Website Considerations There are many elements that lead to a successful website. The technical elements are usually dealt with, but it is the user's experience at your site that is often forgotten.

A Website consists of several elements, which must work together. Each one of these elements is a separate make/buy decision.
 

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A series of communications is involved to view a web page

If the web server is up and running and the webpage is located in the expected place, the webpage is downloaded into the PC, and then the connection to the web server is dropped. The webpages you see (including this one) exist in your computer. Unfortunately many webmasters seem to frequently rename files and directories in their website. While they may be careful to make sure that their links are all updated, this means nothing for all the external links and bookmarks which may be pointed towards the original file location. How many times have you seen "Document not Found"? Lesson to be learned - Avoid renaming your directories and files at all cost. Whenever you create online content, take  the time to think about your naming conventions for the next 20 years of your website.

The care and feeding of your website is a hidden challenge that many organizations do not anticipate. I have seen web site "project plans" which have a final milestone called "Website Launch". Website launch is much like giving birth; You have made it through the pregnancy, but now you have a living entity that must be taken care of for the next 20+ years. Some things to consider:

• Who creates (and HTML’s) the information?
• Define how information will be fed to the site
• Who "approves" the information for publication on this world wide medium?
• The site should have a user-friendly “look and feel” A style guide should govern the site’s web pages easy navigation, few layers, no frames, less graphics, page titles, etc
• Test your site using a 14.4 modem and VGA Screen (Even T-1 customers may have trouble accessing your site)
• What is the purpose of your site?
• Enable Users to quickly reach your content
• Show off the fact that you can afford a Java/Graphics/Multi-media guru who shows the site to the CEO on a 21” monitor with millions of colors)
• Your design should also cater to the needs of search engines - placement of key words, Meta-tags, no frames, robot.txt file.

Generating Traffic to your site: 

• Add interesting content to attract users
• Design web page to be search-engine friendly (See searchenginewatch.com)
• “Announce” your site to appropriate subject trees (Yahoo)
• Use advanced Altavista features to see where your competitors are listed, ask other webmasters to link to you. (search term = link:.domainname.com )
• Pay for online Ad Banners - These can be quite targeted For example look at these Altavista Ad Banners
• (“Search term” ---> Ad Banner)
• “Insurance” ---> Insurance Shopper (netquote.com)
• “Insurance Agent” ---> USF&G Small Business Insurance Policy
• “State Farm” ---> State farm Auto Parts Litigation (Class Action Lawsuit website)
• All” employees should have an email “signature” containing: http://yourcompany.com Spell out the full URL and leave spaces around it. (How many emails leave your company every day?)
• Keep your pages simple and User friendly (Avoid framed, Java-enhanced, Graphics heavy, imagemap, webmazes…)
• Allow users to register for email announcements
• Study your web site access statistics to determine how users are interacting with your online content
• And most importantly...
• The URL shall always appear whenever the company’s name or phone number is mentioned (business card, letterhead, forms, contracts, advertising (print, Radio, TV), brochures, calendars, coffee mugs, etc.)

Web Development Resources:

• Web Developer's Virtual Library located at stars.com
• Webdeveloper.com
• Web reference.com
• WWW Consortium
• Developer.com (Also home of JAVA/Gamelan)
• gif wizard to optimize your graphics 
• Searchenginewatch.com - Learn all about search engines. - especially the webmaster's guide to search engines
• You may also want to look at my Intranet overview page.
• Find out the ownership of a domain name (or see if a name is available) using whois at: Internic
• Tophosts - A webhost directory  and resource.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines   - Make sure that everyone can view your content.
• Useit.com - Jacob Nielson's column of website usability
• The ABC's of promoting your website.
• HTML Tutorial - Basic HTML  introduction course.
• Domainsurfer and Netcraft - Perform a keyword search against all domain names.  This is helpful when searching for a new unique domain name.
• Tools and utilities that check for dead links, HTML standards, etc.
• workz.com - links to help small businesses grow and prosper online.

Newsgroups (Note: Do not post messages into any of these newsgroups unless you have been trained/authorized to do so) : These links will only work if you have access to a usenet newserver, in the mean time you can Make Use of Dejanews, especially the Computer-related Newsgroups

• comp.infosystems.www.servers.misc
• comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows
• comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.images
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets
• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.tools
• microsoft.public.frontpage.client

Web Statistics - Every Webserver has detailed access statistics as to who has been visiting each and every page within your site. You should work towards having easy, clickable access to this information for each of your pages. For example, look at this annotated view of the access statistics for my own web site . If your Intranet websites are "thin", why not publish Intranet usage statistics to se whose pages are the most popular. This might motivate your content suppliers to add to their site.

• Use your web site statistics - They can be very valuable (who has looked at each individual page) Total “hits’ for a site is MEANINGLESS Downloading this page may cause 4 “hits” (page.html, logo.gif, menubar.gif, bullet.gif)
• Track what sites are “referring” users to you pages.
• Watch for statistical “bumps” associated with external advertising events.
• Track how users navigate through your site. Which pages are popular? Watch for attrition through many page layers Recognize the importance of positioning a link on the web page - Many users never see past the “top 5 inches” of a web page.

Places to get web statistics software:

• This list from the web developer's virtual library.
• Yahoo's section: Computers and Internet:Software:Internet:World Wide Web:Servers:Log Analysis Tools
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Brought to you by Russ Haynal