More than 19 million people now have Internet access, and they have the demographic make up that makes marketers drool. According to recent surveys, 56% of the Internet audience falls into the prime 25-44 age group. Once a bastion of male surfers, the ratio of female Internauts has risen to 32%. Currently, 70% of Internet users have earned college degrees, and 61% make more than $50,000 a year.

In addition, a recent study by Odyssey found that almost 7 million households bought something on the Net in the last six months of 1997 vs. 3.2 million for the last six months of 1996. Fifty-five percent of Net-equipped households in the survey got information about a product or service online before making a traditional retail purchase, and 41 percent said they have made a buying decision in the last six months because of something theylearned online.

Now that you are ready to dive into the Web, we thought we'd do our best to start you off on the right foot. Here are some tips on how to build and maintain a great Web site. Included in this primer are:

1. PICKING A SITE STRATEGY
2. DESIGNING YOUR SITE
3. SETTING UP YOUR SITE
4. MAINTAINING THE SITE
5. MARKETING YOUR SITE

1. PICKING A SITE STRATEGY

Before you can build a great Web site, you need to decide exactly what you want it to do. Is your site being created to:

• Disseminate information?
• Improve customer service?
• Provide demonstration software distribution?
• Be your retail storefront?
• Polish or define your corporate image?

Picking those goals, and setting their relative priorities, is your first step. Here are some ways you can use the Web to make life easier for you and your customers:

Digital Information Library
Overwhelmed trying to get information into the right hands in an efficient manner? On-line digital libraries and product catalogues can cut down on customer call traffic, internal fact-finding time, and the waste of having to constantly change update-intensive materials. If your site is large, include a site index or an on-site search engine to speed up navigation through your site and minimize customer frustration.

24-Hour Employees
Think of your Web site as an automated operator. This "employee" can reduce the load on customer service representatives by taking over repetitive tasks such as answering your most frequently asked questions, gathering information, and automatically sending out responses. Your Web site also works around the clock, so people from other time zones and countries will be able to work around their schedules, not yours.

Instant Research
Use the Web to capture key research nuggets about your market - and automatically compile a running tally of the results. Whether your customers are raving or complaining, you'll have it verbatim. Instantly. Within weeks, a nagging gray area could become crystal clear, without costing you a lot of time and resources. You can track traffic through your site, too, and find out what your visitors are really interested in.

The Cyber-Store
If you have a mail order business or a retail business and you want to expand your sales without having to pay for printing extra catalogues and the postage involved, then you can use your Web site as your cyber-storefront. All of Golden Pear's Hosting plans allow for you to take orders on-line through a secure connection between your customer's Web browser and your Web site. This "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL) connection gets your customer's order to you without the risk of fraud. Using tested shopping cart technologies, you can set up an easy-to-use Internet store and even get real-time credit card authorization.

2. DESIGNING YOUR SITE

Good design will simplify complicated concepts. This especially applies to the Web. When designing a site, think in three levels - function (content), presentation (graphics), and navigation (flow).

First, keep in mind that some of the visitors to your site may have a faster connection than others. Those visitors that have a corporate connection via a T-1 will be able to view your site faster than those users with a 28.8 modem. Your site should accommodate all users by limiting your file/page sizes so they can be viewed quickly by users with slower modems.

Second, designate one person to be responsible for overseeing the site's content, and give them the power to edit incoming content so that it's optimized for the electronic medium. Your site will be more coherent and your message will be stronger.

Third, ask yourself how critical the graphic presentation is. Depending upon your business, it may not make a difference. But if you're in an image industry, home page aesthetics are a critical factor in site design.

Next, create a site plan that lays out the entire site (a blueprint). Then, pretend you're coming to the site for the first time. Is navigating the site intuitive? Can you easily find your way through to information at the lower levels? Once you site plan is tried and tested, you're ready to start developing content.

Here are five tips to help you create a site Web surfers will rave about.

1. Be informative and interactive
   People come to Web sites for information, not a marketing pitch. Make sure your content reflects that. Also, make your site engaging by providing internal hyperlinks and navigational paths to help people get around it. This is the first truly interactive medium; take advantage of it.
2. Maintain context
   Most printed material is linear - it goes from point A to point B. If we skip around in a brochure, it's easy to look around and get back on track. Most Web content is set up as a hierarchy, so it's easy to get lost while clicking through the levels. Provide toolbars, frames, etc. to give users a way to keep their bearings. In other words, keep some of "linear."
3. Electrify your content
   Don't expect your printed information to work verbatim on the electronic medium because it's usually too linear. Repackage it into bite-size chunks and let visitors use hyperlinks to "drill down" to the specific data they want. Edit your content, too. Just because it is possible to put all 75,000 products and their specifications on the Web doesn't mean you should.
4. Keep images lean
   Use "flat" colors rather than subtle gradations whenever possible. That means using simple illustrative techniques rather than full-color photorealism. Flat colors will look good on screen even when you reduce the file size to the preferred 16 or 32 colors. Gradations require more colors - and bandwidth - to display well.
5. Shrink your file size
   If your target market uses a relatively slow connection, try to keep page sizes under 15K - particularly on pages that users will visit often while navigating your site. That means being thrifty with images rather than burdening pages with a 10" scroll down of graphics. To determine how fast it will take users to download your Web pages go to the Web Site Garage.

The design of your site will originate from two sources. One will be within your organization, and the other from outside of it. Choosing a designer is similar to picking a car mechanic. Check out their qualifications, view some of their previous work, try to agree on the price before any work starts, and try to speak to any of their past clients. A designer should be easy to work with, friendly, professional, and should understand your needs. Information on Golden Pear's design team may be found at http://www.gpwm.com/index2.shtml.

3. SETTING UP YOUR SITE

How do you choose a Web hosting provider? Here are six factors to consider:

1. Connectivity
   What is their connection to the Internet backbone? As ISPs grow, this is becoming more and more of an issue. If their "pipe" is filled with incoming traffic to other servers they are hosting, your potential visitors will be greeted with "Sorry. Server not accepting....at this time." Make sure your ISP has enough bandwidth to handle peak traffic flow without overloading. Golden Pear connects to the Internet via multiple redundant connections that provide both a large "pipe" for all of our customers and redundancy so that there is never a traffic jam getting to your site.
2. Reliability
   There are over 7,500 Web hosting companies in existence today. You will want to make sure that the one you choose has a proven track record so that your site reflects well on you. Ask how long they have been in business. Make sure that they have redundant systems for both connectivity and power. Ask about data back ups and their server up-time.
3. Customer Service
   This is perhaps the toughest factor to judge up front - but the easiest one to measure down the road. If your provider is too busy to answer your questions or solve your problems in a timely manner, find another on-line home for your business.
4. Hardware
   What type of Web server hardware do they have? What servers do they use? Are they UNIX or NT boxes? Your site may have specific applications that can only be run on one type of Web server. Golden Pear uses Linux Web servers running Apache server software. This combination is the most widely used on the internet today and allows the maximum in power and flexibility for our Web hosting customers.
5. Software
   What about software? Make sure your virtual host has all the "bells and whistles" you need. Do they support all the applications that you want to use with your site? Applications to look for are: Secure Socket Layer (SSL), RealAudio, Web Site Statistics, and Password Protection. Golden Pear provides options for all of these features, and more.
6. Ease of use
   How easy is it to make changes to your site? Does it require someone on your end to have a strong technical background? Does the ISP require updates to be posted by their own staff - at their convenience and not yours?

4. MAINTAINING YOUR SITE
Once your site is up and running, the toughest task is to keep the content fresh. Without constant attention, Web sites turn into cobweb sites. In fact, the majority of corporate sites are considered by Internet experts to be "dead." That is, they haven't been updated for a long time.

Constant site updating can be tougher than it looks. (And more time consuming.) Information that's fresh and in demand isn't easy to come by. Explore content that's self-generating. One company provides a real-time snapshot of a key freeway junction (updated automatically every 60 seconds) so users can gauge their evening commute. Others let users' daily postings to a moderated discussion group provide fresh information.

Here are a few ways you can keep your site from falling into the Stale Site Syndrome:

• Don't needlessly date your site. Don't put in information that instantly dates your site - event dates, "last updated" references, etc. - unless you are going to change your site on an almost daily basis.
• Update regularly. Not to be interpreted as updating your site for the sake of updating, always be sure that your site has timely information. Most sites accomplish this by publishing a monthly newsletter or tip on their site.
• Track your visitors. Use statistical software to track site traffic and find where people are going within your site. Use the information to adjust the content or revise your site design. Golden Pear provides statistical reports to help you track your site's visitors.

5. MARKETING YOUR SITE

Once your site is running smoothly, make sure the world knows about it. Traditional marketing will involve any current methods you use to advertise your business. Put your URL on everything you do: ads, brochures, letterhead, business cards, and other materials. Where possible, offer an incentive in your advertising to check out your site - a free download, contest, or some other interactive lure.

On-line marketing includes a wide variety of options. Search engines will pick up some Web pages more quickly that others. Know how to design your home page so this is among the first links returned by key words. Actively search out reciprocal hyperlinks to draw traffic from other related sites. Make sure you're registered with industry indexes.

Fine-tune your on-line advertising. Some search engines can deliver extremely focused special interest groups. Others can display your ad banner only to the domain names of Fortune 500 companies, or to specific platforms. Use these avenues to reduce waste if you have a specific market. Set up a monthly e-mail "publication" which will contain a summary of the latest news and information pertaining to your company and Web site.

If you need more assistance in developing your Web site strategy, then you can call on us!

CONTACT US

INFO@GPWM.COM

References---- Odyssey marketing report; see CNET's web site