Developing Your Website: Tools for Women Part 1 and 2

I recently read Susan Gunelius’s post on Women on Business.com about how women earn approximately 25% less than men in the same jobs with similar qualifications and how this gender gap is not expected to close until 2057 (!)

The majority of my clients for my web design/development business are women, and I’ve found that many women are utilizing entrepreneurship, home-based businesses, internet-based businesses, and part-time consulting or part-time jobs to supplement their income. I believe that it is definitely possible for you to use a website to generate additional sales (even if you have nothing currently ready to sell!), so if you want some step-by-step pointers, please bookmark the following series on how to develop your website on a minimal budget.

As a side note, in my humble opinion, it is vitally important that you do everything in your power to convert your thoughts, ideas, creativity and unique knowledge into tangible products (like widgets, rents, intellectual property, royalties, etc.). Create something, like a product or easy-to-implement service, that you are able to sell over and over again. This way you’re not selling your precious time for an hourly wage (which, if you’re a woman, is probably 75 cents to every male co-worker’s dollar!). You’re also building your effectiveness, increasing your ability to reach more people, and growing some revenue streams.

Let’s move away from wage slavery, commuting, drudgery, and a lack of challenge. Instead, let’s create abundant opportunities to help others through employment or by adding value to their lives. Let’s explore our gifts and talents, and let’s allocate our time to be with family and friends, pursue hobbies or continued education, build our communities, and engage in activities we love. The quicker we use our creative minds to envision solutions, the easier it will be for us to take control over our time.

This resource on Developing Your Website: Tools for Women will go through the following ideas in a series of posts over the next few days.
1) Introduction
2) Parts of a Website (domain names, hosting, mailing lists)
3) Content Management
4) Free and Open Source solutions
5) Design and user interface
6) Payment processing
7) Networking (online and offline)
8) Generating revenue online: Google Adsense, affiliate programs, members-only content and other ways to make money
9) Reviewing your Data by using Reporting
10) Updating your site with Timely Content

Part 1: Get Started with your Website: Stepping towards your Success

To keep in mind:

Lack of a budget is not an obstacle.
Take active steps to developing a web presence.
Use tools and knowledge at your fingertips.
Share your unique skills and talents: they make your business shine.
Connect with your customers and build your community of clients online.

Introduction and the Strategic Planning Process

Your business deserves and demands a website. Beyond the difficulties of trying to fax or scan printed matter, showing materials to someone in person, or having to physically drop off brochures, business cards, or product samples, you want to retain a sense of professionalism, tidiness, and authenticity by having a well-developed website. Your website will work for you 24/7 and will help your ideal clients find you easier, so focus on making your website a clear representation of your business.

Important Note:
You as the owner of the business must understand what you need from your business, how you intend to manage your business, and what you want the business to do for you.

Additionally, you as the owner of the website must understand what you need from your website, how you intend to manage your website, and what you want the website to do for you! This is as easy as setting goals for yourself like a) you want to add new content to your website very easily, b) you want to manage your content without having to learn new software, or c) you want the website to generate X amount of money for you every month.

Be strategic about your goals for your business and your website. I’ve heard and read many stories of people who start out with a full-time job and a MySpace page or a blog on the side to start selling their products — as they sell more and gain more customers and friends, they move to half-time and eventually focus on their business fulltime.

Questions for you to Answer:
What is working for you now?

What needs to change?

Which priorities do you need to put online?

How do you anticipate maintaining/upgrading content on your website?

Part 2: Parts of a Website

What is your website?
Your website is an extension of your business, which is also an extension of your personality, values, and ideas. If you are planning on generating more opportunities for yourself, your website is a natural extension of yourself. Your site provides you a “home” on the web and serves as your stake on the World Wide Web.

There are four main parts to a website:
1) domain name (www.yourname.com)
2) hosting (where the files live)
3) the actual files (text files, graphics, any database content)
4) the maintenance, or how you will update the website content

Domain Name

A domain name will cost you about $10 per year. I use GoDaddy.com or 10KHosting.com (our affiliate) to register domain names.

If you’re not sure what kind of domain name to reserve, keep it simple, keep it easy to spell, and retain the .COM, .ORG, and .NET version of the domain.

You may check a new browser (like Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer) and type in a domain name to see if it’s available.

Or, do a Google search on the domain. If your domain is already owned by someone, it might be available for sale: you may check the public records on GoDaddy.com to see the owner and their contact information.

A good domain to have is your name: www.firstnamelastname.com

I also recommend you retain the .org and .net versions of your domain name, e.g. firstnamelastname.org and firstnamelastname.net.

It is a good idea to keep any common misspellings of your name, too. These may all be forwarded to one hosting account.

Hosting Information

Choose Economy Linux Hosting if you’re using Godaddy products. It runs about $50/year and has everything you need. You do not need any “add-ons.”

Hosting usually comes with e-mail boxes and e-mail forwards, typically enough for business usage. This particular hosting package also has a valuable “hosting connection” functionality that installs common software packages onto your hosting automatically.

Your hosting should have php/mySQL enabled so you may use many of the available open-source software applications.

When you log in, you’ll receive information on FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and your control panel information: make a note of these usernames, passwords, and pins or call-in numbers, as you’ll need them to log back into your account.

Mailing Lists

There are a number of solutions to solve your announcement-only or members-only mailing list, including Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, or paid services like Constant Contact or iContact.com.

Your main issue is to make sure that participants may opt-in (meaning they must confirm that they want e-mail from you) and they may opt-out (meaning they may remove their e-mail from your mailing list at any time).

When you have permission to mail to someone, and you always give them an option to unsubscribe at the bottom of every e-mail, you establish trust, you build a base of loyal fans, and you prove that you are not a “spammer.”

Your Web Files

The physical files on your site are typically files that end in .HTML or .PHP or .ASP. These files are the text files that display your information. You’ll also find .JPG and .GIF files (photos and graphics). There are usually style files to control how the site displays.

Your web files may be developed on a word processor, using an HTML editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, or created through a Content Management System (CMS) like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. If you’re using a CMS, your files are typically database files (with content stored in a database), and then a front end with all the design for the page conveniently stored. Different “themes” may be used to customize the look-and-feel of your site without changing the content.

What does a Web Designer Do? What does a Web Developer Do?

A web designer helps lay out your information within a web browser so it’s pleasing, navigable, and easy-to-understand. They typically help you make the most of font, color, typography, and selection of images. They might help you with a topbar for your website.

The web developer integrates the web design and your content into a cohesive whole. The developer is usually a programmer who will help make all the pieces of your website fit together such as the code, the content, any forms, keywords and meta-tags, and images. They are usually the ones who make any changes to functionality within your site and are familiar with HTML markup, PHP, mySQL and databases.

Sometimes the web designer and web developer are the same person, although these are very different functions, so it’s infrequent to find someone equally skilled in both aspects.

Who else may be involved in your process?

A graphic designer may create your original graphic or hard brochure materials. They may or may not be skilled with web design (just like a web designer may or may not be good with packaging, brochures, stationery, or logos).

A marketing, branding, or communications expert helps you with messaging, your keywords or your specific marketing copy, and your “style”. They’ll help you make your website text as clear and compelling as possible.

A copyeditor helps you get your website content spell-checked, proofread and ready to go.

A search engine optimization (SEO) expert will help monitor your keywords and search engine phrases and give you feedback and pointers for improvement on how your site measures up in search engine results.

A user-interface specialist helps you if your site has multiple applications or forms attached, or if you have multiple pathways where users will navigate through your page content. They will help simplify any difficult or counterintuitive procedures on your website.

A content manager or community manager will help you keep your site content fresh and your users engaged (this may be someone skilled in community-building, or it may just be someone who follows your instructions to update a calendar or add/edit page content).

An easy way to get started

Here’s a simple way to get started with your website:
1) buy a domain at GoDaddy.com or 10KHosting.com (our affiliate) and reserve it for at least a year

2) buy Economy Linux Hosting for the year. This takes 24 hours to set up.

3) Go to Hosting Connection (in your control panel) and set up the Value Application: Wordpress. This is a blogging platform that is in worldwide usage and is very easy to understand. It takes a little while to install the application. You’ll specify a database name, a master login, and a password.

4) Log into your Wordpress site (usually www.yourname.com/wp-login.php or www.yourname.com/blogfolder/wp-login.php) and set up at least three “pages”: start with an “About” page, a “Products” or “Services” page, and a “Contact” page.

5) Next, write 3 “posts” on the topic of your business. These posts may be about 3-5 paragraphs apiece and focus on your industry, what you offer, what sets you apart, some frequently-asked questions about your field, some upcoming events, or something else informative. Posts appear in the main content section of the site.

6) Sign up for a Paypal.com account if you’re going to be selling anything online. Use their “button generator” to create some “buy now” or “donate” buttons.

7) If you’re ready to start playing with themes, visit themes.wordpress.net or type in “themes wordpress” into a search engine. Themes are packages you may upload to your hosting to customize the way your site displays. Download a theme onto your hard drive. You’ll then upload this theme into the wp-content/themes section of your Wordpress installation using something like FTP or your hosting contol panel FTP program.

8) Create a plan on how your will monetize your site: you may start selling your wares online. You may add “Adsense” which is ads served by Google that are relevant to the content on your page. You might offer members-only content (such as password-protected files). You might offer sponsored reviews.

Additional ideas for content include research findings, industry news, company news, new product offerings, more about your company, any events or groups you participate in, and ways to help your customers.

9) Check your site statistics on a regular basis to see how your site is faring. You might install Google.com/analytics, which gives you a “snippet” of code to embed on your footer files: this code tracks actual visitors and how they use your website.

10) Keep on checking your data and implementing fresh content and functionality as you are able. Now may be a good time to call in a web developer to install the additional “widgets” you want to add.

Tools to Create your Files

Dreamweaver/Frontpage/Word allow you to create files in a regular windows format, and then “save as” or “upload” or “export as” HTML files to your hosting.

Notepad or Textpad: my choice, allows complete control over your code. Check any primer on basic HTML to understand the basic codes.

The Filezilla Project: an open source FTP program to upload files from your machine to your hosting. I also recommend WS_FTP and Fetch for Mac.

Sxc.hu or istockphoto.com: Sources of images and royalty-free or low-fee photos.

More Tools

Flickr: a good way to organize your photos.

Twitter: you can build up your list of “tweets” and repackage them to publish to your website or Facebook profile.

Google.com/calendar: you might want to publish your business calendar to your website.

There are hundreds of tools available, do some searching around on other sites you like and feel free to utilize what works for you.

Important Note:
Keep your domain name easy to spell and say.
Retain different versions of your URL (like garciasjewelry.com and garciajewelry.com)

Questions to Answer:
Have you done a Google or Yahoo! search on your name or the name of your business? Check your current listings.

If your domain name is already reserved by someone else, are you willing to change your company name?

Do you anticipate keeping the domain name for a while, or are you going to build up the website and business, then sell the domain name along with the other business assets?

Check in again for ongoing posts in this series.

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