Now it's time to begin documenting information about your company.

Documentation

Now that you have gathered all your available information, it's time to begin to build your web site.  We will determine the content of the web site by documenting and organizing the information outline.  As you write, think carefully about the sort of information your visitors will find useful or interesting.  This step is the most time consuming and the most important part of the process.

It's always helpful to attract visitors back often (and have them refer others to your site) if you have value-added information for them.  For instance, you could provide them with tutorials, frequently asked questions, how-to guides, reviews and editorials about your industry, newsletters, etc. 

Use this outline as a guide to help you prepare the documentation needed for your web site.  It's not all inclusive, but it will give you a great start to your site.  It's important to capture as much information as possible using this outline. 

Building Your Web Site

1. General information
1. Company Name
2. Address
3. Phone Number(s)
4. Fax Number
5. E-Mail address
6. Contact names for more information (sales, support, info, etc.)
7. What domain name do you want (e.g. www.mycompany.com).
8. What general color scheme do you want to use for your company web site? Think about the general colors you use in your marketing brochures or in your logo. We have many themes available that we can apply to your entire web site and modify if necessary.
2. Business Description
1. Introduction – give a high level overview of your business. This will be a few paragraphs for your home page. This is your hook for your client. You want to briefly describe what you do and why you are the best at doing it. You want to catch their attention enough so that they will want to browse other parts of your site. Don’t be modest.
2. About your company – This will be it’s own page to talk about your company in more detail. Here’s where you can describe the specifics about your company in any level of detail, including experience in the business, number of years in service, why your company is qualified to serve the customer, special awards, etc.
3. Products and Services
1. Products and Services overview – here’s where you get into the meat of your web site. You can use this section to discuss at a high level summary, all the products and services you offer. If you have many products and services, you could list them with a one or two sentences description, which we will eventually tie to the product or service detail pages. This is you introduction page to your products and services. Think of your web site as a virtual electronic brochure whose paper has no boundaries.
2. Product X – here is where you describe each product you have. You should describe the product in detail and include any graphics you may want listed with the product. You could also include links to vendor web sites if you wanted them to get more detailed info. You should include a separate write-up for each product. If you want to include costs, you can do it here or think about a separate price list page.
3. Service X – here is where you describe each service you provide. You should describe the service in detail and include any graphics you may want listed with the service. You should include a separate write-up for each service. If you want to include costs, you can do it here or think about a separate price list page.
4. Price List – this is the summary price list for all your products. You can list separately and / or with each product or service.
4. Forms
1. Request for Information Forms – Forms are a great way to have your customers request information. They can click on check boxes, pull down drop down lists, fill in text and click a button to submit information. You should document what information you want your customer to request and what information you wanted gathered about your customer. Document all the fields you would like listed on this form.
2. Order forms – similar to request for info forms, you can provide a mechanism for your customers to order products. If you want order forms, you should determine what you want them to order, how they will order it, will they use credit cards, etc.
5. Images
1. Gather any images (photographs, logos, artwork, etc.) that will help to enhance the message you are giving. Image quality should be as high as possible. Try to keep your images as small as possible. For example, a 5" x 7" photograph is not common for the web, since they will be slow to load and will turn off your potential client.
6. Other pertinent information
1. Give some real thought as to other types of information your could provide for your customer, such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Newsletters, Tidbits, Tricks & Tips, Editorials about your products and services, etc. The more you show you show your potential client that your web site is not just for you, but for them also, the more likely they will want to visit more often and want to peruse all your products and services.

Now it's time to enter the final preparation stage ... organizing your web site.

Organization

Okay, let's review what we've done. In the preparation step, we determined our objectives for putting our web site together and gathered all materials, both hardcopy and softcopy, that we had for our business. Then, in the documentation step, we gathered all the information we wanted to present on our web site into a logical outline format.

Now, it's time to organize our information into a structure so your visitors can find their way around and so additional features can be added in the future. We need to build an expandable and adaptable structure. BISINET will handle those concerns for you. 

When we design your site, the site structure should present a logical hierarchy of information. Your home page should provide the broadest, high level information which will link to lower level pages, where the greatest level of detail can be found.  Give some thought to how you want your web site presented.  Think about creating an indented outline  showing how you want your web site to display.  For example:

1. About Us

2. Products

   • Product A

   • Product B

   • Product C

3. Services

   • Service A

   • Service B

   • Service C

4. Support

5. Frequently Asked Questions

6. Contact Us

7. Search Our Site

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