New Websites Questionnaire
Welcome to Market Street Websites and Willow Glen Productions. As
a new website customer we have a few questions that we need to ask
before we develop your site.
Web site name (URL):
Most web sites have a name (e.g. google.com). It is a lot easier to
remember a name than the actual numeric web site address
(http://212.247.93.146). The name is called a domain name. You
register the name you choose with a domain name registrar (e.g.
godaddy.com, networksolutions.com, etc). Registration ensures that
your name is unique and connects it to your web site. Domain name
registration must be renewed or you will lose the rights to it.
1) Do you already have a domain name registered?
___________________
1a) If so, with whom? ___________________
2) If not, have you picked out a domain name? (We can help you with
this.)
If you do not have a domain name, we prefer to register it for you. This
allows us to keep track of the renewal, so you don't run the risk of
losing your domain name. If you forget to register your domain it may
get poached by someone else.
If you have one, we would like to transfer the registration to our
registrar. It makes many things, including renewal, much easier for us.
Web site hosting:
For a web site to be useful it must be available. Most web sites are
hosted on servers designed for the purpose. If you were to host your
web site on your computer, it would disappear every time you turned
off your computer. Market Street Web Sites are created with special
computer programs written by us. They require a special database
and other software which makes it necessary for us to host them on
our server.
Custom web sites are more portable. They can be hosted on most
servers. We prefer to host them on our servers because it is much
easier for us to monitor and update sites on our servers than those
hosted elsewhere.
3) Do you already have a web site host? ___________________
3a) If so, who? ___________________
Photography:
You will want photographs of your art on your site. If you have images,
great. If not we can work with you to photograph your art.
Text:
Your web site is about you. You will probably want a biography, artist's
statement, list of shows and awards, etc. It is very helpful if you can
prepare and edit this text prior to web site construction. If you need
examples, guidelines or help, please ask.
Each web site has a description and keyword list that is used by
search engines. It is helpful if you have written these in advance. For
the keylist would include: your name, your name plus your art form,
variations of your name, etc... The description is an approximately two
line description that you would like to show up on a Google search
page with all the other results (do a couple of searches to see
samples).
e-Mailing List:
A good mailing list is one of the most valuable tools you can have. You can
enter the names and email addresses of people you want to include in any
email "blast". You can announce a show, pass along some publicity, or tell
people about new things that a collector of your work or friend might want
to know. (Always put a note at the bottom that they can unsubscribe. If you
learn the tools connected to the site you can easily send out these email
blasts yourself.)
Statistics:
A web site can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection
anywhere in the world. This means that billions of people will have
access to your site. Web site statistics can give you a picture of who is
accessing your site, what country they are from, what pages they visit,
etc. This can be very helpful if you are trying to correlate something
like a postcard mailing with traffic on your site.
We provide extensive statistics by default. You can also add third
party statistics, like Google Analytics, if you want more details let us
know.
Publicity:
There are many millions of web sites on the internet. There are many
ways for an internet user to find your site. Search engines (e.g.
google, yahoo, msn) provide a keyword or category based tool for
finding a web site. Linking to your site from another site like a fellow
artist's site, a gallery's site, a blog, linked-in, facebook, etc provides a
path for users to find your site. Advertising, both on-line and
traditional, can be a big source of visitors. Be sure to include your web
site address on your business card, postcards, adverts, and other
printed material. Emailing your fans and customers is a great way to
build traffic to your site.
We can provide you with consultants and tools to help with web site
publicity.
Function:
Think about the purpose and target audience of your website, a
portfolio site will be different than a sales site. We can discuss the
issues, pitfalls and expenses related to selling via your site.