What you need to get started?

Step One: Develop Content

You may hire the finest graphic artists and the most talented web designers in the country to actually build your web site, but ultimately you're the one that determines whether your web site is a success or failure. Well written, useful content is the core of any good web site. You will need pics, articles, blogs, videos - you will also need - pics, articles, blogs, and videos - OH WAIT - I already said that...If we have to search content, get pics, video, artles, and blogs there will be a charge of $65 an hour. Seriously.

HERE ARE SOME GOOD TIPS:

• Think about your audience. Every web site has three basic audiences:
  
  
  • Primary -- the people for whom you are building the web site. A typical law firm builds a web site to attract clients; thus, the primary audience consists of potential and current clients. As you develop content for your web site, put yourself in the shoes of your primary audience and consider whether you're appealing directly to them. Do they want to read the forty page article you wrote in college on the complexities of the life? Probably not. Do they want to know what your basic service areas are and how to contact you? Absolutely.
    
    
  • Secondary -- those who are likely to visit, but for whom you are not primarily building your web site. There's nothing wrong with adding content to your web site that appeals to your secondary audience, but remember that they're secondary; don't give them top priority.
    
    
  • Unintended -- the people you never intended to communicate with, but may very well find your site at some point. It's a safe bet that within a few weeks of uploading your web site, Google and other search engines will have carefully scoured it with their automated programs and everything you've put online will be available through a quick web search. For example, there may be another business closley related to what you do and they stumble upon your page. The lesson: Be ready for all.
    
    
• Organize. Eloquently written and edited content isn't going to help you if your visitors can't find it. Take the time to draw out a flow chart for your web site and know how the various pages should connect. Key information, such as your practice areas, should be accessible with as few "clicks" as possible regardless of whether the visitor has loaded your home page or entered somewhere else in your site via search engine.
  
  
• Keep it brief. Web surfers tend to be an impatient bunch. Chances are they've come to your web site with a specific question in mind, and they aren't going to wade through walls of text to find the answer. Basic information on your business or organization should be written in "sound bites" -- short, concise paragraphs with short sentences. Rather than describing your practice areas with five paragraphs of prose, use a simple bulleted list. Limit personal bios to the most important and relevant professional details. Never use twenty words for something that can be said in ten.
  
  
• Make it timeless. Unless you have a dedicated IT staff to keep your web site fresh, much of the information you put on your web site will remain unchanged for long stretches of time. Avoid adding date-sensitive content unless you have a plan in place to keep it up to date. For example, it may seem like a great idea to post a listing of your upcoming speaking engagements when you first build your web site, but if that list isn't regularly updated, it might give readers the impression that you're no longer a sought after speaker.
  
  
• Make it dynamic. While much of the content on your web site will be static and remain unchanged for long periods of time, adding dynamic elements will keep your site looking fresh and will help boost your site in search engine results. Here are a few good ways of keeping your web site fresh:
  
  
  • Add RSS Feeds: many news web sites and blogs syndicate their content at no charge via an RSS feed.
    
    
  • Start a blog: blogs can be a great way of building a reputation within your specialty and within the profession, and they also serve to keep your site fresh. Blogpot.com is a great place to start. Its free.
    
    
  • Paid/custom content: another option worth considering is hiring us as the company to regularly add custom content tailored to your practice area, region, or specialties.We can prepare custom blogs and e-newsletters featuring a combination of original writing and links to the latest news from around the ministry.
    
    
• Edit and proofread. It may be a cliche, but it's true: you only get one chance to make a first impression. There are few ways of making yourself look more unprofessional and unreliable than a web site filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Treat the content for your web site like you would a pleading, brief, or journal article: make it perfect.

Step Two: Pick a Domain

Picking out and registering a domain is an important step in building a successful web site. Your domain (or web address or URL) will become your identity on the web and a confusing, misleading, or embarrassing domain name can make it difficult for your web site (and thus, your firm or organization) to be taken seriously. The same is true for your email address, which will likely also use your domain name.

When it comes to picking the domain name to register, here are some tips:

• Keep it short. Long domain names are hard to remember, hard to type, and hard to fit on business cards and letterhead.
  
  
• Make it clear. Avoid unusual spellings and abbreviations - especially "text message" speak like replacing "you" with "u" or "for" with "4." Try saying the domain out loud to a friend and then ask them to write it down for you. If they can't do it, you may want to try something else.
  
  
• If you have an established business name (e.g. "Sirius" or "Gateway"), try to use that name or some variation of it as your domain.
  
  
• If you're running a for-profit business, use .com. If you're running a non-profit or professional organization, use .org. It can be tempting to go with less popular TLD to get the better domain name (e.g. johndoe.info rather than johndoe.com), but these TLDs aren't always regarded as professional and will invariably lead to confusion
  
  
• Go long term on your registration. Domains are registered by the year, and if you forget to renew your domain there's a chance someone else will buy it out from under you -- a major disaster for an established web site. You can reduce this risk by initially registering your domain for multiple years (some registrars let you go up to 100 years!) and by establishing a policy within your organization to make sure your domains aren't allowed to lapse.
  
  
• Find the perfect domain but it's already registered? You may be able to get it from the current owner -- for a price. Try using a whois tool like DomainTools to find out who owns the domain and how you can contact them. You can also visit LeapFish to get a free (but very rough) appraisal for the domain, or you can pay for an expert appraisal from Emergeworks.

A Word of Warning! You may notice that some hosting companies offer "free domains" if you sign up for their hosting service. Make sure you read the fine print. In many cases, the "free domain" is registered in the name of the hosting company and if you change hosts or if the host goes out of business, you could lose your domain.

Step Three: Hosting

You've put together a good plan for your site, you've written some of the content, and you've registered a domain name. Now it's time to think about where your web site will live. We are the one stop shop for domains and hosting.

All too often, a web designer will have a potential client visit his or her office with a horror story that begins something like this: "Well, my golf buddy said his neighbor's kid was really great with computers, so..." Invariably, that story ends with the potential client admitting that he or she has wasted thousands of dollars and months of work on an incomplete, non-functional, or simply non-existant web site. The moral of the story? Professional web sites are built by professionals. If you hire an inexperienced amateur, delegate the project to a non-web designer employee, or even try to do it yourself, there's a good chance you'll end up exhausting your budget without getting a product you can be proud of in return. That said, if you understand the process and the options that are available, a solid and effective web site can be developed even on the slimmest budget.

Thanks to the always-on nature of web sites, a neglected or broken web site can be just as harmful to your business or organization as a functional web site can be useful. If a potential client finds your web site and discovers it's full of outdated content, broken links, missing images, or incorrect contact information, he or she is likely to develop a strongly negative opinion as to your ministry or organization's professionalism. As discussed above, before your web site is built you should have budgeted the time and money for regular upkeep and you should have worked out a plan with your designer (or picked an appropriate out-of-the-box solution) to ensure easy maintenance.

Here are some tips to keep your web site in top form:

• Visit your page regularly. A quick once-through of your web site will let you know if anything obvious is broken or missing. This particularly important if you've included an RSS field or some other dynamic content that you don't fully control.
  
  
• Check links. Links within your web site should be stable, but if you've linked to outside web sites -- such as a professional organization, a news site, or some other resource, there's always the chance that they will alter their URL in some way that breaks your link.
  
  
• Check your statistics. Your web host or your designer should be able to provide you with daily, weekly, and monthly statistics on the traffic coming to your web site. Not only can this help you identify broken pages and links (most statistics packages will list these), it will also tell you approximately how many visitors your web site is getting, what sites are linking to you, and what sort of search queries are leading people to your web site.
  
  
• Get your web site out there. A web site is a marketing tool for most bsuinesses and organizations, so you'll want to make sure people are aware of it. Add the URL to your business cards and letterhead. Put a link to it in your email signature. If you know of a web site that has a list of links to ministries or organizations like yours, contact their webmaster and ask to have your link added.
  
  
• Solicit criticism. Chances are you'll want to renovate your web site at some point in the future, so keeping a list of suggestions and critiques can be a helpful way of ensuring your future web site is as much of an improvement as possible.