As with any marketing projects you undertake, the most important stage in creating a web site is the planning. There are a few questions that you should ask yourself before you start to develop your site.

Who Are You Trying to Reach?
Determine who your clients are, what they are looking for and what you have to offer that will attract them to your business. This will help you to prepare the content for your site and will aid in marketing your web site on the Internet.

What Information Do You Want to Present?
You should decide what information you wish to dispense through your web site. At a minimum, you will want to offer some basic information about your organization. This should include a brief corporate resume, company history and information about key personnel. You may also wish to include more in-depth biographies and past achievements.

Because of the history of the Internet as an informational resource, you will increase the appeal of your site if you offer information that your clients will be seeking. This may include some basic legal information, updates and advice on how to use your products/services.

How Much Are You Willing to Spend?
Before you decide to take your business online, you should determine how much you are willing to spend for the creation and operation of your web site. A detailed look at some of the costs you will incur is presented in our What's Involved and How Much Will It Cost? section.

There are typically 3 costs associated with establishing a web site:

The cost of designing and developing a web site varies depending on how much information is to be presented and on the features that the site will contain. Many web site designers charge based on an hourly rate, but the lowest hourly rate doesn't mean the lowest total cost. The web design industry is very competitive so you should be able to receive a firm estimate from a designer before the project is started.

Web space rental fees also vary, usually ranging from $30-100 per month. Be sure to compare the allowable disk space (should be at least 5-10 MB), the daily data transfer limit (approx. 20 MB to start) and how often you can update your site. Other factors that are important include the speed of their link to the Internet "backbone" and the availability of their web server to host automated programs. As your site developer, AFAB will recommend to you a list of web servers which will rent you the space according to your needs.

Marketing is an additional cost that you should consider. Your web site is ineffective if no one knows it's there. It's a great start to register your web site with the popular search engines (where Internet users can search for sites by keywords), but for a better response, you should implement an effective marketing plan - both online and using traditional methods. With AFAB, you will have years of marketing and communications experience to assist you in planning and implementing a strong promotional program.

Another cost that you should count on is ongoing maintenance of the site so that your information is always fresh and up to date. This cost depends on the amount of new material you plan to add and the changes you make once your site is operational. This maintenance can usually be contracted at a fixed rate by most web designers or you may decide to train an employee in your organization to make the updates as required.

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