Concepts for initial development of your website

1. Consider your main target audience. Question why you should reach them, and how you will reach them.
2. Consider your purposes for your site. Such might include; to sell something, to inform people, to network with peers, to gather feedback, or to support customers.
3. Devise content for the site which you feel will be effective in 1) addressing your audience and 2) achieving your purpose.

Structural suggestions for websites

1. Make your contact information easy to find and available from many places.
2. Place email links so people can email you from many places. You never know what subject matter will prompt a response.
3. Don't place too much detail information at any one location. Make heavily informational sites of a logical hierarchical structure so that those wanting more detail will have to dig deeper.
4. Don't place too many links on the same page to the same information.
5. Particularly if you are selling or advertising a product, provide information or resources of interest to your audience. Allow the browser to take something free away from the site, as well as, the exposure to your product.

Preparing text for your site

1. A general 1-page outline of information to cover on the site is a time-saver in organizing your thoughts.
2. Select and compose the text yourself. Having a web author compose content or select content is more costly.
3. Proofread and spell check your text before submitting to a web author. Most authors are not responsible for proofreading and it is much more efficient to correct problems before they are incorporated into the site.
4. Save files in text-only file format. Generally, unformatted style is best, unless you desire specific formats of your web design.
5. Transfer text (and graphics) files to your web author in a number of ways. 1) Attach text file to an email message. 2) Copy and paste your text file directly into a mail message and send (Not available for graphics). 3) File on a CD

Preparing graphics for your site

1. Give some consideration to the style of your website, possible colors, fonts, and other graphical treatments. If you have preferences, communicate them to your author/designer. If you are leaving those considerations to your author/designer, you will have less recourse concerning the outcome.
2. Picture prints are most common format for pictures placed on the web. Since graphics are low resolution, most regular photo prints will yield good results. It is not necessary to hire a professional photographer (unless expertise and artistic skills are needed to produce specific photos)
3. Using photos from other sources, make sure to respect copyright laws. It is your responsibility to obtain rights to use, pay usage fees, and defend yourself in any claims or disputes concerning publishing.
4. For logos and illustrations, clean, larger renditions are most desirable. Avoid images printed on textured stock.
5. When scanning images for web use, scan your images in a low resolution (72 DPI) at as large of scale (100%-500%) to produce an image with which your computer can comfortably work with. Generally, we work with images from 1 - 2 meg each on the original scan.
6. Save images in one of the following formats. Photoshop, tiff, or Gif. Jpeg format is also a good choice if the file is in final format but not as desirable if the file will need editing.
7. Compress an image with a generally accepted method. Our recommendation is Zip IT.