Experience please

[Naive Group User]

Once you have a contract signed for you to design a webpage for some
company, what should you then ask them as requirements for the designs
you are going to do ?

I am thinking up
menu items (how many do they want, what should be the menu item
title they want etc)
so what else did you ask your employer to do ?

Thank you :-(

 

[Naive Group User]

As far as functionality, business sites fall into some broad categories.
Catalog sites have a shopping cart, brochure sites have info and news
about the organization, social sites have blogs and user forums, and
so forth. There's often some overlap, such as a catalog site where
visitors can post reviews of the items being sold, or a brochure site
that includes a blog by the owner.

For some businesses, the functionality is pretty obvious; for a company
that has an existing mail-order business with printed catalogs, extending
that onto the web with a catalog site is pretty much a no-brainer. You
need to understand - and often, help your customer understand - what
business need is served by the web site.


Don't invite your customer to micro-manage - that way lies disaster.
You're supposed to be the expert; if all they needed was someone to type
in what they're told, they could have hired a secretary for less money.

So *be* the expert! Project an image of confidence. Don't ask them to
design the site for you, make an initial "rough draft" - even sketches
on paper are good enough at this point - and then ask them for feed-
back on your proposed design. You do need to involve the customer in
the design process, but you shouldn't be a doormat or a "yes man." If
you do that, you'll lose their respect, and probably won't get any repeat
business from them.

Thank you so very much Sherm Penley for your definitive information

Visually, gather up any existing assets the business has - stationery,
advertising material, catalogs, whatever. Stuff like that can be a huge
help, providing a general "theme" that the web site should fit into.

sherm--

Does that mean I have to write down all the information to advertise
their company as well as images of them right ?
or do I just need to send them the web layout as a final product-the
one that includes only 'latin verse' as seen in many web templates ?

 

[dorayme]

Does that mean I have to write down all the information to advertise
their company as well as images of them right ?
or do I just need to send them the web layout as a final product-the
one that includes only 'latin verse' as seen in many web templates ?

You the company manager's nephew?

 

[Paul]

"Naive Group User" <[email protected]> ha scritto nel messaggio

The best thing would be if:

- you were the boss of the company, so you know exactly which your needs are, and
- you are completely capable on building websites.

Take my case: I am the boss ) of my company so I know very well what I want to show to the external world.. But I am
only a little capable to write a website.
Anyway I have tried and put my website in the web years ago. And...it works very well, as we are receiving lots of
orders, much more than we can handle !!
Yes, my website is badly written, I know very well. But it works more than my hopes and I do not need making it better
(or spending money to let other people do it). Anyway during years I have updated it several times trying to make it
more efficient and user-friendly, thank to reading this news group and receiving some advises.

This is my website, and please, don't criticise it too much)

I hope you'll find something useful (as ideas) like buttons and thumbnails and creation of different meaning areas.

http://www.tortebomboniere.com/bomboniere/favourcake01.html

Paul

 

[Peter]

In my experience, most clients want to write the main body content for
themselves. Usually, they'll send it in an email message, or as a Word
document.


There's normally a few rounds of back-and-forth involved. The first
thing you'd give them is one or more rough mockups with ipsum lorem
text. Based on the feedback you get from them about the mockups, you'd
make some changes, then meet with them again, repeating as necessary.
At some point, someone (probably the client, but maybe you) will write
the text, so you can replace the ipsum lorem with the real thing.

Though I would have thought that depends upon whether the client wanted
the site to show up in search engines, or not.

 

[Peter]

Of course the client wants to show up in search engines. That's a given.
How would what I said above affect that one way or another?

I'm fairly new to this, but from what I gather, when improving your
search engine ranking, you have to be very particular about using
keywords that relate to what your website is about. If you allow the
client to go ahead and write whatever they feel is appropriate, it will
be great for them, but may be unsuitable when it comes to search engine
optimization and should not be overlooked.

When promoting a site, understanding which keywords customers, or those
with an interest, are going to probably search on and repeating those
keywords and phrases whilst maintaining a flowing style that doesn't
make it appear as though that is what you're doing, is a necessary skill
these days if you want to move up the rankings.

I've been working for about 6 - 8 weeks to get a site up as high as I
can and it's one hard slog. Currently page 17 is the best I've managed,
which of course, no-one is going to ever see.

Obviously there's a whole lot more to it that just keywords, once you
starting reading up on this stuff, but it is definitely a black art.

 

[Peter]

SEO is snake oil, and search engines ignore keyword spam.

Keyword spam? Maybe we're not talking about the same thing, but in your
body text you have to include words or phrases that you think people
looking for your type of site are going to type into a search engine. I
don't call that keyword spam, I call that a necessary part of creating
website text. And I doubt search engines ignore that kind of thing.
Unless of course all you're going to do is repeat the same words or
phrases over and over, which is not what I stated above. I stated
creating a page of flowing text that also includes the keywords that you
believe customers are going to search on. That is how Google decides
what your page is about, is it not?

It's a necessary skill, but not all that difficult - just speak the same
language as your customers. Don't describe a product as "delicious
meals for canine companions" - call it what it is, dog food, because
that's the term your customers will be using when they search for it.

Which is exactly what I'm talking about. However there will be
thousands of other sites also using the term, dog food, so there's no
chance your site is going to show up at all.

That may require a bit of an adjustment for marketroids who are used
to using the overblown, grandiose language that's common in traditional
advertising, but for most of us it's just the natural way we speak and
write.


Ranking and matching are entirely different animals. Links from other
sites play a huge part in ranking. If someone searches for "dog food,"
the first two results are PetCo and Purina. That's not because those
companies have carefully tuned the language they use on their sites,
it's because there have been a bazillion tweets that say "I'm going
to PetCo to buy dog food," or links to purina.com when people write a
blog article about their favorite dog food.

When I first launched my CamelBones project, it was the #1 result for
a Google search for "Cocoa Perl bridge" within a week. That's not the
result of careful keyword placement - I literally did *nothing* along
those lines. It happened because it was a project that a lot of people
liked. They wrote about it and linked to it in their blogs, and they
used the same term to do so that someone else would be using in a
google search.

And how did they know it existed for people to like it and write about
it? You must have had to do some work to promote it.

Sure my UK site works fine and is on the first page if you search using
those same keywords, but include the local town or county as well.
However, no-one is going to include that distinction in their search.
They are only going to search on those major keywords, with probably uk
on the end to prevent non-uk pages showing up. Unfortunately, this is
where the market is over-saturated and where the hard work begins, and
why the site is only on page 17.

SEO consultants and book authors would like you to believe that it is,
because they want you to buy their services and books. But it's really
not - if you have a product or service that *deserves* a high Google
ranking, it will get it regardless of whether or not you take special
steps to "optimize" your site for it. On the other hand, if the product
you're selling is inferior and/or unpopular, no amount of SEO snake
oil will fix that - you're better off just buying adWords if that's the
case.

And how will it get a high Google ranking if no-one knows about it? A
bit of a catch 22 situation, don't you think. Yes, I know you have to
also do the donkey work and try and get other sites to link to yours
(backlinks), but generally, in ecommerce for instance, those sites are
likely to be your direct competition.

 

[Neredbojias]

Keyword spam? Maybe we're not talking about the same thing, but in
your body text you have to include words or phrases that you think
people looking for your type of site are going to type into a search
engine. I don't call that keyword spam, I call that a necessary part
of creating website text. And I doubt search engines ignore that
kind of thing. Unless of course all you're going to do is repeat the
same words or phrases over and over, which is not what I stated
above. I stated creating a page of flowing text that also includes
the keywords that you believe customers are going to search on. That
is how Google decides what your page is about, is it not?

Which is exactly what I'm talking about. However there will be
thousands of other sites also using the term, dog food, so there's no
chance your site is going to show up at all.


And how did they know it existed for people to like it and write
about it? You must have had to do some work to promote it.

Sure my UK site works fine and is on the first page if you search
using those same keywords, but include the local town or county as
well. However, no-one is going to include that distinction in their
search. They are only going to search on those major keywords, with
probably uk on the end to prevent non-uk pages showing up.
Unfortunately, this is where the market is over-saturated and where
the hard work begins, and why the site is only on page 17.


And how will it get a high Google ranking if no-one knows about it?
A bit of a catch 22 situation, don't you think. Yes, I know you have
to also do the donkey work and try and get other sites to link to
yours (backlinks), but generally, in ecommerce for instance, those
sites are likely to be your direct competition.

Interesting conversation. I don't pretend to know the ins-and-out of
search engine mechanics but many times in the past I've entered
specific keywords searching Google for specific site-types and the
first 2 or 3 pages or more proffered sites which were nothing but
ad-laden, content-poor crap. Surely these sites were SE-optimized
however, but their real worth was next-to-nothing. In such cases I
*did* go deeply into the pages list and usually found *something*
decent like at page 6 or 7 or even a bit more. If nothing showed by
about page 12, I gave up, but the point is similar to the one about the
good student being an expert at being a student while useless in the
everyday pragmatic world.

 

[dorayme]

Time to break open the piggy bank and buy yourself some AdWords. ;-)

A local businessman acquaintence tells me his retail sales website gets
more hits and he gets more online orders almost in direct proportion to
how much he spends on these things. But let me add, the season of
kindness being now over, that may be just his business.

I wonder if there are adword salesmen? There have been salesmen in
literature, but maybe adword salesmen are yet to appear?

"Look madam, we have a special offer for one week on *hyphenated
words*", Dirk said in a low whisper to Samantha ...

 

[dorayme]

I've heard similar things from many site owners.

The key is understanding that the site itself is not the equivalent of
cold-calling to generate leads. It's the follow-up - its purpose is to
turn leads into sales, by providing more detailed information and a
convenient means of placing orders.

*Not* like the US sites I have been on lately to purchase printer
supplies where the web designer has forgotten that there is an outside
the US part of the world and it is left to me to deduce after a lot of
form filling that they don't ship to outside! With content manager
powered sites, it is probably forgotten to do simple things like
actually make a direct statement about this matter at the start of the
"buying" process!

 

[Peter]

I sent an announcement to a couple of developer mailing lists where
it's on-topic. It had done my homework before-hand, and knew there
was a huge demand for it before I ever began work.


The same way you attract traffic to a store on main street if no one
knows about it - you spend some $$ and buy advertising.


No, I don't think so - it's not self-referential. Page rank isn't about
letting people know about a new product - that's what advertising is
for. A new business needs to advertise, especially one that's entering
an arena that's already crowded with competition.

Time to break open the piggy bank and buy yourself some AdWords. ;-)

Have already resorted to AdWords. So far of 4,500 impressions, only 8
clicks. Need to do work in this area also. ;-)