These days everybody has a website, whether it is for advertising your business, club or service, selling online or communicating with friends and family, if you don’t have one you are missing out, bigtime! This guide will help you make an informed decision on what is involved with setting a website up.

Ok, I want a website to advertise my business or sell products on-line, where do I start?

You need to put some spare time aside and think about the following:

Why do I want a web presence? Websites take time and money, do you really need a website or could you write your sheepshearing news in a blog or upload your photographs of the baby goat to facebook? Of course if you have a business you will be missing out of millions of potential sales if you do not have the right website.

What do I want to advertise/tell people about? Think about the things that people will be interested in or do not know about your company. The website is a 24 hour a day selling tool, so if you find yourself telling customers the same thing regularly why not put it on your website? Also the more relevant information about your business or services the better as it builds up trust with a potential customer.

Who is my target audience? A very important consideration, you need to project the image that suits your market and customers eg jokey wording and humour may be appropriate for a community group site but not for professional business services

What do my customers want? An often overlooked but important consideration, your site needs to do the selling, if the customers expect certain information and it is not there they will go somewhere else.

How much time have I got to set it up and maintain it? Do you take a course in HTML and design and have a go yourself, or do you hire a designer? The good news here is that there are loads of internet sites to teach you or excellent deals on getting websites designed check out the ebay local services classified ads for starters.

What information will I need? Regardless of who does your website you will need to spend some time thinking about your content. You need to consider the following:

• Logo’s and Branding – Will you need to create new logo or transfer something from my printed artwork. You need to project the right brand for your business or service, all of your customer contact must reinforce the brand.
  
• Text Copywriting – The best person to write about your business or service is you, 250-300 words is the best amount of text on a page to keep a visitor interested. Ideally you will need to write this amount of information for each page and each product or service, setting this up with the right amount of keywords or keyphrases will also optimise your page for search engines. There are also professional copywriting services available which will create this wording for you.
• Photographs – A good website will contain a selection of well-photographed images, the web is a visual medium and visitors will soon click away if they are bored. You will need to consider what you have available and if you need to start snapping. Web designers these days consider photography as part of the job.
• Features and Style – What do you want your site to look like and what does it need to do? The best way to research is to look at your competitors and any other sites and ‘borrow’ ideas, a good designer will be able to advise on colour schemes and the cost of special features.
• Technical considerations – The web is getting easier to use but there is no denying there is a level of technical expertise required to get a site up and running, consider will your time be better spent creating the right wording or learning about HTML, CSS, Flash and Web Servers?

Now you've spent time creating a good brief it will save you time and money getting the product you want. Now who creates the site, as they say ‘the choice is yours’!