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Tips for craftsmen on creating a websiteMy father is a Silversmith and in March this year I rashly agreed to develop a website for him. He wanted to hand make silver spoons and sell them directly to customers using the internet to achieve country wide exposure. We wanted a series of pages showing thumbnails of the spoons. The customer would browse through and click on a thumbnail to jump to a larger image and a full description. The problem was how to update and maintain a site containing over 300 spoons and how to enable the customers to put anything of interest to one side in a shopping basket and then take it all to a virtual till. We worked out that the only way to manage the spoons was via a database and the use of dynamic web pages. This meant that rather than producing 300 separate pages, one for each spoon, I just needed to produce one dynamic page that would grab the spoons details when a customer clicked on the thumbnail. To do this I created Active Server Pages with VB Script using Macromedia Dreamweaver. As I planned I came up with some complications. In particular how to get the best possible quality image of each spoon, without making a customer wait 10 minutes for the picture to download. I found a compromise by using gifs for the thumbnails and jpegs for the larger images. I am not happy with the quality of the thumbnails, but until more people have broadband I will have to accept lower quality over long download times. By June the site was taking shape and I needed to get it listed on the search engines. My first mistake was to use a program supplied by our web hosting company that boasted that it could get our site on 100 search engines in one click. I clicked and waited for six weeks nothing happened. In the end I found a book called Search Engine Optimization for Dummies. Two weeks later I managed to get the site listed on Google. The site has been live for five months and we are doing well. If you would like a list of resources I have found on web design, and search engine optimisation please send me an email mailto:tamzin@handmadesilverspoons.co.uk. If you would like to visit our site go to http://www.handmadesilverspoons.co.uk. Here are my top ten tips for building a website. I hope you find them useful. 1. Work out what, when, how, who and why before you approach any web design companies. 2. Think about whether you really need a site. If it will be one page with your address and a few images it might not be worth it. Try listing your business in online craft directories and local directories instead. 3. Do it yourself. HTML is easy and if you dont want to learn it there are software programs that write the HTML for you. I like Dreamweaver, but cheaper options are also available. Try Cute HTML or you have Windows you could simply use Notepad. 4. Dont be conned into having animation, rollovers, or Flash movies on your site. Many web users find them irritating. Are they for your customer or an opportunity for the web designer to do something cool? 5. Keep it simple. Stick to a consistent straightforward design. 6. Ask yourself how will this help my customer? It maybe that the online form you think is essential marketing information will a drive people away. The same goes for pop ups, and adverts. 7. Dont forget about the search engines. Some websites are designed in such a way that no search engine is ever likely to find them. 8. Security of your customers credit card details is vitally important. I used WorldPay to avoid most of the pitfalls. 9. Make an advertising plan. Put your site on local and craft directories, get a listing on yahoo and make sure your site appears in google. Ask similar sites for reciprocal links. Put your web address on all your packaging, business cards, and adverts. 10. Be patient. It will take a while to get custom to your site. |
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