| DOMAIN NAME
SELECTION - Your domain name will be your address on the Internet. It should be easy to
remember and clearly identify your company, product, or service. People who find you from
within the Internet, by searches or links from other sites, will not need to remember (or
even know) your domain name. They will be taken to your site automatically.
Your domain name is more important
for directing people outside of the Internet to your site through newspaper, radio,
billboard, direct mail and other forms of advertising.
A domain name can be a combination
of letters and numbers, and, words can be separated with dashes (-), but, most other
symbol characters are not acceptable. Domain names begin with "www." (world wide
web) and may end with ".com" (commercial), ".org" (organization) or
".net" (network). For example: www.tropicalmarine.com (using company name) or
www.honda-outboard.com (using a product brand). You may register more than one domain name
to use as an Internet Address, all pointing to the same location.
1. ENTER
A DOMAIN NAME YOU WISH TO REGISTER. IF IT IS AVAILABLE, COMPLETE THE COMPANY
AND BILLING INFORMATION. THIS WILL POINT THAT DOMAIN NAME TO MEGAIQ'S SERVER.
| Enter a domain name
to register, renew, transfer or look-up:
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DESIGNING YOUR WEB
PAGES - In order to create the pages for your site, it is best to define a theme or
ambiance which you want your site to reflect. This will dictate color, style, texture and
character selections.
2. Specify what
overall theme or style you want for your site (country, futuristic, antique, art deco,
oriental, etc.)
3. Specify a
color scheme or any other aspects of style that you prefer.
4. Provide the
best original art work available for your company's or your products' logo and trademarks.
If you are in a service
oriented business, it will be important to provide profiles of the people who work for
your company. Focus should be placed on your staff's accomplishments, experience,
accolades, certifications, etc. If your company is product oriented, then focus
should also be placed on your products. For real estate companies, this would
include your listings.
5. Provide a
photograph of each staff member and/or product, or a group photo.
6. Provide a
profile statement for each staff member and/or product description.
More specific details
about your services or product sales policy may also be useful. To the extent you
want to disseminate price schedules, terms of sale, terms of engagement and other company
policy you will need to supply this information.
7. If desired,
provide information related to any company sales or service terms, conditions or policy
that you want included in your website.
CATEGORIZE YOUR
PRODUCTS OR SERVICES - To organize the information in your website, it is important to
group information into categories and sub-categories. For example, real estate
companies generally use broad categories of "single family residential",
"multi-family residential", "commercial", etc.; and, residential
sub-categories such as, "waterfront", "golf course", "view"
etc. This will help to determine the navigational buttons needed to control the flow
of your information.
Although
your website is very much like a company brochure, especially in it’s content,
Internet functionality brings a whole new dimension to the presentation. Any object
(a word, phrase, or image) on one page can be linked to another object on another page
within your website, (or to a variety of other places and objects). As such, your
presentation is totally relational, but, it is a presentation, like a slide show with
buttons on each slide that can call up any other slide in your presentation. Thus,
you need to give thought to the flow chart design of your overall site.
8. Provide a
list of the categories and sub-categories related to your products and/or services.
9. To the
extent possible, create a flow chart which demonstrates the hierarchical organization of
your categories including any links between pages.
DESCRIBE YOUR BUSINESS
- In order for people, who are not familiar with your company, to find your website,
the site must be promoted within the Internet by listing or registering it with various
search sites. Several different methods are employed to provide the search criteria
for your site.
The primary method is
through a list of "keywords". Others derive their information related to
your site from a "key description" or "key phrases". The best
approach is to create a list of keywords (words people might be likely to enter in their
search request) then create short phrases using as many of those keywords as possible, and
finally, string the phrases together into a paragraph to describe your business. For
example, if you are a real estate company in Marble Falls, your keywords would include:
real estate, realtor, property, acreage, ranches, lots, homes, houses, buildings, Highland
Lakes, Texas, Hill Country, Burnet, Marble Falls, Marble Falls….etc.
10. Prepare a
list of keywords as in the above example. As many as you can think of.
11. Create a
number of phrases which incorporate as many keywords as possible (and make sense).
Pay particular attention to what you believe people might search by, which you want to be
certain would result in their finding you.
12. Create a
description of your business using the key phrases and/or keywords. This description
should be under 150 words.
Click here for information on how search engines work.
CONTACT INFORMATION - So that people who reach your website have the means to
contact you in as many ways as possible, you should provide all available contact
information.
13. List
your company's physical address(s), mailing address, phone numbers (especially toll free
numbers), fax number, pagers, home numbers and mobile numbers when applicable, e-mail
address(s), etc.
AREA INFORMATION AND LINKS - Businesses which are regional in their nature (such as real estate)
or otherwise would benefit from the promotion of amenities in their geographic area,
should either include such selling points about the area within their website, or provide
links from their website to other sites where this information can be found such as
the local Chamber of Commerce , or state government sites, etc.
14.
Provide any descriptive information, maps and/or photographs you want included relating to
your geographic area, or, provide the domain name or Internet Address of any sites you
want to link to from within your site.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS - Another
means of promoting your website within the Internet is through banner exchange services
such as "Link Exchange". Under these programs, a banner box is placed on one or
more pages in your. When that page is accessed by someone browsing your site, an
advertisement for another exchange member's site will be displayed in this banner
box. Each time a page with a banner is accessed, you earn ½ credit. For each
1 credit that you accrue, your banner ad will be displayed on another
member's website providing a link back to your website.
15. State
whether or not you want to include banner exchanges on your website.
THIS PROVIDES THE
BASIC INFORMATION THAT MEGAIQ WILL NEED TO START BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE. DELAYS IN
OBTAINING THIS INFORMATION WILL PREVENT US FROM COMPLETING YOUR SITE IN A TIMELY MANNER.
THE MORE INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE,
THE BETTER WE CAN SERVE YOU.
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