hahoo.com)and Free Web Site Hosting (http://www.50megs.com).
Using Full-Time Web HostsIt pays to plan ahead for success. Even if your business seems small now, it may growto be big and successful before too long. You’ll save yourself the time and troubleinvolved in moving from one Web host to another if you sign up with one that func-
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tions solely as a Web server and that gives its customers the maximum amount ofresources they can expect.
A full-time Web host, like other types of hosting services, gives you space on aWeb server where you can store your Web page files (and your auction photos andother documents), create a shopping cart or sales catalog if you need to, and commu-nicate with your customers by e-mail.
Not only that, but you get a console, sometimes called a control panel, that helpsyou manage your files and your site. One example I am familiar with is Webmasters.com (http://www.webmasters.com). This site includes hosting packages that rangefrom $9.95 to $99.00 per month.
The options for hosting a commercial website, and reasons for choosing each
one, are summarized in Table 16-1.
Selecting the Right Domain Name
A domain name is an easy-to-remember alias for a computer that is connected to theInternet. Every computer on the Internet is assigned an identifier called an IP ad-dress—a series of numbers such as 145.223.76.9. If everyone who surfed the Web hadto enter this series of numbers to access their favorite websites, there would be chaosand confusion.
You’re already familiar with the process of choosing names if you have an eBayStore and an eBay user ID, not to mention user IDs and storefront names on othermarketplace sites. When I was searching for domain names, I naturally looked to myown name first. I wasn’t able to obtain the domain name Holden.com, but I was ableto secure gregholden.com, which is a good alternative.
Table 16-1. Website hosting options.
If you want . . .
Choose this hosting option
To start a website for no money
Use the space your ISP already gives you.
Have an e-commerce sales site with shoppingcart
Your own domain name (like mysite.com)
A free website
Find a full-time Web host.
Register your name with a domain nameregistrar.
Search for a free Web host that makes itscustomers display ads for other businesses.
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Signing Up for Value-Added Services
I sometimes use the term part-time to describe hosting services that perform functionsother than simply hosting websites. VeriSign (http://www.verisign.com), for instance,is in the security business. It sells security keys that help businesses and individualsprotect the information they transmit either through e-mail or through the Web byencrypting it. But VeriSign also provides a domain name registry to registrars thatdeal with the public. It also provides online payment processing solutions like Pay-flow Link for $19.95 per month. Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com) is primarily in the business of managing domain names in the .com and otherdomains. But Network Solutions also gives its domain name customers the option ofhosting their sites.
Part-time Web hosts aren’t necessarily less expensive than others. But they giveyou value-added services that might pay off in the long run. Consider the full-timeWeb host Easy CGI (http://www.easycgi.com). In the basic level of service, you gethosting for $9.95 per month that includes 3GB of disk space, support for Perl andother scripting languages that help you process forms, and support for the MySQLdatabase environment, which can help you create a dynamic sales catalog (see Chap-ter 17 for more information about dynamic websites). Compare that to NetworkSolutions, whose basic plan costs $9.96 per month for Web hosting. You also get3GB of disk storage, 50GB of data transfer per month, and MySQL/Microsoft Accesssupport. In addition, you also get a free domain registration or renewal if you pay fora year in advance.
Hiring a Consultant to Help You
When you decide to create your own website, especially if it is a site designed to helpyou make money, it can be intimidating. When you look around at your competitors’websites, you naturally wonder how you are going to make yours of sufficient qualityto compete with theirs. You should consider hiring a consultant. One of the bestreasons for hiring someone is to have the person create a logo for you. Anotherreason is to make sure your graphics appear sharp and have the 3-D shading effectsthat Web surfers come to expect from professional websites.
Choosing a Web DesignerThere is no shortage of individuals who are willing and eager to create websites foryou or other businesses. The challenge is to find one who is affordable, has a stylethat is compatible to your own, and is easy to work with as well as reliable.
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Where do you find such people? One of the best ways is to ask around by askingpeople you know or sending e-mails to people who already have websites. Look atthe bottom of Web pages for a credit line such as, ‘‘Web site created by. . . .’’
Look at the websites these people have created. Look at the colors and typestyles. Are they compatible with your own style, with the market you are trying toreach? Are the sites complex and easy to follow? Do they seem well designed? Dothe pages seem crammed with as much content as possible, or is the emphasis onclean white space? One approach is not necessarily better than another; the impor-tant thing is to find a designer whose work approaches your own aesthetic.
Sometimes, the same designers can alter their style to fit the content they aretrying to illustrate visually. Debbie Levitt of the design firm As Was is a well-knownWeb designer who works with a staff of artists to create auction templates for eBaysellers and websites for e-commerce entrepreneurs. As Was also specializes in presen-tation and branding for online marketplaces. Two of the eBay-related As Was sitesare shown in Figure 16-2 and Figure 16-3. Figure 16-2 is a template design for AdamHersh Auctions. Adam is a young entrepreneur who is fast becoming one of eBay’sbiggest and most successful sellers.
Figure 16-2. A design like this appeals to shoppers who like printed media, particularly posters.
(cid:2) Debbie Levitt, owner of As Was.
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Figure 16-3. This design appeals to a sportier crowd, particularly those who love golf.
(cid:2) Debbie Levitt, owner of As Was.
The eBay listing template for Lost Golf Balls Retail shown in Figure 16-3 wasalso created by Debbie. The design is more active and busy and will appeal to ayounger audience more accustomed to getting visual information from many differentmedia sources.
Levitt offers this advice to eBay sellers who are looking for a designer to create
listing templates or a website, or both:
Find a designer who can capture your personality and speak to your target audi-ence. If every design looks the same, then expect yours to look like the restbecause that’s what that company or individual does. Look for someone who cando a variety of styles since then they are more likely to connect with the style youwant. Speak to their clients. Look at case studies and call or e-mail those people.Most importantly, sign a contract. We hear all the time comments to the effectthat, ‘‘The design was never done and I can’t get my money back.’’ Or, ‘‘I don’tlike it and they won’t make another version.’’ Well, what does the contract say?What contract? Don’t enter into handshake deals!
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Creating a LogoOne of the best reasons for hiring a designer to help you is to create a logo for yourwebsite. Your site is an extension of your auction business. As you already know fromyour auction activities, professionalism is important. It’s worth spending a few hun-dred dollars (specifically, I would guess that you can have a logo designed for any-where from $250 to $400) to have someone create a logo for you. The one-timeexpense will pay off for years to come as you apply the logo to your stationery,business cards, advertisements, and any other print and marketing materials.
(cid:3)
Solicit Bids for Your Logo and Web Design
One of the best places to ﬁnd freelance designers to create a logo for you is eLanceOnline (http://www.elanceonline.com). This site matches professional contractorssuch as designers, writers, and consultants with employers who need their services.
It is also a reverse auction site, where you post a description of the project youwant someone to do for you, and freelance contractors bid on it. You can review thebids they submit and choose the lowest bid, or select a contractor whose price maynot be the lowest but whose other qualiﬁcations attract you.
If you’re a service provider yourself, you can pay a monthly fee to bid on projects.You are also able to create a page on the site that describes your company and yourexperience, and that provides potential employers with references they can contact.
Plenty of businesses use logos that are simple to create; they consist of type only,with no drawings or photographic images. If you’re in a hurry and you are the do-it-yourself type you, too, can create your own logo at the Cool Text website (http://www.cooltext.com).
Creating Your WebsiteWhy would you consider paying a Web designer to create your entire website? Youmight do this if you are in a hurry and/or if your website is going to be an importantsource of income for you.
Choosing Web Page SoftwareIf you’ve created an About Me page on eBay, you’re already familiar with the processof creating a Web page without having to use hypertext markup language (HTML),
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which makes the page’s contents readable by a Web browser. Like many other Webhosts, eBay provides you with a simple form to fill out so that you can enter thecontent and have it formatted automatically when you submit the contents to eBay.When you create your website, you should also look for a user-friendly utility thathelps you create a home page without having to work directly with HTML. If you useYahoo! GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com), for instance, you are given access tothe same kind of interactive form to make a home page on that site. However, if youuse Yahoo! to host your site, for instance, a sophisticated Web-editing program calledSiteBuilder is available to you.
SiteBuilder, like other Web editors, gives you a wide range of menus, buttons, andother user-friendly options for creating and formatting Web pages. The nice thingabout Yahoo! SiteBuilder is that you can use its built-in Site Creation Wizard, whichleads you through the process of starting up a site. You also receive a selection ofmore than 330 templates you can use to design your pages. When you first open theprogram after installation, you are greeted by the Site Creation Wizard shown inFigure 16-4.
Click START, and you are led through the process of naming your site and creating
Figure 16-4. You are prompted to use the site creation wizard when you first open Yahoo! SiteBuilder.
(cid:2) Yahoo! SiteBuilder.
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a simple set of pages for it. One of the templates, with its corresponding navigationbar, is shown in Figure 16-5.
Note: SiteBuilder is really only useful if you have an account with Yahoo!Web Hosting or Yahoo! Merchant solutions: it’s only set up to publish tothese sites.
Organizing Your Website
When you create an About Me page or an eBay Store, organization is streamlinedfor you. Although you ultimately have to come up with something to say, the formsyou fill out lead you through the process of writing the content. The classic methodfor brainstorming your site’s look and feel is to talk it over with your friends orcoworkers. You write up a list of the features you want, and you come up with adescription of how you envision your home page to look. I’ve been known to comeup with drawings as crude and crowded as the one shown in Figure 16-6.
Figure 16-5. SiteBuilder helps you get started, but you have to finish by publishing to Yahoo!
(cid:2) Yahoo! SiteBuilder.
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Figure 16-6. Take pencil and paper in hand and brainstorm to come up with a list of contents.
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Dividing Your Content into CategoriesAmazon.com has its millions of marketplace items divided into categories and subcat-egories through which you can search and browse. Every website needs to have itscontents divided into two or more categories, too. Each category contains a singletype of information, which makes that information easier to find. Categories alsomake website data easier to digest; rather than seeing all of a website’s contents inone place (a task typically performed by a Site Map Web page), you see a short listof contents.
When you’re thinking of how to design your website, make a list of all of thethings you want to say and do on the site. Think of how that list can be boiled downinto, say, three to five categories. Each of them can have its own home page, plus alink on your site’s main home page. For example, you might come up with a roughlist of tasks you want your website to perform, such as the following:
Link to our auction sales
• Explain who we are and what we do•• Give customers contact information••• Help build our brand and increase our overall visibility••
Provide links to detailed product specificationsSell catalog items directly to the public
Turn our eBay customers into repeat customersLet shoppers sign up for our newsletter and provide us with contact informa-tion we can use for future communications
• Give customers links to related websites and online resources we recommend•
Sell half-price items and hold special promotions
That might seem like an ambitious set of goals, but it’s well within the range ofmost websites and their designers. How would you turn this set of objectives intocategories? You group the ones that seem similar. For example, ‘‘Provide links todetailed product specifications’’ and ‘‘Let shoppers sign up for our newsletter‘‘ couldboth be described as customer service functions. ‘‘Link to our auction sales’’ and‘‘Sell catalog items directly to the public’’ are both ways to let shoppers purchaseyour merchandise. They could be grouped under a heading such as Products or Sales.The next step is to group the items in your list of goals into categories; Table 16-2gives you an example.
You should, of course, feel free to come up with your own category names, andarrange content in a way that best suits your needs. Headings like ‘‘About Us’’ and
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Table 16-2. Website categories.
Home
About Us
Products
CustomerService
Contact
Help build ourbrand and in-crease our over-all visibility.
Let shopperssign up for ournewsletter.
Explain who weare and what wedo.
Link to our auc-tion sales.
Provide links todetailed productspecifications.
Give customerscontact infor-mation.
Give customerslinks to relatedwebsites and on-line resourceswe recommend.
Sell catalogitems directly tothe public.
Sell half-priceitems and holdspecial promo-tions.
‘‘Contact Us’’ are widely used—perhaps even overused—and you might want to comeup with something more original to make your site unique.
Including the Must-HavesNo matter what categories you come up with, make sure your website includes thefollowing standard components:
•
A Home Page. Shoppers and prospective clients want to know that their pres-ence is appreciated, whether they are entering a brick-and-mortar store or an onlinestore. A good home page can function much like a friendly receptionist, makingvisitors feel welcome and directing them to content they may want to investigatefurther.•
Photos. Images are essential when Web surfers go shopping online. They helpprospective customers learn something about the products they’re considering pur-chasing. The more photos you have, the more likely someone will click the BUYbutton.
• Description of Who You Are. On the Web, people can’t deal with you face-to-face. They don’t have the advantage of reading body language or looking in your eyes.You can, however, build trust by telling something about who you are, why you lovewhat you do, why you’re good at what you do, and why people can rely on you.
• Description of Items for Sale/Services You Provide. This is where you ‘‘sell’’your goods or services. You have to expend some time and energy in capturing images
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and writing descriptions. But once you’re done, you can publish the information andget it online in a matter of minutes for a fraction of the cost it would take to producea printed sales catalog or promotional brochure.
• Navigational Tools. Every site should provide ways for visitors to help navigateit. Think of them as functioning like the signs and directory in a department store.You provide links, images, a site map, or a search box for your visitors so that theycan locate what they want more quickly.
•
A ‘‘Customer Service’’ Area. If you’re conducting retail sales on your site, thisarea enables your customers to get questions answered and contact you if they needhelp. You might provide information on your returns policy, for instance. If you’recreating a site for personal use or business services, this can simply be a page full ofcontact information or directions to your office.
It’s often a good idea to draw up a quick sketch of the pages you want to have onyour site. This sketch doesn’t need to be complicated or beautiful. It can be as simpleand crude as the hand-drawn diagram I threw together in Figure 16-7.
Linking to Your Auction SalesWhen you create a website that is designed to supplement your existing sales on eBayor another auction site, one of the things you must have on your site is a link to yourauction sales. Visitors to your website should have a way of finding the items youhave for sale so that they can purchase the items. If you use eBay, you make use of atool called the Editor Kit, which creates links to your current eBay sales. (See Chap-ter 17 for step-by-step instructions on how to use it.)
Creating Web PagesOnce you have selected a host, have a domain name lined up, and have given somethought to your website’s organization, you can get to work. It’s always a good ideato start small and build your site up rather than trying to create a twenty-five- to forty-page website from the outset. You might create only six to ten pages to begin with.When you start small, you don’t get overwhelmed, and you have time to focus onmaking each one of your pages look just right.
You might consider drawing a map of your website. I usually draw these maps inthe shape of a triangle. The home page is drawn at the top; the top-level categorypages are beneath it; the subcategory pages are beneath them. The map helps youkeep track of which pages link to each other, and how many pages you want to have.You’ve probably heard the term hypertext markup language, which is one of themarkup languages commonly used to create Web pages. Although it’s a good idea to
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Figure 16-7. A rough sketch of a site map can help you get started with creating individual pages.
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know at least something about HTML, you don’t have to know how to write it. In thedeep, dark ages of the World Wide Web, people had to write the HTML commands tocreate Web pages in the form of plain-text files. They would then save those files withthe file extension .htm or .html and open them in Web browsers to test them out. Itwas a time-consuming process suited primarily to computer programmers. Thesedays, you can choose from many different software programs that enable you tocreate Web pages without having to write HTML. These software programs go bydifferent names; in this chapter, I’ll call them Web page editors.
The Web page software that I find most convenient and easiest to use comes withthe Netscape Communicator and Mozilla browser packages. It’s called Composer;it’s free and, while it doesn’t let you do flashy things like applying Web page scriptsand automatically making the same change on dozens of Web pages at once, it stillperforms many of the basic tasks that simple websites require. It’s a great programfor getting started and creating your first Web pages; if you like the process and wantto perform more complex technical tricks, you can invest money in a commercialWeb page editor like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Tip: You can download Netscape Communicator, which includes Com-poser, at http://home.netscape.com. Mozilla is available at http://www.mozilla.org. In both cases, you need to download the completepackage rather than the standalone Web browser.
Once you have installed either Communicator or Mozilla, you launch Composerby choosing Composer from the Window menu. A new blank document appears onyour computer screen with the text cursor blinking on the top line, waiting for you totype or paste something. You can paste a text file you have prepared previously in aword processing program or you can start by typing the name of your website. Forthis example, assume you’re creating a site called The Bargain Basement:
1. Type ‘‘Welcome to the Bargain Basement.’’ Click and hold down your mouse
button and drag across the letters you just typed to highlight them.
2. From the paragraph format drop-down menu list that currently reads BodyText, choose Heading 1. This formats the highlighted words in the Heading 1style. Six levels of headings are provided in HTML; H1 is the biggest and mostimportant, and H6 is the least important and smallest.
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Note: In the final version of your page, you might insert your companylogo at the top of the page, but for now, this heading will serve as aplaceholder.
3. Press ENTER to create a blank space, and then type a subheading to go withyour main heading. Highlight the subheading as you did earlier, and chooseHeading 3 from the paragraph format drop-down list.
4. Press ENTER and type a paragraph that describes your website and its mission,or that serves as a greeting to your customers. Your Web page editor shouldlet you review the results as they will appear online (see Figure 16-8).
If you are graphically challenged like me, the temptation is to use type as a deco-ration on your Web pages. Resist this urge! Instead, stick with a tried-and-true princi-
Figure 16-8. A Web page editor lets you preview your work in ‘‘what you see is what you get‘‘(WYSIWYG) format.
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ple followed by many pros: use a serif face (such as Times or Georgia) for the text,and a sans serif typeface (such as Helvetica, Arial, or Verdana) for the headings, linkbuttons, and other navigational text. These are just two of the various type familiesshown in Figure 16-9.
You can go on adding content to your page. When you are done, save the file ina folder on your local file system. Within that folder, you should create a completeversion of your website; it should serve as a backup to the version you are eventuallygoing to publish online.
Creating ImagesYou already know how to take images, so it’s a small step to posting images on yourhost’s Web server rather than with eBay or your photo host. The same principles thatwork with eBay auction images work with Web page photos: take them at a relativelylow resolution (for instance, 600 x 800), keep them as low in file size as possible
Figure 16-9. You can use sans serif, serif, or plain-text fonts in your Web design.
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(ideally, 15K to 50K), and crop them so their physical dimensions don’t consumetoo much screen space (perhaps 2 x 3 inches, or 3 x 5 inches).
Posting Pages OnlineWhen you fill out an auction description form and post images, you move the HTMLand image files from your computer to a remote Web server. You have to do the samewith your Web page files. You move them from the folder you have set up to storethe local version of your site to the folder that your Web host has set up for you onone of its servers. Chances are your Web-hosting service will provide you with a user-friendly way to move the files. Otherwise, you may want to acquaint yourself with theins and outs of using a file transfer protocol (FTP) application. FTP is simple andeffective: it only has one purpose, which is to move files from one Internet-basedcomputer to another.
FTP applications aren’t flashy, so they don’t require a lot of overhead in terms ofbandwidth. Sometimes, you’ll find that if your Web browser isn’t working effectivelybecause your wireless connection is weak, your FTP application might still be able toconnect to a remote server. In order to get connected, you need to get some criticalinformation from your Web host: the FTP address of your server, and the user nameand password you should use. Typically, the information looks like this:
Server address: web-ftp.earthlink.com
•• User name: [your e-mail address]•Password: [your password]
Once you enter the information in the appropriate boxes in your FTP applica-tion’s main window, you click a button labeled CONNECT (or something similar).When you connect, you view the files on your local file system on one side of thewindow (usually, the left side), and the files on the Web server on the right. Youselect the files you want to move on the left and click a button that points toward theWeb server side of the window; the file is moved from your computer to the remotemachine. The WS_FTP window is shown in Figure 16-10.
One nice thing about FTP programs is that they give you the ability to createdirectories and move files from one directory to another. You can also use them torename files either on your local computer or the remote server.
Checking Your Content and Your LinksSimply moving your files to the designated folder on your Web server isn’t enough.It’s rare that you can move a group of files online and have everything look and
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Figure 16-10. F TP programs are reliable and give you control over your site’s organization.
function correctly the first time. Take the time to review your pages for typos orimages that don’t appear quickly—or that don’t appear at all. Better yet, have a friendor family member look it over closely. Because you’re managing an e-commerce web-site rather than a personal or humorous site, you need to ensure that your site por-trays you in a professional manner. It’s very common to make corrections to a Webpage, save the changes, move the revised file to the Web server using your FTPprogram, then refresh the page in the browser window to review your changes. Alsomake sure your prices, model numbers, colors, and other pertinent details about yourproducts are correct as well so your customers don’t get confused. Once you haveyour site up and running, you can gradually add features that will make it functioneven more effectively, as you’ll learn in the Chapter 17.
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C H A P T E R (cid:3)17
Boosting Your Website’sEffectiveness
What would your reaction be if you held a garage sale and nobody came? How wouldyou feel if you opened an eBay Store and no one made any purchases from you forweeks at a time? It would probably be the same feeling you’d get if you went throughthe effort to create a website and nothing happened—no page views, no e-mail inquir-ies (except for those spammers who want to sell you the usual range of medicinalsubstances and other services), and no purchases. It would make even an optimisticperson want to give up. But don’t stay discouraged for more than a few seconds. Youcan take steps to boost your website by making it more effective and attractive. Whenyou see your number of visitors and customers go up thanks to your efforts, you’ll bethat much more satisfied.
When my brother first put his website (http://www.lp2cdsolutions.com) online,he was afraid he had wasted his time and energy. I remember him telling me thatonly a few people had found his site—and after we did some calculating, we deter-mined that most of the hits came from the two of us. A couple months later, he wasvery happy. He was getting more visits, and the number of business assignments hereceived through the website was more than enough to satisfy