FAIR SHAKE

I'm creating this thread here for people who have never made a website. Any questions - I'll do my best.

The basics of creating a website.

First off, if you’ve never done this before, it’s a good idea to pick a free webpage provider, like Google - and just begin by making a webpage unrelated to your business so you can play around with things and get used to the feel of presenting a web page. Maybe you could make one about your hobby, or a family website to share with friends. Doing this will give you some basic skills.

When you feel that you’re technically comfortable to start doing your business website it’s time to take a look at other websites that seem to be successful. Do a search for something similar to what you sell and check out the ones that come up on the first few pages of the search.

Visit these sites and see which ones you like the best and would fit your business. Take note of how they are selling their items. Do they have their own domain name? Is their website integrated with a shopping cart? Or are they just linking to the places they sell - like their auctions.

Click all the links in their Navigation bar and see what else they have to offer besides their products.

With successful products you will often see that they are not just selling - they are informing. Why? Because they know that a good percentage of traffic to their website can come from people who are just looking up information about things on the Internet.

Here’s an example that many of us already know about. Replacements.com. If you sell glassware you have probably visited their site because there are thousands of patterns available and help identifying your own items. Now you probably aren’t buying anything from them when you visit, but they have become so well know that if someone said to you - Where can I get extra plates for my Knowles pattern xyz china - you’re very likely to send them to Replacements.com. Kovells also does this well. They are such a big name in antiquing that they make much of their money selling information.

So there’s Lesson #1: Websites are not just for selling your product, they are for Branding. Your aim - make your Brand a household word. One person that visited my website said they liked the name Pennsylvania-Antiques because it let them know right off the bat where the items were coming from. Actually, we sell so many different products, it was hard to thing of a name - but most do come from Pennsylvania estate sales, so it seemed appropriate. It’s also good for the search engines because people often search for Pennsylvania Antiques (looking for B&M antique stores and flea markets)

2nd Lesson - The name you put in your URL is important for the search engines - So don’t name your store Mary’s Treasures if you’re selling DVD’s, dolls or even depression glass. Name it Marys-Movies.com or Marys-Vintage-Dolls, or Marys-House-of-Depression-Glass.com. So, think carefully when you’re signing up for a website and domain name - don’t just type in the first thing that comes to mind.

#3. There is a difference between your website and having a domain name.
If you join an auction site or shopping cart host and get a website - you do not necessarily have a domain name. If there is anything else in that URL besides http://yourname.com or http://www.yourname.com You do not have a domain name. For instance, my ecrater store is http://pennsylvania.antiques.ecrater.com. My website is http://pennsylvania-antiques.com My website is my domain. My store on ecrater is in their domain. I don’t get to keep it if I close my store.
My domain is mine to keep as long as I keep paying the yearly fee for it. You have to check the fine print when you sign up, but generally domains can be transferred to another host if you don’t like the one you have. You can FTP files and photos to your domain, and often have lots of pages that you can create to add to your website. These are among the benefits of buying a domain name. As long as you keep paying for it, nobody else can come along and steal it from you.

You may also want to consider buying very similar domain names to keep competition from starting up a similar business and diverting your customers. You can try to get a domain with the same name that ends in .net, or you can try to get domains with what your customers may erroneously type into the URL.

The URL for OnlineAuction.com is a good case study - Type in OnlineAuctions.com and you’ll see what I mean. Lots of people think the “s” is added and are not giving out the proper URL for the site. If OnlineAuction could buy this domain (with the s addition) they could easily steer their customers in the right direction with a link.


The Nitty Gritty - HTML - and other useful website tools

Do you really want to go take a course in HTML, CSS or Java programming. Probably not. So, thank God there are lots of programs out there created for developing your website.

Before using any of them, think about what you want to do and then read about the capabilities of various programs. You don’t want to half-build your website and then find out the program doesn’t have all the features you want, or is so complicated you can’t use it.

I use Yahoo Site Tools - a free download because Yahoo is hosting my site. I know HTML so it’s fine for me. They also have a super easy online Site Builder tool, but it’s very, very limited in what it can do and in what templates it has. So I decided to go with the one that was a bit harder to use.

If anyone has suggestions on easy to use site tools, please start a thread on that - it would be very helpful.

Once you’ve chosen a program and have your site ready - you can upload it following your program’s directions and it will be on the Internet. You can still make changes by using your program, but each time you will have to upload what you’ve changed for it to take effect on the actual website.


More will come later. Any technical questions about this - please ask.