Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Web Site Design Before we get too far into supporting our e-commerce site, we really should design a good Web site. Even if you are not ready to go on-line yet, you should spend some time thinking about and designing your Web pages ready for the big event. If you plan to evolve your site, starting with a few products and expanding as you have the time and demand, you need to get organized properly at the get-go, instead of revamping your entire Web presentation with each iteration. One general rule to remember: you may think you have a very simple Web site to lay out and code, but you will find it takes more time than you expect. The reason is simple: unless you design a lot of Web pages, it takes a while to get everything looking and flowing properly. You could hand off the design of the Web page to someone else, of course. There are lots of Web page designers in the market, many charging reasonable rates assuming you know what you want. What's reasonable? Many designers charge by the day, while others quote on the entire site. For a fairly simple site, plan on two or three thousand dollars. If you decide to let someone else do your Web site, you should do preplanning first to save more money: rough out how you want your sites to look, provide the designer with all the details of the pages, your products and services, and how to link them all together. Get the nitty-gritty dealt with before you call the designer: if he or she is waiting for you to provide answers to these questions, the clock is ticking and you are paying for time. Do you need to hire someone to design your Web pages? Most likely not. If you have a few free hours spread over a couple of weeks you can develop your own Web site, have fun in the process, and learn a lot. Even better, by designing your own site you can maintain it yourself, making changes as you need to, eliminating the need to call your Web design guru for simple changes. You don't need to know programming, don't have to learn HTML, and don't need any special skills. Most of today's Web design packages are drag-and-drop applications that can make designing Web sites almost as simple as writing a letter. The most popular Web site designer is Microsoft's FrontPage, now in its FrontPage 2000 incarnation. FrontPage is remarkably good at helping you lay out new sites and add features you want, but its primary limitation is lack of support for product catalogs, ordering subsystems, and most e-commerce functions. You could use FrontPage to lay out your site and then switch over to a database Web application, but there are better alternatives which focus directly on e-commerce Web site building. A number of Web site design packages are tailored directly at product and service lists, including the ability to produce an on-line catalogue quickly and easily as well as link into shopping basket software and credit card authorization services. Two recent packages that are designed for small to medium sized sites are Online Merchant from Stumpworld Systems and Web Business Builder from IMSI (both selling for about $100 US at retail). These packages both allow drag-and-drop Web page design as well as offering specialized wizards for the e-commerce side of things. These two packages are among the more recent releases I've seen, but when it comes to e-commerce site design I return to an old favorite: ecBuilder from Multiactive Software (I bought my copy for about $80 Canadian at one of the office megastores). The ecBuilder package isn't that impressive: no fancy blurbs on the cover, no fold-out with attractive graphics. Just a plain box with a CD-ROM and a thin manual inside. The marketing copy sounds attractive: "Get your business online in under an hour". Well, you could, if you don't need anything too difficult or clever. ecBuilder is a very easy package to work with and if you spend a little time playing around with designs, you'll end up with a nice site layout and your list of products or services on-line in a day or two. The only really problem with ecBuilder and all such site software packages is that all the sites look the same, basically. There's nothing wrong with that, just that it tends to inhibit creativeness. Still, you want creative, hire an art director. Finally, there are some software packages designed for Web site e-commerce that include ISP hosting and secure transactions as part of the package. One of the more attractive was available in the US from IBM, and it may be available here in the frozen north now. It's worth digging around to find the best software for your task. You'll be using it often to modify your pages and save yourself lots of money over that Web design company you thought of trying. We'll return to the subject of site design again. For now, grab some software and start coming up with your site's home page. |
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