Creating, Managing and Marketing Your Own Web Site WebMaster

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Creating, Managing and Marketing Your Own Web
Site WebMaster
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Contents

• Introduction
• Creating
• Marketing
• Managing
• Lessons Learned

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Increased Use of Web

• More and more people are using the WWW each day
  whether it be for
• Business or pleasure
• Hobbies
• Online banking

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95 of Web Sites Fail

• Some Reasons are
• It is generally a lot cheaper to start an online
  business than an offline one
• It takes time and effort to make a successful
  online business
• No or inadequate marketing

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How much will it Cost?

• As much as you want to spend
• With the tools available on the web today it can
  all be done for free
• A Consultant can do it all for you at a price
• A route some where in between

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My History

• Working in IT for over 15 years
• Started as a Programmer and occupied numerous
  roles including Team Leader positions
• Working at HP in Belgium for last 3 years as an
  Independent

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My Web Site

• With my technical background I decided to try my
  hand at developing my own web site in early 2002
• I launched my first site CoursesForFree.co.uk in
  August 2002

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Aim of Presentation

• Not to promote my CFF website, although if you
  want to explore it you can!
• The aim is to share my real life experience
  gained along the way
• Help anyone thinking I want to develop my own
  web site but does not know where to start

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Aim of Presentation

• There is no definitive wrong or right way to
  produce a web site
• I will provide a lot of information to help you
  Create, Manage and Market your own web site

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Creating Your Web Site

• Planning
• Idea
• Purpose
• Demand
• Site Structure
• Web Site Name
• Web Host
• Development
• Testing
• Implementation

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Planning

• As with any project this is essential
• Will save you time money in the long term

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Idea

• When you have an idea for a web site you should
  first start by doing some general investigation
  and research
• Stimulate ideas

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Stages

• Find similar sites using search engine
• For each site found answer the following
• What is its aim? (selling, informing)
• What are its good and bad points?
• What do you like and dont like?
• Where could you do it better?

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Idea

• If it does not feel right then leave it alone as
  it is more likely to fail
• Use your own area of expertise we all have one in
  either work or leisure
• Start thinking about keywords for your idea and
  make a list

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Idea Keywords

• CoursesForFree examples
• Course
• Education
• Information Technology
• Computing
• Free

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Purpose

• Hobby
• Information
• For Profit
• Promote/Support off line business

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Demand

• Look at search engines and see how many searches
  are made for your keywords
• Establish if demand exists
• Niche market or offline customers may not be as
  critical

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Defining a Structure

• Will there be a dbase?
• Will the screens be fixed or dynamic?
• What screens are required?

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Web Site Name

• Usually tells people what the site is about
• CoursesForFree.co.uk
• CoursesForFree.com
• .co.uk - registered in the UK
• .com - registered in USA
• .be - registered in Belgium

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Purchasing Web Site Name

• Shop around as price differs considerably for
  same extension
• For .co.uk I use
• https//www.123-reg.co.uk/
• 2.59GBP approx 4.14 (minimum 2 years)
• For .Com I use
• https//registrar.godaddy.com/
• 8.95 per year or 6.95 if buy 10 years

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Be Warned

• They sell the web site names at minimum profit
  and make money out of other things they offer
• Web hosting packages
• Submission to search engines
• Email accounts
• Web building tools
• You do NOT need to purchase these from the same
  source

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Existing Web Site Names

• As more and more names are registered less choice
  available
• Alternative buy an existing name
• Via Auctions
• Expired not renewed
• Direct approach to owner

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Web Host

• You can get free or relatively inexpensive web
  hosting on the internet and in a lot of cases you
  get what you pay for
• After developing a web site you do not want to
  find it is unavailable all the time as the server
  is down

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Web Host Requirements

• Uptime Guarantee
• Disc space
• Bandwidth
• Dedicated IP Address
• POP 3 email
• Windows, Unix or Linux
• Dbases
• Scripting languages

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Web Host Requirements

• Forum to buy direct
• http//www.webhostingtalk.com/
• Shared WebHosting Special Offers
• Dedicated Servers Special Offers
• Web Hosting Requests - place own web request

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Web Host Pricing

• Work out the price per year so can compare like
  with like
• Some price monthly some annual
• Some offer substantial discounts for annual
  payments in advance as less administration

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Web Host Pricing

• Things to add to the cost
• Initial set up cost for account
• Extra disc space charge
• Extra bandwidth charges
• Procedure if exceed bandwidth

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Web Host I Use

• Very reliable and stable company state of the art
  equipment
• 50 MB disc space
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Free trial
• 10 setup fee
• 14.95 per month
• Refer 6 people get hosting for free
• http//www.cashculture.com/?refandychess

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Development Common Pages

• Introduction
• FAQ
• Feedback
• Newsletter Sign Up

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Development Platform

• Own PC or server
• On web

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Development

• There are thousands of packages on the market
  that allow you to develop your site faster
• They are designed to build your site without
  having to learn the languages
• They are very helpful but not necessary

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Development Products

• Instant site maker
• FAQ factory
• Pop up Creators
• Deadline Generators
• Payment acceptor protector
• Instant meta makers

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Development Tools

• These can all be bought on the web
• I have bought a partnership in a software company
  that allows me to use and resell over 60 software
  products and 100s of ebooks
• You can have 1 for 39
• http//www.free-software-forever.com/sales/sale-00
  162002.htm

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Testing

• This is very important
• Need detail testing plan
• Someone else to test on another PC if possible

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Testing Plan

• Tick list to detail every screen and all the
• Buttons
• Links
• Proof Reading spelling
• Feedback form sends email
• Registration form
• Adds user to list
• Sends appropriate email to user
• Displays correct thank you screen

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Implementation

• Move all code to production server
• Go through all items on the testing plan to
  ensure they still work

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Marketing

• If you build it they will come
• Does not apply to the WWW
• People have to know your site exists

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Traffic Required

• Indicated that only 1 of visitors to a web site
  will want what is on offer
• Others say it is as low as 0.1
• This means you need 1000 visitors to reach 1
  person who is interested

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Traffic Utilisation

• To best utilise traffic to your site
• It is suggested that you create a newsletter and
  capture email addresses of all those interested
• People who do not want what is on offer today may
  be interested in the future

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Traffic Generation

• There are hundreds of methods for promoting your
  web site
• You can do it all for free or you can employ a
  marketing consultancy to do all the work for you

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Traffic Generation Online

• Search engine
• Pay per click
• Pop up Window
• Pop under Window
• Classified Ads
• Banners
• Exit Exchange
• Link Exchange
• Free For all
• Safe lists

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Traffic Blasting tools

• To increase your coverage you can now buy tools
  which blast your 1 web site advertisement to many
  places at the same time
• Classified ad blaster
• Safe list blaster

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Traffic Auctions

• Numerous sites auction advertisement specials on
  the WWW
• These can provide cheap access to a diversified
  market
• You could sell advertising on your site to
  generate profit

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Traffic Co-ops

• If you do not have time to spend marketing your
  business then you can pay a traffic co-op to
  generate the leads for you
• This is now big business on the WWW with
  businesses dedicated to it

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Traffic Generation

• Do not forget, just because your site is on the
  WWW does not mean that you can not use
  traditional offline methods of advertising
• In fact combining both offline and online
  marketing can be the best combination

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Traffic Generation Offline

• Newspaper Ads
• Trade Magazine Ads
• Posters
• Flyers
• Direct mailing
• Business Cards

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Managing

• Once your web site is up and running and you have
  started marketing your web site you have to
  consider the ongoing management
• A web site should be a living entity, constantly
  evolving

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Management Tasks

• Responding to email queries in a timely manner
• Production of newsletters
• Updating site content
• Updating advertisements
• Checking site for dead links
• Backup
• Dbase
• Website
• Mailing List

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Lessons Learned

• Took longer to develop than expected due to the
  number of new skills required, but these new
  skills should enhance my future job prospects
• HTML
• PHP
• MYSQL

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Lessons Learned

• Need to shop around for the best deals on web
  site hosting and domain names
• Marketing of the site is a bigger task than I
  expected