So
how do I start?
Surf & Ask. If you already have a web page, you might as well skip
the next few paragraphs, if you don't have one and you don't know HTML,
consider this:
To start with,
you might not want to invest too much time, learning HTML. There are
loads of programs out there that can help you to make your first web
page. I will not go into detail here about that, but a little surfing
and reading through some Computer-Magazines should help you a great
deal. As strange as it might sound: How to make a web page is not
the most important thing, when you want to start a web business!
Let's assume you fall in this category: You want to make some money
on the side on the web, but don't know anything about HTML programming.
Start with content. Think about how you want your page should look
like, how you want your shop set up and which colors you want. Write
everything down and make some sketches. This is half the battle.
For example: If you want to sell wooden toys that you produce yourself
in your basement, here is a list of things that you can do without
even knowing a single HTML command:
- Make a price list (including all different models and sizes). Just
type it in any word processing software or spreadsheet calculation
and save it.
- Take pictures of all your products (ideally with a digital camera,
or scan some that you took the old fashioned way). Don't worry about
technical stuff too much when taking the pictures with your digital
camera, or when you scan the pictures: Just don't make them too small.
Once you or somebody else uses them for the web page, they can always
be made smaller, but it is not possible to make a low-quality picture
bigger.
If you want to make it easy for yourself or for whomever is doing
your page, here is an outline of how a "good" web-picture
looks like:
- A JPG image (you can use GIF , but they are usually bigger, because
they are not compressed - do not use BMP images.)
- Size about 300-500 x 200-400 pixels
- A low resolution is OK (72 DPI ). If you only use the images for
the web, 72 DPI is all you need, only if you plan on printing a catalog
you need a higher resolution.
- Use more than 256 colors only if you really have to. (It *might*
be needed if you sell paintings/art or anything related to colors/paints,
but other than that I can not think of any reason to use more colors.
Test it yourself and view the same image in 256 colors and true color:
You will most likely not see a big difference.)
- None of your images should be bigger than 100 KB. Actually you should
try to keep them around 20KB-50KB max. Apart from the fact that they
use up too much disk space on the web server if you have them too
big, it also takes longer for your visitors and customers to load
them.
- If you have many products and you want to have them showing all
on one page, it is a good idea to use "Thumbnail " Images
- Another thing you should keep in mind, when taking pictures of all
your products is, to make them look somewhat uniform, i.e. use the
same background for the pictures, make sure the background goes with
the color scheme you want to use for your web page, use the same light
while taking the pictures, etc….
- Write something about your products and about you (why should people
buy your product?, History of your company…)
- Put your Terms
of Sale and Shipping Terms in writing
- Draw up a Privacy Policy: What will you / won't you do with your
customer's data? Will you use cookies? Etc…
- Prepare a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document
- Make a few sketches with design ideas: Where do you want what on
the page? Maybe you saw a page before, that you really liked: Make
a screenshot or bookmark it, so you have a reference to explain what
you want later.
- Make a "link-tree" on paper, what do you want linked from
which site? Will all of your products be on one page, or will you
have one page per product? Remember: KISS! Keep it simple and stupid!
- Think about a color scheme for your page - make sure it goes with
the pictures you took of your products.
- Most goods bought on the Internet are paid for by credit or debit
card. There are several methods for accepting card payments. The two
most common are getting an Internet Merchant Service (IMS) from a
bank, to let you accept credit and debit card payments, and a Payment
Service Provider (PSP - also sometimes called a Payment Bureau). PSPs,
like PayPal, WorldPay or Netbanx, collect and process card details
for you without the need for an IMS.
Surf around on the web and find a PSP. Once you found one that fits,
familiarize yourself with it: How do you make a shopping cart? How
do you need to prepare your products? What do you need to apply for
a merchant account?
- Find a place to register a domain-name and a place to host your
page (more about that later)
All this can be
done before you even start a web page. From your word processor to
the web page it is only a simple copy/paste - either for you or for
somebody else, who is doing the web page for you.
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Expressions
explained:
JPG: Joint Photographic Experts Group) A commonly used file format
for images on the World Wide Web. .jpg (also called .jpeg) files use
compressed data, so they take up less disk space.
GIF: Pronounced jiff or giff (hard g) stands for graphics interchange
format, a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web.
It supports up to 256 colors and is often used for line graphics,
logos, and animated pictures.
BMP: Microsoft bitmap image format. This is a fairly simple bitmap
format that can be viewed on many different platforms but is directly
supported by very few browsers. It is not used too much on the web
(fortunately, as it is very inefficient).
DPI: Dots Per Inch. A measure of the resolution of a printer, scanner,
or monitor. It refers to the number of dots in a one-inch line. The
more dots per inch, the higher the resolution.
Thumbnail: A tiny copy (about the size of a thumbnail) of a larger
image. Generally, thumbnails appear on Web pages to give users a general
idea of what the image looks like before they choose to spend time
waiting for the larger version to download. Clicking on a thumbnail
image generally causes the larger image to load automatically.