanship. Obviously, a more complicated website brings with it a heftier price tag. It’s standard practice for companies and freelancers to have a portfolio of designs so that you know what your getting into before you buy, but ultimately their job is to make your website as concise, easy to navigate, and engaging as possible.

Protecting Your Original Content Online

It’s inevitable that as a publisher of original content, someone will steal it.  What’s important is how you deal with it. With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), there are ways you can protect your content from people who steal from your site. And you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand how it works. 

There are six ways that you can protect your content online.  By taking these actions, you reduce the chances for your online content to be stolen.  

·         Learn the basics of copyright law. According to the DMCA, your post is protected as soon as you publish it. As a creator – the content becomes your intellectual property and no one can reproduce it without your permission. 

·         Post a copyright notice on your website.  Although having a copyright notice on the bottom of your website does not protect you, it does tell everyone that the content is your intellectual property.  It is used as a warning for others that copying your content is not legal.   

·         Post a permissions policy. Create a permissions policy page which clarifies what people can do with your content.  It allows other webmasters a guide to follow on what they can or cannot do with your content. 

·         Request that they remove your post. Ask the offender to remove your post by email or in the comments – politely.  In many cases, people may not know that they have done an offence and just need to be educated. Most likely they will comply once you’ve notified them.

·         Notify the ISP (Internet Service Provider).  The DMCA allows copyright owners to have ISPs comply with “take down” requests. In this case, ISPs can be any website that hosts the offending website or content. You may have to do a bit of research in order to find the right hosting service or even contact name. However, once you’ve sent them an email, the ISPs will do their research into your request.  If the ISP finds that there is a copyright infringement, they will make their own request to the website owner or take down the site.   

·         Hire a copyright lawyer. If nothing else works, you may have to resort to hiring a lawyer who can go after the offender.  Keep in mind that lawyers can be expensive and there can be no guarantee that you will be successful.  

If you use a Wordpress blog, download and install one of their plugins – the WP Copyprotect. This locks your content so that no one can highlight and copy your content. However, for the real pirates, this won’t deter them as they can merely shut down their website and appear elsewhere with another site.

The best strategy is to create great original content that your readers will love and share. This not only helps build credibility but also brand loyalty that keeps your readers coming back.

How to hire a web designer

Is your company about to design a new website or planning to revamp your existing one? Finding a web designer to do it can be a challenging process; with so many to choose from. However, before you start looking around for one, you should already have a detailed understanding of what your website will be like. Take the time to plan your requirements for the site including the business goals. Some other questions that you should ask are:

• Is your website going to be powered by a Content Management System (CMS) such as Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla?

• Do you have a site map ready?

• Do you know the style including branding, logos and colours that your website should look like?

• What is your project deadline?

• And finally, how much are you willing to spend on your website?

Once you have created your brief, you can then start choosing a designer. Here are some of the points that you should consider:

• Portfolio: A designer’s portfolio is the best way to gauge their experience and skills. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions about their work that is represented and make sure that it can be verified. Ask for client references and find out:

o what their professional relationship was like;

o was there open communication;

o was the project done on time and to satisfaction?

Also, choose the portfolio that has work similar in scope to your project. For example, if you’re looking for a Wordpress site, make sure that the designer you choose has done multiple Wordpress projects.

• Style: Each designer has their own creative eye. This creativity can be seen in their designs - see if they are flexible in all their work, or does their work show the same, repetitive style?

• Communication skills: For any project to be successful, there has to be clear communication channel both ways. Make sure that your requirements are understood clearly by the designer, and secondly, that the designer can communicate clearly any changes or problems that may occur during the course of the project. It’s better to over-communicate than make assumptions that could be wrong. There should be a process where both of you can easily update each other during the course of the project including having regular meetings. There also should be multiple ways to communicate with your designer, when reaching them is critical.

• Are they knowledgeable: A consultant should always tie their services to the needs of your business. They should spend the time in learning how your business works, what you offer, and what kind of clients you work with. With that knowledge, they can design a site that will reflect your business and not what they think it should be.

• How much does it cost? Get a full breakdown of the costs in creating your site. Features such as a blog, email newsletter system, ecommerce functionality and others should be listed in the quote including time taken, resources used and any sub-contractors hired. Understand their billing process – will they bill you monthly, or are payments based on milestones

Your website is essential to the marketing success of your business. By interviewing potential designers, you’re more likely to pick one that:

• Is skilled to do the type of work you want,

• Communicates and listens well,

• And is budget conscious.

By keeping these tips in mind when searching for a website designer, you should be on your way to starting a successful website.