small business web sites - your questions answered

Does my business need a web-site? If so, why?
How much will it cost?
Should I hire a professional web-designer to create my site or do it myself?
There are so many companies offering to design web-sites. How do I choose the right one for me?

There are so many companies offering to design web-sites. How do I choose the right one for me?
My web-site isn't generating any new business. What should I do?
No-one's visiting my web-site. How do I get people to see it?
How do I make an attractive page that downloads quickly?
How do I make an attractive page?
How do I reduce download times?
Which graphic format should I use?
How do I allow visitors to upload an image to my web site's database?
Can you provide ASP (.NET) code to do...?

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Does my business need a web-site? If so, why?

Ask yourself these questions:

If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions then there are certainly potential benefits in a web-site. Perhaps you can estimate what the benefits might be to your business. Then compare the value of these benefits against the cost of setting up and operating a web-site...

How much will it cost?

Simple sites (with pages comprising html and images scanned from photos or other sources) can be produced for about Au$50 - $100 per page. More complicated pages might include special graphics (as on the web design page) or interactivity using javascript or perl programs - these options would obviously be more expensive, but not necessarily prohibitively so.

To set up a simple small-business site of 5 to 10 pages, including design, the first years hosting and domain registration (www.yourname.com.au), our price would typically be between Au$500 and $1000, depending on the complexity of what you want and the information you supply - please see Aussie Houseboat Holidays for an example of a site in this price range.

Sites built around custom database applications can offer features such as a users area accessed by username and password, automatic e-mail registration of new users, data storage and retrieval, special calculations, special searches, automatic image upload, resizing and storage of images, administrator access etc. We build in whatever functions you require. Price is entirely dependent on your choice of functionality but something in the range Au$2000 to Au$5000 would be typical.

For more details please see our pricelist.

Remember, we will be happy to discuss your needs in detail and provide a free, fixed-price quotation. Please contact us for a free quote without obligation.

Of course, you can get a web-site virtually for free if you do it yourself...

Should I hire a professional web-designer to create my site or do it myself?

If you are reasonably computer-literate, you have some time on your hands and you're willing to learn then there's no reason why you shouldn't do it yourself. The creation of the web-pages is the easy part - there are lots of programs you can use and you don't even need to learn HTML (but it helps...). I suggest you study the web-sites page carefully to get an idea of some of the other aspects of publishing and publicising your site. Here are some of the main issues you should consider:

If you want to save money by creating the site content yourself without having to learn all the technicalities, we have a new system called "Building Site" (free trial now available). This allows you to create or update a web-site yourself, without any special software. You can choose a standard template or get a new one built specially for you. The system gives a consistent look to your pages and automatically generates all the links required for site navigation.

There are so many companies offering to design web-sites. How do I choose the right one for me?

Take a look at other web-sites created by your candidates. Are they professional and in a style compatible with your company? Talk to them about your ambitions for the site and ask what they will do to help you achieve them. Compare prices - they vary enormously, and more expensive doesn't always mean better. Above all you must be comfortable with whoever you choose - you will be working closely with them.

My web-site isn't generating any new business. What should I do?

First try to get hold of an analysis of your site's access log. This will give you lots of useful information such as:

Armed with this infomation you should be able to guess what the problem is. Maybe no-one can find your site (see next question), or they come expecting something completely different. Worst of all maybe they don't like what they see. At least you'll know...

No-one's visiting my web-site. How do I get people to see it?

Publicise your web-site in any way you can, on and off the internet (studies suggest that advertising web-sites in the "real world" is more effective than advertising on the web). Make sure that the site contains all the elements used by search engines to classify it (see the web-sites page) and keep monitoring the search engines to ensure that they include as many as possible of your pages. Resubmit your pages whenever required, but beware of resubmitting a page to a search engine which already has it well placed.

To do this properly takes a lot of hard work, or specialist software that handles it for you. I use and recommend WebPosition Gold, which takes care of monitoring and submitting automatically and even includes a "Page Critic" to advise you how to improve the positioning of your pages in all the major search engines. They offer a free trial for download which is fully functional but limited to only three search engines (of the normal 15 or so).

How do I make an attractive page that downloads quickly?

To do this question justice I've broken it into three parts: How do I make an attractive page?, How do I reduce download times? and Which graphic format should I use?.

How do I make an attractive page?

This requires some kind of artistic appreciation, which of course is different for every individual... As an engineer I like to believe that beauty is function, and so aim to design functional pages in the hope that they also prove attractive (judge for yourself). Ask yourself: What is the aim of this site / page? Does this feature contribute to that aim? This helps to remove unnecessary clutter, which also helps download times. Example: until this update there were no graphics at all on this page - now there are just the five images below, added to demonstrate the use of different image formats.

How do I reduce download times?

Try these three suggestions:

Which graphic format should I use?

Graphics on the Web are always a compromise between file size and image quality, but by correct choice of file format you can make a big difference. You will need a graphics program capable of converting between different formats and manipulating the images to best effect, such as Paint Shop Pro (shareware version available from Jasc or any magazine cover disk) or Adobe's Photoshop (also available as shareware). Alternatively upgrade to Linux and get the wonderful Gimp for free!

Jpeg image - 24-bit colour, 160 x 105, 3785 bytes

For images with subtle variations of colour, generally photographs, "Jpeg" is the only format to use. This is a compressed format which dramatically reduces file size, and you can adjust the degree of compression to achieve the best compromise between file size and image quality. One word of warning - this format is lossy ie. when saving your image you lose some detail for ever. Always keep a backup copy of the image in a loss-free format (such as a bitmap) and when you want a new version of the image, work from the backup and save as "jpg". The image right shows correct use of a Jpeg image (25% compression). File size is 3785 bytes.

WRONG! Palleted (gif) image - 256 colours (web-safe), 160 x 105, 4655 bytes WRONG! Palleted (gif) image - 256 colours (optimum), 160 x 105, 11160 bytes

These images show incorrect use of a palleted (gif) format for a photographic image. Left, using the web-safe pallet, only 39 of the available 215 colours are in use. File size is similar to Jpeg (4655 bytes) but for most viewers quality is poor. Right, using an optimum pallet (256 colours) file size is over 10k!

Images with just a few distinct colours, and large areas of identical colour (eg. company logos) will benefit from a palleted format. One of the colours may be transparent, allowing the background to show through, which can give interesting effects like allowing the shape of the image to appear rounded or irregular (all Web images are really rectangular). There is a maximum number (normally 256) of colours that can be used but file size will be greatly reduced by using a smaller pallet. Ideally the 215 colour "web-safe" pallet should be used, although the need for this is diminishing as most computers now use at least 16 bit colour depth. The traditional palleted format (and the only one universally supported by browsers) is Compuserve's "gif" format, but this is proprietory and recently Compuserve have been demanding royalty payments from web-sites using it! My preferred alternative is "png" (pron. "ping") which is technically superior, open source, and has been supported in Netscape and Microsoft browsers since version 4.

Correct use of a palleted (gif) image - note the clear colours. File size is 806 bytes. Palleted image - 8 colours, 68 x 105, 806 bytes WRONG! Jpeg image - 68 x 105, 1531 bytes (50% compression). Should be palleted. Incorrect use of a Jpeg image - note how the colours bleed. Despite 50% compression, file is 1531 bytes, almost twice the size.

Animations traditionally used Compuserve's "animated gif" format, which has the same copyright problems. Also, it is raster-based, like a movie - each frame is an individual image, so file size can get very large. File compression helps by saving only the differences between successive frames, but even so this format is only useful for short animations of relatively small images. It is typically used for clip-art images such as animated mailboxes and spinning globes - pretty (in some cases!) but not useful and very much a cliche...

Of course, the modern standard for animation is Macromedia's Flash plug-in. This is so much the standard that it has been distributed with browser updates since both Microsoft's and Netscape's version 4 browsers, in different versions. For maximum compatibility you should provide a non-Flash alternative and if you don't need the latest facilities, try using the earlier Flash 3 or 4 formats. Flash is sadly abused by many web designers who seem to be trying to demonstrate their own cleverness rather than their client's products, but it can be a very efficient method of communicating complex information - see the Dyson web site for some superb examples. Here's one we did for International Magnetic solutions:
How do I allow visitors to upload an image to my web site's database?

Uploading files (images or any other type) is a part of the CGI (common gateway interface) standard, so is supported by most programming languages that process web forms. We use Perl and its built-in module Perl::CGI. A Perl program to upload an image file and save it in a file on the server would look something like this (modified from the Perl documentation):

#!usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
$q = new CGI;
print $q->header;
print $q->start_html('File Upload Example');
print $q->start_multipart_form;
print "Choose a file: ";
print $q->filefield( -name=>'uploaded_file',-size=>50);
print $q->submit;
print $q->end_form;
if (param('uploaded_file')) {
open (OUTFILE,">>/usr/local/web/users/upload");
$totalsize=0;
while ($bytesread=read($filename,$buffer,1024)) {
print OUTFILE $buffer;
$totalsize+=$bytesread;
}
print "Your file has been uploaded ($totalsize bytes)";
}
print $q->end_html;

If you're interested in using Perl it's available on nearly all web servers - check with your hosting provider. You may also want to install a copy on your own computer for development and testing - Activestate provides convenient binary distributions for most computers including those running Windoze. You should also check out perl.org and CPAN.

Alternatively, using our 'Building Site' system you can use special tags in your HTML, as below. (For more details of what's going on here see the manual page for the CGI-contact program.)

<!--#contact:start-->
<!--#contact:prompt Choose a file:#Your file was uploaded.-->
<!--#contact:upload name='uploaded_file' extensions='png,jpg,jpeg,gif' max_size=60000-->
<!--#contact:uploadbutton-->
<!--#contact:end required_params='uploaded_file'-->

Doesn't that seem simpler? The system will also ensure that only files of the correct type can be uploaded, and if the file size exceeds a set limit (60k in this case) it will automatically reduce the image size accordingly. This is particularly useful for modern digital camera image files - with image sizes of 1024 x 768 or more and minimal jpeg compression each photo can be 1Mb or more!

Having uploaded the image file to your server, you can then put it into your database. Exactly how you do this depends on the database you're using and what you want to do with the image after it's added. You can store the binary data itself in the database (hint: use a data type BLOB in a SQL database), but this will result in large database files with no searchable information in them, so it may be more efficient to save the files in a specific location on the hard disk and keep a record of their filenames in the database.

A convenient database interface from our 'Building Site' system will be available later this year.

One important warning - we strongly advise you NOT TO ALLOW uploads into a publicly-available directory on your server, or otherwise to publish uploaded content without first checking it yourself. You are responsible for the content available to the public from your server. If illegal (eg. pornographic or defamatory) material is published then you, not the anonymous person who uploaded it, will be held liable.

Can you provide ASP (.NET) code to do...?

No, sorry. We've no use for Microsoft servers or ASP. Try Microsoft...?

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