Step 1: Your Message and Feel

The first thing you want to do is decide what message you are trying to convey to your visitors. It is helpful to think about who your visitors are going to be. Try and put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself a few questions. Are you primarily targeting new guests who are unaware of your organization or business? Or is your site primarily geared towards current clients? What kind of “feel” do you want visitors to get when they visit your site? Many times what you are displaying will dictate the type of “feel” you want. For example, if you are a photographer or an artist, you will probably want a simple and clean site that does not distract from your photographs or paintings. If you are a doctor, you may want your site to be warm and inviting in order to take away the possible fear a doctor’s office may suggest.

Step 2: Navigation

Closely related with the feel of your site is what we call its “navigation.” There are a few main choices when talking about how your site will function. The two basic navigation types are horizontal and vertical. The difference between the two is where your main menu of items will be located. On this site, we utilize a horizontal menu structure that can be see at the top. This is not the only option, however. It is also possible to have right or left vertical navigation. The decision is yours and will depend on which you prefer. Note: With horizontal navigation the space for your menu items is limited by the width of your website. If you have a larger website with lots of menu items, many times it is better to utilize vertical navigation.

Step 3: Gather Your Content

This is the step that will take you the longest. After you decide what kind of message and feel you are trying to convey, you need to start gathering the content for your site. While we can help you set the tone of your site, you know the details of your business or organization better than anyone. You know what information is most important to your visitors. Our job is to take your content and information and turn it into an attractive and user-friendly website. Here are a few suggestions for your content:

1. Do you have a logo and/or catchphrase that you want to display prominently on your site? Organic Website Design displays our company logo and catchphrase in the top “header.” This is usually where they are located. If you do not have a company logo and would like one, we can either design you a simple one or point you to other good design firms.
2. Most people will want to display pictures in a number of locations. Images of your business or location, of people who work or volunteer there and pictures of items and services that you offer are very helpful for visitors of your site. For example, if you teach music lessons, you may want to show pictures of you interacting with your students. If you provide a gardening service, you can have a before and after picture of some work you have done. The main point is to visually highlight what you do so that your visitors can get a taste of what they can expect from you. We will need to have all photos that you want displayed e-mailed to us when we begin to design your website. See Photo Preparation on the left for more info.
3. You will also want to think through the different “pages” that will make up your website. You can think of these in terms of different “categories.” You can get an idea of this by looking at this website or the sites in our showcase. There are many commonly used categories that you can use. You will always have a “Home” page, which is what people will see when they first visit your site. Many people like to have an “about us” page where they can give a history of their organization or company as well as some personal information about the owners and employees. This helps visitors and clients identify with you on a personal level. You will also most likely want a “contact” page where you can display a map to your location with driving directions, your address and phone number and hours of operation. An interactive form that people can fill out and send to you by email is also desirable. You may also want a “products & services” page, a “photo gallery” or any number of other page types. If you need help or suggestions with this, please contact us.

We will be there to help you think through all of this, but remember that you are the one who needs to supply us with the content and information for each page. Once you have contacted us and we have a plan for your site, we will need your content e-mailed to us in either a Microsoft Word file (.doc) or a text file (.txt). If this is not possible then we can work out another arrangement. We will then take your content and pictures that you give us and turn them into a beautiful website.

If you are feeling a bit stumped, a good tip is to look at some different websites that are on the same subject or offer the same services as you offer. This can give you some much-needed inspiration as to what type of information and pictures you want displayed on your site.

This is a dynamic process. Once the initial choices regarding layout have been made, we can start inserting your content in. There will probably be a few revisions as the process goes forward. To make this process easier for everyone, we will post periodic updates that can be viewed online as we build the site. This will show you exactly what everything will look like when it is published on the web. This gives you a chance to follow along with development and to provide us with feedback on things you like and things that aren’t working exactly like you want them to. Three revisions are included in each of our packages.

Setting Up E-mail

You will most likely want to have several e-mail addresses so that people can reach you easily. We can help you set up as many e-mail addresses as you need. Many times each employee or volunteer of an organization or business will have their own e-mail address. E-mails usually look something like the following (where “yourdomain.com” is the domain that you have chosen):

• firstname.lastname@yourdomain.com
• support@yourdomain.com
• contact@yourdomain.com

These are just suggestions and your e-mail addresses can really be anything that you want. You can access your e-mail in a couple different ways. You can log on through your website and use what is called “webmail.” This way you can access your e-mail from any web browser and computer. This is similar to how you would use popular e-mail services like Gmail and Hotmail. You do not have to be using your personal computer to access webmail. You can also set your e-mail up through an e-mail program on your computer that will fetch your e-mail and deliver it to this program. Popular programs are Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express, Apple’s Mail and Mozilla’s Thunderbird. You may have even used these programs before in other contexts and may already be familiar with them. Your web host will provide all the necessary information to set up your e-mail in this way. If you run into any issues, we are always here to help!

Photo Preparation

Photo Preparation is an important process before your photos can be displayed on the web. First, they must be in a digital format. If they were taken with a digital camera then they will already be in this format. They also need to be small enough so that they don’t cause your page to load slowly. A good rule for photos is to try and have them at 640 x 480 pixels per square inch. Most times photos taken by digital cameras will be much bigger than this. If you do not know how to scale down your photos to a more web friendly size, we can do this for you. Also, if you want the photos to be cropped, we can do this, but your preference may not be met exactly unless you personally attend to this.

Photos that you send should be in .jpg format when possible. If they are another file format we can convert them for use on your site. Please do not place any spaces or characters other than letters and numbers in their names. When you e-mail the photos, please send them in batches that correspond to the page they are to be on. For example, if you are sending pictures for your “about us” page, please include all those in an e-mail indicating they are to go on the “about us” page. This allows us to keep your content easily organized. If they cannot be sent in one e-mail because the file size is too large, you may send them in more than one e-mail but please remember to indicate which page they are for.

Choosing a Domain Name

During your planning process, you will need to choose your website’s “domain name.” The domain name for this website is www.organicwebsitedesign.com. Usually a domain name will end in .com, .net or .org (which is usually for non-profit organizations). The domain name you want must be registered and must not be taken by any other party. If you already have a domain name then we can use that with the host that you choose. If you do not have one, we will need to register one for you before we can get your site online. We can do a quick search for you and let you know if the domain that you want is available or not. It is a good idea to send us a few possibilities in case your first choice is already taken.