- Decide Exactly What You Want from Your Web Site
- Decide on a Structure for Your Site and Develop a Rough Site Plan
- Decide What Interactive Elements You Need
- Decide What Graphics You Want to Include
- Write the Text for Each Page in Your Site
- Determine Your Budget and Timeframe for the Project
- Establish Your Web Infrastructure
- Collect Your Toolkit
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Decide What Graphics You Want to Include
Second only to interactive elements, graphic elements such as pictures, bullets, logos, lines, and backgrounds are likely to be the most expensive elements of your Web site. Every graphic you include in your site should have a compelling reason for being there. Ask yourself why you need each graphic, and leave it out if you do not have a good answer.
You should expect to pay from $5 to $20 per image for all the graphics you include, and those prices assume the images already exist, either in electronic or printed form. Printed images are necessarily more expensive because the developer must first digitize each image before processing the image into a Web-usable form. At the very least you should get a scanner and digitize all the pictures you want to use. A couple of hours of scanning work in preparation for your Web development project will easily pay for a $100 scanner, and besides, you can always use it to digitize pictures of your kids or significant others to send to mom. Make sure you do not violate copyright laws when you choose the images you scan for inclusion in your Web site. Violations you might easily get away with as an individual can really cost you as a business. As a business professional you are held to a higher standard, so do not take chances. Copyright violations can easily result in tens of thousands in fees and penalties. Make it a habit to ask first.
If you are planning an extensive catalog site, check your Yellow Pages for a service bureau that can handle the scanning work for you. You will probably be surprised at how cheaply such a service can digitize images, saving you considerable time at a surprisingly low cost. If you do undertake this project, make sure you pull all the parties into the loop. Get your Web developer and your service bureau representative to meet with you at the same time so that you can make sure all the details are covered. You will especially want to settle on:
an image file naming convention (by choosing the right file names, you can import hundreds or even thousands of image files into your Web site, and the links inserted in a separate process by your developer will work immediately);
quality level for the images (remember the file size vs. image quality issue); and
a method for generating and formatting thumbnails (tiny images used to call up full sized pictures).
When you are just getting started, don't blow your budget on bells and whistles. Use a simple clip-art or plain colored background. Use the <hr> tag with appropriate modifiers to create horizontal ruling lines rather than inserting a cool graphic image as a line. Use the logo you already use in your business. Just scan it and optimize it for use in your Web site, then reuse the same logo in various sizes throughout the site.
As you complete your site design, choose all the graphics you will use and do all the preparation work you can. Ideally, you should have every image you wish to use in your site already saved in optimized form on a floppy you can just hand to your Web developer. This is one place your efforts will really pay off. Web developers do not like scanning and prepping images, so they tend to really gouge you if you want them to do all the graphics work.