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Website Production
When the actual coding for the webite begins, you must keep in mind that some things wil not be possible, and some will be extremely difficult and will be needing other programs to help design and produce the object or desired actions. Some desired actions or interactions or objects may be better suited for the task at hand rather than what you've possibly selected or currently have at your disposal. Also keep in mind that you will always want to add stuff later on down the line, so make your menus expandable to include more options as your website proggresses with time and basic economics. You'll also want to keep note of the size of all your webpages, and make sure you keep it lower than 15kb on normal pages not including pix. Most of your pages you will want that low, maybe even lower. The only real exception to that is your main page, the 1st page everyone sees when they type in your website adress. Example: type "Maxnout.com" in your url or web address or location on the web bar... the place you type in maxnout.com...That page you can make a little bigger, but you're only going to want to do that if your main page is going to be seen constantly, as in a static menu.
Even if you don't want to create your own website, it's still good to know these things to help in the ease and flow of your site. A good website design is to have a menu that is static on the left or right side of the screen, and the full span opposite that menu is a frame or script that will show the relative or linked information attached to each selection from the menu. Another simple design is to brand the site with the logo and/or the name of the site/company along the top few inches and span the screen with the menu spanning the length of the screen as well. Under this all will be a window frame or script that will do the same as design 1.
Color is important when designing a website. You need to make sure you blend colors right and stick to a specific set of colors throughout the site. Now an exception to the rules would be if you have a massive site, or a lot of info for another sub site or a whole new area can be created. When this happens, make sure the colors still match and/or blend and stay consistant in the sub area/sub site. Color is very important for your site, it's portraying your company and your site AND you as an individual.
Color scheme's can and do compel people to react, whether it's positive or negative. It's always best to be on the posititve reaction, obviously. Subway once said something about why they use a lot of yellow and green color scheme's. It's because it's said by scientists that that color combo supposedly makes us hungry. No wonder.... Well, simply put, that's what you need to find out. But don't worry, you don't have to do anything like that if you feel it's unnecessary for now. What I would suggest is to go to some of your competitor's website's and look at what they are doing to get a better understanding of what you should do with your site.
Building your site can be time consuming, so you'll have to work with the company you select to have your site built to your standards or specifications. Remember that going from one area to another part of your site should be a smooth effortless transition. You're going to need to make your menu easy to read, understand, and navigate through your site. You'll want to make important info easy to get to and an attention grabber or at least stand out. You may want to use a different color of text or a button or animation to get attention. Remember to make a links page close to the main page of the site so that if you want to link swap with other sites, you'll be more likely to get more credit for swaps. You'll also want to go to some submission sites and click through banner swapping sites and sign up there. Put those banners and buttons on your links page so that the rest of your site and space on the server can be used more effectively for the meat of your site.
Another great invention to lure prospects on to your website is meta tags/names. You need to give each webpage a unique meta name that corresponds to the basic info on the page. The meta tags/keywords are the keywords typed into a search engine that will pull up your webpage along with other similar or relative pages. For each webpage, list at least 250 meta keywords that relate to the info on each page to quintuple your attention.
You will also need to place a link pointing to your homepage/mainpage on every webpage to allow searching of your website on a per page basis so that in case they click on the search engine's produced link that points to a specific page on your site, the prospect can then get to your homepage to search for any other info that may be relative to their needs. In any case, it will create more hits on your website, thus producing more sales. That, of course, is your main goal for building a website.
Another good thing to remember to do with your website is to give free info/programs for potential prospects to utilize. Anything that is absolutely free and useful will bring more hits. A possible search engine for both searching the web and a search engine for searching your site will allow for a more streamlined use of your website. Feedback forms can offer useful information on getting rid of annoying glitches/errors/bugs or even for revamping your site or to update/add info to help your customers. Forms can also be used to speed up a service issue/sale by giving you all the required info needed to either give an estimate or provide further info needed for whatever you require the info for. Also look for Javascripts that make neat or useful features available to you and your prospects. Think of useful popup ads for special promotions or offers, text movement, mouse pointers, mouse chacers, popup windows, window in window scripts, email scripts, right click scripts, norightclick scripts, and several other forms of scripts to make your site not only more appealing, but also adds more prospect input and feedback.
Another interesting and intriguing website developement application would be FLASH. With flash, a website can have a menu that constantly moves and interacts with the mouse and has a full range of interactive possibilities. You can make interactive movies, splash images, moving images/buttons, and even music/movie players! Although these files can get big fast, they can more than make up for it if used wisely. If you've noticed, I use a lot of flash and java that intertwines with the html webpages to make a smooth website. A good thing to keep in mind is "EYE CANDY". That's what the world wide web is all about. Images and pictures make great eye candy, but take up a lot of space and can be very big. Keep the size low for these, if at all possible, keep them around 20kb a piece or lower, or just make thumbnails that are very small and add a description of the image by the image, and make the thumbnail a link to the actual picture. The color scheme, yes I'm bringing this up again, is very important when it comes to eye candy, as it's all over your site, so you should take great care when applying it to your site. Bacgrounds add to the eye candy appealing nature of your website. There are a few things you can do with your background, such as make it static, where the background does not move if you scroll down/up, or have a colorful texture or feel to the website or webpage(s) it is being used for. A background sets the "mood" for the webpage, and casts a glow on specific info that is relative to the bacground/color scheme. You can use a picture or moving image(some browsers will let you use a moving pic) as your background, so you can use pictures that either involve all the info on the page, or it relates to that subject of info, or it is a picture taken for the even, or was taken during the production of the info on the webpage. Whatever the case, don't use a ken doll when a G.I. Joe is needed. Yeah, both are male "dolls", but ken can't be G.I. Joe, and vice versa. So bottom line is, use material and colors that go with the info on the specific webpage.
Now, I know I skipped over the info you need to provide on your site, so we'll cover that now. The info on the site needs to ecplain your company goals, products, focus, terms, policies, contact info, services, pricing scale, and company info. Of course anything else that you deam important will be useful, so get all the info collected together, group it, and seperate it. For each group of info make a name for it that's relative to the specific group. Don't worry if certain info is singled out, it's o.k., that info will prolly need it's own seperate menu button to link to. Ahh, yes, the reason is brought to the surface for grouping the info. Yes each groups name will be on your menu, so please make sure you name them accordingly. Why am I asking you to? I might need the info on your site one day, and I'ld like to be able to find stuff easily. This is about all I can tell you, so use it the best you can, and feel free to revisit any time you need some help. If you have anything you think should be added here, you can contact us and let us know. Enjoy!
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