In deciding how to formulate and determine the content for your website you should think about what your website must include to be credible and have the necessary information to prevent the possibilty of lawsuits and other potential problems. But also what you need to keep people on your website and to keep them coming back for more and more visits. In addition, when you write the content for many of these pages, remember, you are also writing for the search engines.
So with all that in mind, let's get started. Lets take the header pages in order. Header pages are those pages that are either at the top of your home page or on either the left or hand side of the page.
HOME PAGE
This is the most important page on your website, because this is where people decide whether or not your website appears to be what they want or are looking for and if they are going to stay on your website or move on.
The home page should tell people what your website is all about and you need to differentiate yourself from every other website that is doing the same thing you are.
ABOUT US PAGE
This page is where you state who you are, what your credentials are and why we should care and belive what you say. Do not be boastful or condecesending. state facts, some of your successes and what you do and what your website. Give the reader some of your bio. But do not over do it.
In the process of deciding what to put on this page, as well as all of your others, look around and see what your competitors have on each of their pages. But do not confine yourself to just your competitors, look at the websites you like to visit and think about what appeals to you about those sites.
NEWSLETTER PAGE
This is the page where you can grab your visitor's attention and keep them coming back for more as well as build up your credibilty in their eyes by demonstrating your expertise and arousing their curiosity. You can also use this page get people to sign up to recieve your newsletter by e-mail. In addition, you should keep an archive of prior newsletters, perhaps just for your members to access.
MEMBER'S SECTION AND JOIN OUR MEMBERS SECTION
This is where you start to seperate the "tire kickers" from the people that are seriously interested in your website(and/or your services, if applicable). It is important that you make these people feel that they are getting something special by being a member and then make sure you deliver. Do not make empty promises.
By giving your members real value, and letting them try your suggestions and recommendations, it gives them the chance to see if you are the real deal or not.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS
Here it is very, very important that you know exactly what you are talking about. The products you recommend should be products that you found useful and had a positive experience with. If you have not used the product yourself, do not recommend it unless someone you know and trust very well has told you all about it.
I want to stress that it is very important to use the products you recommend personally. This way you can honestly tell your members what works, why it works and how to best use it for their benefit and if possible, provide screen shots of the product.
Personal useage of the recommended product also enables you to determine what the learning curve will be for new users. For example, you would not want to recommend Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0 to someone who has never built a website and/or taken pictures and edited them. All of these programs have a very steep learning curve. It is also a good idea to give your members some idea of what the price will be, so they can determine if it is within their budget and if the learning curve is justified for them based on what the program does and what they need it for.
It would be very unfair for you to recommend Adobe CS 4.o without telling them that the price range can be anywhere from $1800.00 to $2500.00 depending where you look. Yes this is extremely powerful software, and it could be almost everything you need to design and build a website and make it powerful and fancy, but you could spend a year easily learning how to use it, and just know the bare essentials.
When you recommend a product, you are in effect endorsing it and your credibilty with your members is at stake. But there is a way to tell your members about programs without putting your credibilty on the line, and you need to show them that you are aware of of programs that are generally considered to be the industry leaders.
So what would be an acceptable way to tell your members about Adobe CS 4.0? Here is how I would do it.
The leading program collection for website developement and picture editing is Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0. These programs are not for the faint of heart of faint of wallet. You should also know that CS 4.o has a steep learning curve for each of it's components, and you should be prepared to spend a substantial amount of time learning these programs and you might need to invest in training programs to learn how to use it. The price range is from about $1800.00 to $2500.00.
I have not personally used this new version of Creative Suite Master Edition, but I have used CS 3.o , which is one of the earlier versions. It does not have an intuitive user interface. I cannot recommend this to beginers. If you need to build a website quickly or edit photos, this is not the program suite to start with, but rather something to work up to.
For a detailed description of CS 4.0 , please refer their website to adobe.com.
To be continued...
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