As a web developer/designer, we frequently get questions from people that may not know where to begin, or want to tackle the job themselves. We will post the most frequently asked questions to this page. If you do not find your question, please feel free to e-mail us at Ginasis, as we would be happy to navigate you in your website and internet endeavors!
- Where do I start?
- What are the components of a web site?
- What is the most economical way to incorporate e-commerce into my site?
- What is a domain name?
- How do I get a domain name of my own?
- How do I market my site?
- How do search engines find you?
- I have done a search for my company, and it didn’t come up, but other similar companies did. Why?
- How do you make a secure site to accept credit cards?
- What does the site statistics information mean?
Where do I start? First, you should decide what you want from your site. For example, do you just want general business information? Do you want to interact with clients? Do you want to sell something? Next, it should be decided if you want your own domain name or if you want a virtual domain (www.yourname.4mg.com) or a sub-domain (www.someone.com/yourname). The difference here is cost. For your own domain name it costs $30-$35/year. Virtual and sub domains are inexpensive and most times free. With these things established, you are now ready to decide if you want to build your site yourself or if you want assistance. If you choose to tackle the task yourself, you will need to either find a place that offers templates so you don’t have to learn HTML or start learning HTML and invest in a web page designing software. If you want assistance, you will need to decide who you would like to assist you. There is a great economical web site creation business, Ginasis.com, that would love you to be their next client!!!
This is how to START…there is much more than this!
What are the components of a web site? The MAIN components of a web site, in our opinion are 1) the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web address, 2) HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) formatting tags which are stored in a text file, which is stored on a web server that can be accessed by other computers connected to the server via the Internet, and 3) site host, which is the company that has the server where your HTML will be stored so it can be accessed.
What is the most economical way to incorporate e-commerce in to my site? Secured form to e-mail order forms where the customer inputs the information manually.
What is a domain name? Your domain name is the address that immediately follows the www in a web site address. For example, our web address is www.ginasis.com; ginasis is our domain name.
How do I get a domain name of my own? Go to Network Solutions and register a domain yourself, www.networksolutions.com has a great tool for you to check to see if the domain name you want has already been registered.
How do I market my site? Aside from the obvious of making sure your domain is printed on all of your company literature (brochures, letterhead, business cards, etc.), you must submit your site to search engines.
How do search engines find you? There are LOTS of ways to work with search engines, and each engine is a bit different than the other. One way is to try to put your “key” words into your page title, which is in the code the computer reads to upload your page (HTML). You can also put what are called META tags in your HTML for the search engines, although some engines do not use META tags to index sites. Additionally, just making sure your “key” words are in the text of your index page helps too. There are literally TONS of ways to work with search engines, these are just a few pointers.
I have done a search for my company, and it didn’t come up, but similar companies did. Why? Again, there are LOTS of ways to work with search engines, and each engine is a bit different than the other. One thing that does seem to be common, however is the WAY your search is performed. For example, if you were to simply put Ginasis Web Site Creation, LLC in your search box and click GO, your results would include ALL sites indexed with the words Ginasis, Web, Site and Creation. If, however you put quotes around “Ginasis Web Site Creation, LLC”, you are more likely to receive results with only that complete phrase. You can also perform an advanced search to narrow things down.
As a web developer, I ask you to keep in mind that MOST people will not be searching for your company by name, but rather by what you are offering. For example, to really test my site among search engines, I would search key words like “web development”, “web design”, etc.
How do you make a secure site to accept credit cards? This gets a bit confusing, but here is our best shot. The first thing you need, which you may already have, is a merchant agreement to accept credit cards. From there, you need to find a cart server, which is basically a server that is “open” 24-7 to take orders for you on a secure server. Ginasis offers two different shopping cart solutions. Which one is right for your company depends on your needs. Basically, cart servers take the order and forward the information to you. You run the credit card information for your payment and process the order. There is also the “real time” cart server that processes the credit card information for you and electronically transfers the money to your company account.
What does the site statistics information mean? Different site statistics programs provide different information. What is confusing is that some “stats lingo” in one program can be the same as the lingo in another program, yet the information is totally different. The great thing about the stats provided with the hosting Ginasis provides is that there is easy to access HELP menus that will define the terms for you!