February 2008 Newsletter

Issued on Friday, 29 Februray 2008

Welcome To The February 2008 Edition Of The CommArt Newsletter

In this edition we will discuss building a successful web site from the perspective of CommArt and announce details of the presentation by Stephen Welker titled: Introduction to Building Successful Web Sites.

Successful?

The dictionary defines successful as:

• accomplishing an aim or purpose
• having achieved popularity, profit or distinction

Clearly to have a successful web site is to achieve something for the owner.

It could be to provide better customer service, more sales or increase the reputation of an individual or organisation. The reasons are endless, but they are clearly defined. It is not a labour of love - it has a purpose.

Issues

There are many issues involved in making a web site successful. The following items contribute mostly to the success of a web site.

• Content
• Design
• Marketing
• Search engines
• Technology

Content

Web sites are all about content - from a customer focus point of view.

Visitors to web sites are only interested in what your web site (or organisation) can do for them. You must convey how your organisation can be of benefit to them or at least solve an issue for them. The issue can range from: "will the product do what I want?" to "Do you have the right product for me?".

CommArt is able to assist in authoring content for a web site. It is not for the faint hearted - it is hard work.

Design

Web site successfulness is often linked to the design of the site. Design encompasses the visual appearance as well the navigation.

Clean, fresh and modern designs can grab the attention of the visitor to some extent - once the novelty wears off, then it is down to business.

Navigation is a design element that is often overlooked. Well designed navigation layout of a web site allows customers to get in to a web site and complete their task at hand with a minimum of inconvenience.

Marketing

Web sites have to be marketed. Marketing a web site is no different to marketing the organisation. But the trick is to not market the web site, but market the purpose of the web site.

A web site is a 24 hour-a-day representative of an organisation. It should be set up in a way to answer all possible questions that a current or potential customer may have. If the web site has great customer resources, it will reduce costs for the organisation and ultimately be successful for the organisation.

For web sites that sell directly to the public (online store), then the web site has to be marketed as if the web site is another (or only) branch of the organisation.

With the advent of the internet, additional tools have been added to an organisation's marketing deployment plan. Tools such as email based mailing lists, web feeds, search engine advertising, search engine submissions are just a few tools that are additional to the standard marketing tools that an organisation may have. Traditional marketing tool nowadays are used in conjunction with the internet based tools to achieve success.

Search Engines

Search engines are helpful at driving traffic to web sites. Without search engines, the only way a visitor is able to find a web site will be from a reference from traditional advertising or direct referral by the organisation itself.

The most popular search engine currently is Google, followed by Yahoo and Live Search (MSN). Two other search engines of note are Ask and Moreover. All of these search engines allow web site operators the ability to notify them in the advent of changes on a web site - this is commonly called: Search Engine Submission.

Search Engine Submission can take the form of filling in a form at a search engine vendor web site or via an automated mechanism (Sitemap Protocol). We at CommArt offer the automated mechanism as an option to our Web Site Production Service.

For web sites to be listed in search engine indexes, many "golden" rules apply. The most basic rule is good content. The better search engines are now declaring that well written web sites will be better ranked in their search results. Another mechanism for achieving high rankings in search results is to be linked from other quality web sites. A CommArt Internet Business Consultant will be able to expand further on mechanisms for achieving high rankings in search results.

Technology

Many forms of technology are involved in make a web site successful.

HTML (hyper-text mark-up language) is the core technology behind all web pages. It is text based document format that conveys layout directives to a web browser.

CSS (cascading style sheets) combined with HTML, this technology is able to extend the ability of web page authors to display web pages with greater artistic control than with HTML alone.

Images can convey a thousand words. However to make them load faster in a browser they have to be resized and optimised for use on a web site. Sometimes it is necessary to have a watermark applied so that the intellectual property is protected.

Web forms allow web site users to send data, whether it be reader comments or upload documents. Developed primarily in HTML, it uses the web server to provide the functionality of the advertised web form. Some forms are used to make payments for a given invoice.

Shopping carts allow customers create a shopping list online for the purpose of purchasing goods or services or to be used as a "bill of materials" to be taken to a retailer.

Web servers are used to deliver web pages to web browsers. There many different types of hardware and software used to implement a web server, but they all use the same basic protocol to server the web pages to the internet.

Search engine submissions is a mechanism to allow a web site maintainer to notify search engine of changes to a web site. The sitemap protocol (developed by Google) is used to implement one type of search engine submission. Many of the popular search engines have implemented the sitemap protocol, as well as offering manual submission via a web form.

DIY - Summary

Just a reminder if you want to do it yourself, then be prepared to do the following, at least:

• Author content
• Apply visual design to every page
• Optimise and validate HTML
• Scale and thumbnail images
• Watermark images
• Optimise images
• Generate site map
• Upload changes to web site
• Notify Google
• Notify Yahoo
• Notify Live Search (MSN)
• Notify Ask
• Notify Moreover
• Link check all changes
• Understand CGI for web forms
• Understand shopping carts
• Understand payment gateways
• Understand web servers
• Become a web site slave

Or contact a CommArt Internet Business Consultant.

Presentation

Stephen Welker will present Introduction to Building Successful Web Sites to the Macintosh Multimedia Group on Tuesday, March 11, 2008.

Stephen is an Australian web site developer with many years of solid practical experience and he'll provide his experiences in building a successful web site and creating an effective and visible presence on the web. He will highlight some issues for graphic artists and small businesses that are commonly encountered.

Venue Details
When	Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Where	Macintosh Multimedia Group [3MG] Balwyn Baptist Church Corner Whitehorse & Parring Roads Balwyn, Victoria
Melways	46 F8
Google Map	view location
Cost	Entry - Free of charge Refreshments - Gold coin donation

The Macintosh Multimedia Group is a joint venture between AUSOM Incorporated & iMug.