A beginner's guide to websites. [ PDF Version ]

This guide to websites is provided as general information and as such should not be relied upon as your sole source of information. We recommend a client contact Hollowpoint to discuss their individual needs. However, if you are looking at having a web site developed for the first time, this guide should provide you with helpful hints.

What is a website?

A website is a collection of web pages, joined by links between the pages, just as a group of pages in a book is joined by a Table of Contents. Websites can have any number of pages, from one page (commonly called a ‘home page’) to literally hundreds of thousands of pages. A website generally has one overall ‘theme’ or ‘template’ that gives the site it’s look and feel, then it usually has pages that contain different pieces of information, with titles that denote what the visitor would expect to find if they visited a particular page. For example, a website might have a page that contains a business's contact details. So, the web designer creates a ‘link’ to that page on all of the other pages, and titles the link ‘contact us’ so that when the visitor sees the link, they know that if they click on that link, they can expect to be taken to a page that contains contact details for the business.

A website has 3 major components – a web address (for example, www.yoursite.com ), so that visitors can access it, a design so that it appeals to whomever the target audience is, and content (which can be text, images, media and so forth). A website may also have other features like a shopping cart where customers can place orders for products, a form so that visitors can send the owner their contact details, and even complex databases that allow visitors to customize the site to the way they like things to appear or to display the information they want to see, or have searched for.

A website can typically be broken down into two main categories – Static and Dynamic. Static websites usually don’t change very often. Content usually stays the same, and the look and feel of the website doesn’t change over time. Occasionally the website owner may want to update the information contained on the website, so he or she usually contacts their designer to make the necessary alterations.

Dynamic websites, on the other hand, can have content which changes based on time of the day, what a visitor chooses to look at, what the site owner decides to put on the website at any given time, and what products the visitor is searching for. The advantages of a dynamic website is that you can keep the visitor interested for longer, and you can display information that is the most sought after by the visitor. The downside is generally cost – Dynamic websites are usually a lot more expensive than what a static site would cost.

Why do I need a website?

Businesses have many reasons for wanting a website, including:

• Wanting to attract new business by accessing a larger marketplace
• Wanting to save time and money by allowing potential customers to window shop without having to physically attend their premises
• Selling their products and services online, thus reducing the cost of a sale
• Promoting a particular product, event or special, which can’t be promoted in other forms of media because other forms of media cannot be changed (such as print media).
• Because they are aware that their target market use the internet to shop, find information or just browse

There are almost as many reasons as there are websites. Research has shown that retail sales in Australia that were made by purchasing online with Visa Cards totalled $900 million last year. With over 16 million people going ‘online’ in Australia alone, it’s not surprising that many retailers want to make the most out of this highly valuable sales tool.

What is involved in setting up a website?

Firstly, you need a domain name. A domain name translates a number that identifies where the website is stored into a name that people can remember. A website may be stored on a computer that is identified as 283.389.222.289, but a visitor couldn’t possibly remember that, so the business leases a domain name – they may choose something like goldwidgets.com if they just happen to sell gold widgets. So then, 283.389.222.289 = goldwidgets.com and when someone types in goldwidgets.com , their computer says ‘Ahh… you mean 283.389.222.289’ and takes them to the correct website.

There are a range of domain ‘extensions’ to choose from, but the most popular in Australia is .com.au. This means that the website is a commercial website (.com) in Australia (.au). The website owner may not want to state they are in Australia, so he or she may just choose a domain ending in .com which is very popular in the United States.

Once a business has a domain name, they need a design. A design could be as simple as the colour of the text and the background, or as complex as animated images, logos and themes that visitors associate with that business or industry. Design is generally undertaken by a graphic designer or website designer.

Once you have a design that you are happy with, you can then have your pages made up. This involves the business supplying the designer with either specific or general information, and the designer organizing this information into web pages.

Generally speaking, you pay for each page that is created, whereas the design costs are usually calculated by time or a flat rate.

After the pages have been created and any additional components are added (lets keep it simple and not talk about that just yet), then a website needs to be stored somewhere, otherwise no one can access it. It is NOT a good idea to try and store a website on your computer, as you need for other people to access it. This is not secure, and besides, it takes a large amount of resources (such as computer power and telephone lines) to allow many people access to your website at the same time. So, most businesses have hosting for their websites. These are computers located in secure facilities that have many websites on them. Their connections are fast and they can store much more information than a standard home computer. They are also managed, so the business owner doesn’t need to fix any problems that may occur. The computer that stores the information has an identification number that helps other computers find the website. This is called an IP address. We covered this earlier.

Once the hosting has been set up, and the website uploaded (this is usually done by the designer), then you need to ‘point the domain name to the IP address’. There is a registry of different IP addresses and their corresponding domain names. It is necessary to make changes to the domain name’s registration details so that the registry knows where the information is being held for that particular domain’s website. It is actually more complicated than that, but let’s keep it simple.

After all this has been done, your website is online! Other people around the world can see your website! BUT, can they find it without knowing the web address (domain name) ? Luckily, there are ways to make this happen without sending the entire population of the world a business card or brochure.

How do people find me?

If you don’t advertise your web address (domain name) in print, or on tv, radio, a newspaper or other form of media, then your visitors just won’t know where to look. You can tell people where your website is by getting listed in search engines, other business’ websites, in topical directories, in forums, or even in blogs (web logs – one of the latest crazes to sweep the internet). The most popular way to be found though is through getting listed in Search Engines.

A search engine is a massive database that stores information on websites. This information can be accessed by a visitor to the search engine typing in what they are looking for. An example might be a visitor who is looking for a pair of shoes in Brisbane. They might type in ‘shoes brisbane’ or ‘high heel shoes in brisbane’ or something similar. Then the search engine goes through it’s massive database and displays a list of sites that might be appropriate. I should emphasise ‘might be appropriate’ as the results are not always accurate. It is up to the business to word their text on their website well enough that a search engine can read it and determine how suitable it is against what the visitor has searched for.

A search engine will generally display a list of websites that contains basic information on each site, such as the domain name, the title of the site, and usually a paragraph or less of text from the site. The search engine will also create a link to the site so that a visitor can click on the link and be taken to the website.

Because of the vast amount of websites on the internet, and the number of searches performed every second of every hour of every day, search engines can’t possibly keep up with so much traffic, so what they do is this – they cheat by ‘caching’ results. Ahead of time, they search literally millions of websites, and determine what the website relates to. They ‘spider’ the site and look for keywords – words that relate to what the website is all about. Once they have ‘spidered’ a website, the search engine takes note of the web address, page titles and some of the content, along with the keywords, and places it all in a database, so that when someone searches using certain keywords, the only thing the search engine needs to do is display every site that contains those keywords that are already in the database. Unfortunately it can take 6-8 weeks to get a site ‘spidered’ and the details entered into the database – the ‘spider’ is an automated piece of software, but with millions upon millions of websites, it really has it’s work cut out!

Search engines also rank the pages by their relevance to the search terms. An example might be if there are two websites, each selling shoes, but one is located in Brisbane and the other on the Sunshine Coast. If a visitor searches for ‘shoes in brisbane’ the website in Brisbane is more likely to come up first in the list. BUT, this is not always the case, as the job of a Search Engine Optimisation company is to get their clients listing higher than other websites, and they know all the little tricks that help make that happen.

There are other ways to be found on the internet, such as paying to appear on other people’s websites, listing in directories, and even, and this is a very popular method to use, paying a search engine to display an ad, rather than just rely on where that search engine will place you in their normal listings.

This type of advertising is known as Cost Per Click, or Pay Per Click, or Sponsored Links, and is a reasonably low cost way of being found easily. Search Engines such as Google will display ads (called Adwords) at the top and down the right hand side of any page with search results in it. The Adwords are triggered by whatever keywords the website owner thinks will benefit them. If they sell shoes, then the most obvious is ‘shoes’ but then they might want to have derivatives of this, and also location. So, when a search engine visitor types ‘shoes in brisbane’ into a search engine, as well as displaying the normal results, Google will display brief ads from businesses that have paid to be on that page. The reason why it is such a low cost way to advertise is that the business doesn’t actually pay to have the adword displayed – they only pay if someone actually clicks on their ad and visits their website! The ad could be displayed 1,000 times before someone clicks on it, and the business only pays for that one click. They could, theoretically, pay as little as $0.01 to be seen 1,000 times if one person clicks on the ad. Hence the term Cost or Pay Per Click. This system can be set up by a web designer who takes a portion of the advertising budget, or charges a fixed rate. The business owner can determine what they are willing to pay at the most for a click to their website, and how much they are willing to spend per day. A maximum cost per click of $1 and a daily budget of $10 would mean that at the worst, the business would receive 10 visitors for $10. However, it can happen that there are not many advertisers who want that keyword, so, working on a bidding system, whoever bids the highest gets best position. An ad might get displayed in position 7, but only cost $0.09 per click through, but if the ad showed up in position 1 it might cost $1.00 per click through. It is very important to seek out a Qualified Google Adwords Professional to assist you in making the most out of this very lucrative program.