Website Design Tutorials: 3

PHP - It's important that you consider the aspect of interactivity when designing your website: you will want visitors to your website to be able to communicate with you, and so encourage making a sale; you also will want existing customers and clients to come back and do repeat business. To this end, you may want to use PHP scripts and / or MySQL Databases in the design of your website. These allow communication between your site and interested visitors.This can include contact forms, an online shop, forums, guestbooks, messaging systems.. the list is endless. PHP also enables you to update your website yourself with minimum effort. You need to make sure your server (Hosting) supports PHP and MySQL before taking the time to learn or paying someone to create the scripts for you.

Website Ecommerce - Electronic commerce is predicted to be THE way to shop in the future. Without leaving your home you will be able to browse an innumerable amount of services and products and with a point and click of your mouse they will be delivered to your doorstep. But is that happening now? And does your website need to be online shopping enabled? If you're one of the big boys, the Hypermarket top guns, the High Street legends, then probably yes, or risk being left behind. But what about a small local shop? A specialist store?

It's one thing to publish your brochure online and ask for enquiries but would a greater response be had if people could actually order your wares there and then and be confident that within a few days they will be in their hands?

The answer is probably yes, you do need to create some sort of interactive shopping facility but at the same time, it is widely believed, there appears the need for some sort of benefit to be offered to the shopper -other than the obvious hassle free experience of shopping from their P. C. - by way of goods being cheaper than in the high street or the range of products on sale perhaps having an hard-to-get appeal.

If you have already have had a great idea for an Internet store it has every chance of being a success if you proceed sensibly and systematically. The first step to take when setting about your e-commerce venture is to do something that you'll have to do a lot more of before it's finished - think! Think most about what it is that you are trying to achieve. At this stage, don't worry too much about 'how' you are to achieve it. Do your homework and seek out available information resources such as the many Internet magazines now available at any newsagents. If you're not already on the 'net, then give this computer back to whoever owns it and get yourself signed up: you need to be able to see how others do it to help your own decision making.

Think about a few of these things:-

Have you decided what it is that you are going to sell? Who are you going to sell it/them to? Are there competitors already doing the same? If so, have you looked at what they're doing? If not, how can you put the greatest mileage between you and them so that you have a head start.

Is the market already established/defined or will you have to go out and create a market as well as setting up the channel? Do you have sources for your products lined up? Will you be in competition with your source, directly or indirectly? Are they aware of the situation? Will they help you or obstruct you? Might they even pay you?

If you already run a shop or some other business that you are thinking of putting on line, have you analyzed what it is that you do today and how you could do it better if you were using the Internet .A great trap that many companies seem to fall into is of using computers to automate the mess that they already operate - making mistakes faster is not an advantage in most circumstances. Try to use the e-commerce venture as an opportunity to improve what you do today. Don't mimic your terrestrial operation over the 'net if the driving circumstances are different.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes and get a feel for how he will feel about buying your product over the 'net. How will he pay for it? How will it be delivered? How will it be presented? What will make him come back again? Why will he buy from you rather than the guy down the road? In particular, think about payment methods and how these may relate to any existing business you may run. Should you start with a simple site selling your most unique products and grow it later or do you have to take the plunge in one fell swoop with your entire product line? If you bite off too large a chunk of work, just remember that you may never get there. Painting the Forth Bridge isn't the only endless task in this world. Ask any site designer trying to implement a site for a proprietor who is not sure what he wants to achieve but who is sure that it must include everything.

Make sure that you will be able to cope with the work that running a website produces. This is not necessarily just collecting, packing and shipping orders and keeping the shelves stocked. You will have to keep your site up to date with information and prices, make continuing efforts to market the site and , in all probability, keep up with "the day job" too. It is by no means impossible to juggle these various demands, you just have to be prepared for it. Just remember that, at the end of the day, your clientele will be judging you by your website and by your service: that is all they see of you. Let them down and you will not be in business for long.

Take a look at as many web shops as you can find out who developed them and what it is that drives them. If you find a site you particularly like, you may have also found a developer you would like to work with. Or maybe you will develop your own site (there are many good examples of this approach, so don't rule it out, especially for the smaller site) so you might need to arrange to learn about HTML, JavaScript and other such technicalities.

Finally, if you haven't done so already make a few transactions yourself - if you won't, how can you have faith that your potential customers will?

And, please, do keep notes! You can't remember everything. Build up your knowledge, develop your ideas, but keep an open mind when you start talking to developers and other potential partners and be prepared to learn from their experience - it's cheaper than making you own mistakes and hurts a lot less!