Client Consultation

1. Decide purpose of site. Do you want to provide information for clients and
customers, or sell products directly (Do you need a Shopping Cart, Merchant
Account?)

2. Do you need to register a Domain Name? (ie: www.yourname.com) If so, we

can help you check availability and register your domain for you.

3. Do you need hosting? High quality hosting at very reasonable prices is available
with Site-Maker, or you may choose another company to host your website.

4. Plan out the number of pages and their titles. The name of your homepage
might be your company name and whatever product you are offering. Titles/links to
other pages might be "About Company", "Products", "Services", "Contact", "FAQ",
"Guestbook", "Order Form", etc.

5. Get a copy of company logo, letterhead, (hard copy or digital format)

brochures, catalog,etc. and mail or email them to Site-Maker.

6. Decide specifically what graphics/photos you would like on your site and
which pages your want them on. Label them by name and where they will be located
on your site. Send the photos for scanning or send digitized images on a diskette or
CD-Rom.

7. Compose and format text to be on each page of site. All text and information is
to be provided by the client and provided via floppy disk or CD Rom, or sent to Site-
Maker by e-mail on Microsoft Word. Otherwise, there will be a small charge for
typing.

8. Decide if you want any additional options for your site: Shopping Cart, Site-
Map, Guestbook, Links to Related Sites, Sound or Music, Animation, Additional Forms,
Java Scollers & Effects, Autoresponders, Password Protection, Bulletin Boards,
Database

What the client should Provide

| Back |

1. Outline of website pages, starting with the homepage

2. Names of all links to other sections and all pages in each section
3. Titles for each page
4. Complete content and text for each page, must be in file form preferably Word,
and formatted the way you want it to look on the website. We will need to charge an
hourly rate to author, type or format text that is not in a formatted file form
5. Logo in hard copy or digital file form. Logo design is available if you need one for
$150-$500 depending on complexity.
5. Graphics for each page in the form of photos for scanning or in digital file form.
Each image should be labeled by name and the location where your want it
displayed. Graphics that require extensive cleaning up or editing will be charged our
hourly rate.
6. Keywords that you decide are the most important to use for search engine
registration, we are happy to help you with this in consultation..
7. All materials and information are to provided to Site-Maker in a timely fashion to
facilitate project completion according to agreed upon timeline.

Preamble

Conferences, presbyteries, pastoral charges/congregations, camps,

education centres, and other United Church-related organizations are
creating websites as part of their mission and outreach. The General
Council office generally endorses and encourages such activity. In an
effort to support website development across the wider church we
offer the following suggestions to help you plan and design a website.
You may work through the steps in sequence, however, we suspect
your progress through the list will take a more meandering path as the
project evolves.
Important Information About Privacy: Do not publish personal information without permission. For a detailed
list of what constitutes personal information, see What is Personal Information?* published by the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada. The same agency publishes another useful fact sheet, Privacy Legislation in Canada.*

Step 1: Write a Web Site Goals Statement

Where to begin? Start with a couple of obvious personnel questions:

• Who will authorize the development of a website?

• Who will to define the website goals?

Individuals and groups from your organization with a potential interest

in or use for the website should be represented. Their support for the
project is essential.

Decide if writing the site goals document will be a formal or informal

process:

• A formal process means meetings, agendas, decision-making processes, and

specific operating procedures.

• An informal process may be as simple as distilling ideas and suggestions into a brief
statement which is then given formal approval.

Neither method is intrinsically better than the other. However, the size
of the project, pending deadlines, and available resources may
influence the decision to opt for one process over another.
Suggestions for articulating website goals

As planning discussions begin, consider the following to stimulate the

conversation.

• What is the mission/creed/purpose of your organization?

• What role is the website meant to play in the public image of your organization?

• How is your mission/creed/purpose relevant to the purpose of your website?

Stakeholders' responses may vary considerably which means you'll need a process to
resolve these differences.

The responses, refined as you wish, form the basis of your website
goals statement.
Example: The General Council Offices website has a four-point goals statement.
• Deliver the resources that leaders need for their ministry when they need them.
• Promote relationships and collaboration between ministries across the country and around
the world.
• Help people connect with churches and movements beyond their communities, particularly
with global partners.
• Provide information about the denomination to those with an interest or need to know.

Step 2: Identify Your Site Audience

As with the site goals exercise in Step 1, identify who will be involved
at this stage, and the available time.

Consider the following suggestions to stimulate discussion:

• Identify possible user "experiences" you will offer on your website. Samples include:
o An information retrieval experience where users come for information such
as a worship schedule or list of upcoming events.
o A participative experience where users join an on-line discussion forum.
o A transaction experience where users order worship planning materials or
reserve a meeting room for the local scout troop.
This exercise helps stakeholders visualize the site and potential audiences for the
various features and/or content packages. The audience/content issue is very
important:
o A site for children and youth may opt for information delivery through a lush
interactive experience, while
o A site for their parents may deliver similar information in a traditional
manner, one more commonly seen in static print documents.
• Rank the importance of each audience group.

• Identify the special needs or requirements, if any, for each audience group. For
example, people with disabilities may be unable to access your website, or do so only with
great difficulty.
Link: To ensure your website is accessible, we highly recommend the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) List of
Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility.*
The outcome of this exercise is a collection of user experiences that
match the site goals.

Also, remember the expectations of ALL users:

• They want useful content;

• They want easy and clear access to that content;

• As a general rule, they are impatient; that is they are reluctant to wait beyond a
reasonable time for content to display;

• They have more faith in well-designed sites.

Example: The General Council Offices website identfied the following audience groups:
• Ministry leaders in congregations, outreach ministries, theological schools, universities,
colleges, church networks, education centres, etc.;
• Denominational leaders in conferences, presbyteries, General Council staff and appointed
members, elected members, network members, etc.;
• Individual members;
• Ministry leaders from other denominations, sister and colleague organizations;
• The general public, including people from other denominations, researchers, etc. This last
group is a secondary audience.
What have others done?

By now of course (late 2003) a website for your organization is no

longer a novel idea. So, if your collective inspiration is flagging, you
may want to review what organizations similar to yours have done with
their websites. Knowing the "competition" is a good way to learn about
your own site.

This analysis may, once again, be formal or informal. An informal

evaluation may be a simple "surfing" exercise. A formal evaluation
need not be too detailed or complex. The following criteria offer some
suggestions to consider when looking at other websites:

• Consider the site content and variety of user experiences on offer.

• Review the page layout and design.

o What features do you like and dislike?
o Are pages easy to read on a computer screen?
o Do you have to scroll sideways to read? Up and down?
• Review the site navigation features. Does the navigation framework make sense to
you?

• Look for user support resources such as a site map, contact information, content
revision notices, etc.

• How long does it take for pages download? Consider the time required for pages to
display on a dial-up connection. What percentage of your audience access the Internet via
dial-up?

• Does the site use JavaScript and other specialized programming? Are these
embellishments useful or just "eye candy"?
• Does the site have ads? If so, how are they used and where are they placed on the
page templates?
A Note about Browsers: Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) may be the dominant browser, however there are
many versions of IE and other browser brands in use. It is helpful to look at websites, including your own, using a
variety of browsers. Depending on the features supported by each browser version, the content layout and
presentation can vary dramatically. We support and highly recommend the standards proposed by the W3C* as a
way to design around browser eccentricities.*

Step 3: Web Site Content Development

This step is an opportunity to consider the content of your website. At

the end of this exercise you should have a content inventory and a
content development plan.

Consider the following as you begin to compile a content inventory and

development plan:

• Have stakeholders identify the content they want on the site. Sort these requests
into a manageable number of groups. This initial sort provides a logical starting point for the
creation of a site organization plan.

• Will the site offer content currently available in other formats? If yes, does this
content need to be "re-purposed" for a different medium?

• Will you produce new (Web-only) content? If yes,

o Who will produce/write/develop/"re-purpose" this content?
o If you or your organization do the production, what software and/or
hardware are required?
o What are the production costs, if any, and who will pay them?
o What are the deadlines?
If you hire an outside design and production service,
o What criteria will you use to select a vendor?
o What is your budget? What are your deadlines?
o What do you expect the vendor to provide?
• What is required to properly present that content for your intended users in the
"user experience" of your choice? List these requirements in detail. The list may include
everything from images used to support and enhance text-heavy content to the complex
programming requirements for interactive Web pages.
Note: Applying a popular nugget of wisdom* to information dissemination predicts that 80% of user information
requests will be answered by 20% of the content on a website. At the General Council Offices we've observed,
during more than six years of analysis, that less than 1% of our Web pages (20 pages in a site of more than
2,000) generate more than 35% of all page views. All pages generate some traffic, but the home page, the main
directory pages, site support pages, and specialized services such as the church locator log the majority of our
traffic.

Web Site Content Formats

How will you present your website content given your audience and
preferred user experiences? We offer the following as a way to begin
your discussion. Consider first, some format options:

• Content may be static, usually as a unique collection of HTML pages. This is the
most common and the easiest way to produce Web content.
• Content may be dynamic, that is pages are generated from a database and
displayed in templates as users click through the links on your site. Remember, the design,
production and testing cycles for dynamic content will be different, and may be much more
complicated than those used for static page development.

• Content may be interactive, that is users exchange information with the site, usually
for a specific purpose such as a commercial transaction, subscribing to an e-newsletter,
participating in an online forum, etc. The technical expertise and resources required to
develop interactive and dynamic content may require further discussions.
o List all functional requirements and technical components.
o Rank the importance and scope each technical component.
o Determine the feasibility of each technical component.
o Do you have the time, technology, skills and money to build the
technical infrastructure for your functional requirements?
o If you plan to lease or subscribe to such services, how will you
evaluate the various available packages?
Links: HTML: For more information on HTML markup see Dave Raggett's Getting started with HTML.* Style
Sheets: We highly recommend the use of Cascading Style Sheets to control content layout and presentation
throughout your whole site. For more information, see the W3C's Cascading Style Sheet's page.*

Group and Label Content

While the development of meaningful content is the most challenging

aspect of long-term website success, creating a good organization
scheme for that content is also difficult. At the end of this exercise you
should have a draft plan for organizing your Web content. To begin,
consider the following suggestions:

• Write each content element on an index card.

• Sort into tentative groups.

o Try organizing the content in different ways.
It is important to record how each stakeholder organizes and names each content
group.
• Determine pros and cons of each organization scheme. Some will be better than
others, but there are no "right" or "wrong" solutions.

• When you agree on the group elements, name each group as descriptively, yet
briefly as possible. Two common labels include:
o An 'About Your Organization' label. This section includes general information
about the organization, its history, mission, news, contact information, street
location, etc.
o A 'Site Map/Index' label. This section is especially useful with ambiguous
organizational schemes (see below) that are not supported by a site search
function.

Writing for the Web: Some Suggestions

Web Designer Jeffrey Zeldman* identified three distinct classes of Web

users:

1. Viewers would rather be watching TV. For this group the Web is about eye
candy and other visual jolts. They use text only as directions to further visual
stimulus.
 2. Seekers want information they can apply to their own work. They move
quickly through a site, rarely pausing to scroll down or across. If what they want
is not immediately visible they move on.

3. Readers are rare birds of the Web. They will scroll through and read long
documents, download and print PDFs, as they would any print document.

Viewers and Seekers prefer information chunks, scanning the screen

for headlines, summaries, captions. They often engage in "interlaced
browsing," clicking back and forth between sites comparing similar
content.

Readers, because they are in less of a hurry, like archives of

information and are quite content to scroll through long documents.
That said, they also prefer text that has been adapted for screen
display, such as lines of text that run only halfway across the screen,
information formatted in lists, blank lines between paragraphs, etc.

So, unless your audience will be Readers only, adopt a Web-friendly

writing style:

• Write for "scan-ability."

• Use headlines and summaries. Both should be simple and informative.

• Trim or distill long documents. Write "long", if you must, but be prepared to trim
your copy to keep it tightly focused.
o Present the most important material at the beginning and then add detail.
o Write short paragraphs, ideally, with only idea per paragraph.
o Use sub-headings to separate blocks of paragraphs.
• Even Readers will appreciate a summary and/or Table of Contents at the beginning
of long documents.

• Lists and other design elements help break the flow of uniform text blocks. Lists are
especially good for presenting categorical information (see next item).

• Sort information into categories where applicable, e.g., "Sermon Starters," "2003
News Releases," etc. When visitors can jump from chunk to chunk, they get to their
information destinations quickly.

• If possible, work with a good editor!

About Hyperlinks: The Web is a hypertext medium where users bounce from one content point to another, often
in a non-linear way, at the click of a mouse. The paradox is that Web content needs a linear narrative structure to
provide the cues users need to find the information they want. Too many hyperlinks within a document, especially
to footnote-type information, upsets narrative and disorients users.

Step 4: Create a Site Structure

This step takes your labeled content groups and builds a model
structure for your site. To help stimulate discussion consider how the
following models may or may not work for your site.
• An exact organization model sorts content into well defined and often mutually
exclusive sections. Common applications of this model include:
o An alphabetical sort used for a staff directory on a contact page, or
o A chronological sort used to present a collection of news releases.
Exact organization schemes are:
o Easy to design and maintain.
o Require users to know exactly what they're looking for.
• An ambiguous organization model sorts information into categories that rely on
language and/or visual symbols to convey the category content. Common applications of
ambiguous organization schemes include:
o A topical sort such as "Worship Resources", or "Justice Issues."
o An audience-specific sort such as a "For Children" or "For Prospective
Students."
Ambiguous organization schemes are:
o More effective than exact organization models because most users don't
know precisely for what they are looking.
o Difficult to conceptualize and design.
• A hybrid model, applies the exact scheme for some content and an ambiguous
scheme for the remainder. A common hybrid model is a hierarchical scheme where content
is organized as a collection of pages beneath a Home Page. We use this model on united-
church.ca. Not surprisingly, we recommend this model because:
o It is an easy metaphor to understand, and
o It works well with both simple and complex collections of information.
Acknowledgement: Much of the above has been adapted from an excellent book, "Information Architecture for
the World Wide Web" by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. O'Reilly & Associates, 1998, pp. 26-36.

Step 5: Design a Site Navigation Plan

Now that you have identified the major content sections, fill them in
from the content inventory. Once the content is labeled and sorted,
you need a navigation system to help users travel throughout your site
in such a way that they don't get lost.

At a conceptual level, you want your site navigation scheme to work on

a gradient of complexity. High-level navigation milestones identify
major sections of your site. As users move deeper towards specific
content the navigation becomes more detailed and complex as the
"distance" between milestones grows shorter.

The goal, regardless of the complexity involved is to create a "sense of

place" for users, no matter where they are. A user-friendly approach to
site navigation will enable users to answer the following:

• Where am I? Users will never create a mental image of your site plan unless they
know where they are at all times.

• Where can I go from here? This is answered by visible navigation options and other
links on the page.

If users cannot answer these questions to their satisfaction, there is a

problem with your site organization scheme.
How much navigation information do users need? You may know the seven plus/minus two rule. The
popular myth around this concept says users can't make a comfortable choice if they have to chose from more
than seven options. The original exploration of this idea may be found in George Miller's "The Magical Number
Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information."* A careful review of Miller's
conclusions show that they apply more to what we can memorize, not what we can perceive.
Current research has shown that users actually prefer site structures that are broad and shallow to those that are
narrow and deep. Users tend to get lost in deep hierarchical structures and new visitors get a better overview of a
site when they may choose from many options.

Suggestions for Navigation Elements

The navigation elements on a Web page should enable users to do two

things:

• Locate their current position

• Plot a course through your site

We offer the following suggestions to help ensure your site provides

users with the contextual clues they need to navigate confidently.

• All pages should include the organization name.

o Display your logo on every page and make it a link to your the home page.
This is a common feature on most websites.
• The navigation system (tabs, topic lists, a menu of choices, etc.) should present the
site structure clearly.
o The major content categories are obvious milestones for your site's primary
navigation elements.
o Specific content areas should have a local navigation system to supplement
the primary navigation.

The General Council Offices site navigation scheme uses tabs arranged
horizontally across the screen to label the main content areas. Within a
content area a menu in the left margin to sub-divides the content into
logical sub-categories. As users click towards specific documents a full
range of navigation options remains available. The horizontal tabs offer
direct links to every major content category on the site. The left-side
menu offers links to every major sub-category within the chosen
category.
For more information: For a much more comprehensive discussion of website navigation and usability issues,
we highly recommend "Designing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen, New Riders Publishing, 2000.

Step 6: Site Visual Design

Now is the time to take the site plan and build a visual design around
it. This step is often the most satisfying aspect of a website project.
Remember: Settle the intellectual property issues early on. Determine who owns what aspects (HTML code,
graphics, scripts, etc.) of your website. For more information on copyright issues, see below. Understand the
benefits of using proprietary resources and the costs (time, money, inconvenience) of opting out.
Consider the following points as you begin to the visual design phase:

• Consider a unique graphic identity which incorporates your organization logo or a

unique logo for your site.

• Consider a distinct colour palate. Use colour to generate a visual vocabulary** which
supports your site content.

• The colour theme should use browser-safe colours which reproduce consistently
across platforms and browsers.

• Remember, the eye tends to see the pictures first. Consider how visual images can
reinforce the text.
** Visual vocabulary is a set of symbols used to describe a system, structure, or process. Web designers use
the vocabulary to describe, at a high level, the structure and/or flow of the user experience of a website.

Browser-Safe Colours: For a "Microsoft-centric", but still informative, perspective on the colour-safe Web
palette, see Robert Hess'The Safety Palette.*
Layout grids

Layout grids are the foundation of your visual design. Grids and design
sketches lead to page mock-ups. The goal, as you begin, is to have
pages similar in form across all major sections of the site. Consider the
following points as you begin:

• Strive for three or four generic page templates.

• Block out space for the following:

o Page content.
o Organization logo (often in the upper-left corner of the grid.)
o Navigation information.
o Page title.
o Supporting graphics.
o Sponsorship acknowledgements/advertising.
o Page footer, including copyright information, link to a privacy policy.
o Contact information for document author and/or site webmaster.
Important Information about Copyright: Copyright should be respected both as a matter of law and of
conscience. If anything on your website is subject to copyright, identify it with the copyright symbol (©), and
make a statement to show that the material is published under copyright. If you wish to allow people to distribute
your material free of copyright, make a statement to that effect requesting, if you so desire, that you be shown as
the source of the material in any subsequent distribution.
Design Sketches and Page Mock-ups

Consider the following points as you begin your design sketches and
page-mock-ups.

• Sketches establish the site's look and feel. They may been done concurrently (and
approved!) during earlier steps in this process.

• Mock-ups integrate design sketches with layout grids

o Mock-ups should closely replicate actual pages by integrating design
sketches with the layout grids
o Mock-ups serve as the basis for your site prototype, if site is large, or actual
pages if the site is small.
When the design seems too simple for the work it required, then you
know you are done!
Link: In our opinion, the best website design resource is available on the Web, the Web Style Guide.* Originally
developed at Yale University's Center for Advanced Instructional Media, its popularity, alas, meant a book deal
was inevitable. Thankfully, the authors have not neglected the on-line version even as the book went into a
second edition.

Security Considerations: Some General

Recommendations

Protecting Your E-mail Addresses

Some users and their automated spiders and web bots scour the
Internet constantly looking for vulnerable information to exploit in
telemarketing campaigns, junk mail, mass e-mail campaigns. A good
way to avoid a flood of unwanted e-mail is to to hide or mask the e-
mail addresses on your website. We use a tiny script to mask e-mail
addresses on the General Council Offices website. This script is
available for download [RTF 2 pp. / 12 KB].

Dreamweaver 4 or MX users can download the extension called "Super

E-mail" from the Dreamweaver Exchange* to make encoding e-mail
addresses quick and easy (be sure to check the "anti-robots" box when
using this tool).

We recommend that you DO NOT use a Free Web

Hosting Service

In most cases, using a "free" hosting site such as Yahoo!Geocities,

TriPod, etc. is not recommended. These sites do not actively screen
user content or advertisers, which may result in inappropriate or adult
content being displayed on or in association with your website. Instead,
check with your ISP, as many offer package deals, which often include
a modest amount of server space to set up a site, with costs already
included in your monthly access fee.

If you want a unique URL (www.yourchurch.ca), consider registering

your own domain name.* If an ISP is hosting your site, they may offer
to register your domain name as part of the service agreement.
NOTE: Be aware that the free "visitor counters" you see on the bottom of many Web pages often contain
advertising or hidden code. You should also be aware that these counters are an inaccurate way to track traffic on
your website.

Final Thoughts
• Designing a website is a team effort. Anyone who insists they can do the job on their
own is not someone you wish to have planning and building your website.
• Remember, your site should revolve around its content. If you build your site before
you have your content you've done things backwards.

• Understand and approve the costs and fees before you begin. We dislike being so
suspicious, but be wary of a price that seems too good to be true. It often is.

• Every site will require regular maintenance. Information has to be updated and the
site design has to be kept fresh. Ensure maintenance costs and responsibilities are
understood and agreed upon as you begin developing your website.

• What makes a good website? Common Sense! If nothing else, build your website so
that it makes sense to your users.
Don't forget! Once your site is up and running, plan for a formal and regular evaluation of the site. Suggestions
for points of discussion include:
• Has the site met the its goals?
• Are you getting adequate feedback to evaluate the site?
• How would current stakeholders evaluate the site?
• Have new stakeholders come forward since the site was launched?

This questionnaire is designed to enhance communications between Wilson Internet

Services and our clients. Why don't you print it on your printer, and have it handy
when you discuss your project on the phone with a Wilson Internet Services
representative. After we've you've filled in the blanks as we talk on the phone, please
make a photocopy for your records, and mail a signed copy to me. It provides a
written memorandum of our mutually-agreed plan.

Organization Name: __________________________

1. Purpose
Give the most important purpose a "1", next most important a "2". Leave those blank
which do not interest you at all.
__ To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization.
__ To develop a qualified list of prospects
__ To sell products directly taking credit card information over the Internet
__ To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or mail to
consummate a sale.
__ To make available product information and price lists to distributors.
__ To make available product information and price lists to customers.
__ To strengthen brand identification.
__ Other _______________________________________________________

2. Site Organization
Please label pages you desire and cross out the rest.
Total number of pages decided upon ________________

3. Site and Domain Names

Site Name on Masthead: ____________________________________

Domain Name It must be registered through your web hosting service and approved
by a domain registration service before you can use it. You may check the availability
of your domain name at Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com)

Domain name ____________________________ ___Desired ___Already Registered

4. Masthead Graphic

It is very helpful if you will include a copy of your company's

letterhead, brochures, catalog, etc. so we can see how you present
your company image.
__ Company Logo incorporated in the masthead graphic? If so, please enclose a
color copy.
__ Photo or drawing of product?
__ Typeface preference __________________________________________

__ Preferred colors in palette (PMS colors?) _______________________________________

__ Other ideas _________________________________________________________

5. Color and Accents

For the most part, we recommend a white background for best readability and
contrast, with a band of color or a pattern running down the left margin of the
webpage. Your preference:
May we include a link at the bottom of the welcome page which reads "Website
Designed with Care by Wilson Internet Services"? (You are under no obligation
to say yes.) ___Yes ___No

6. Navigation System
The navigation system of all our Standard Website Packages includes:

• Links from the front page and sectional pages to every page in the system to
enable Web search engines to "spider" and index content on every page.
• Colored bar "Image Map" with a brief word or two indicating each page --
or, in larger sites -- each section of the website. This appears at the bottom of
every page. In some sites we put this both top and bottom. You are limited to
a maximum of about eight (8) selections on this image map. We use server
side image maps to make it easy to expand the site at a later time without
having to change the coding on each page of the site. For this reason, and to
keep costs down, we do not include separate "buttons" on our standard sites.
Included in sites of 6 pages or more.

• Where your navigation buttons or links appear on your pages

should be decided by the number of main or primary pages you
will have in your website. Primary pages are the pages organized
just below your home page in the structure or diagram of your
website.
• In general, you can only fit up to 8 buttons (maybe less
depending on how much text you use) across the top of your
pages and if you choose that layout then how the subpage page
links are displayed also may have a limitation. Some layouts with
top page primary page buttons will also display subpage links in
a second row across the top and others will display them down
the left side of the page.
• Navigation buttons down either side of your pages don't run into
any limitations due to the endless amount of vertical space on
every page. Remember though that the amount of text on the
buttons will greatly affect the amount of space for content.

• Left-Side Menus with text links are especially useful on larger sites. Included
in sites of 6 pages or more. They can allow more detail than an 8-item bottom
image map, and can enable visitors to see from any page how to get to any
other. These may be white or light-colored over a dark left-side color or
pattern, or black or dark over a light left-side color or pattern.

Optional Systems. Circle those you wish incorporated in your site.

• Left-Side "Buttons" can be used, but we do not recommend them, since

they are more expensive and time consuming to maintain when a change or
addition is made to the system. Also, it takes significantly longer to load many
buttons than an image map of the same area (Extra charge)
 • Frames System where, typically, a scrolling menu remains on the left side to
provide navigation. We do not recommend frames in practically any situation,
since they are a design disaster. They do not always print out, cannot be
bookmarked easily, and often make the page design look "tacky" with their
ugly gray scroll bars. We see them as the amateur's way to look cool. In a
very few cases, they are useful: (1) to display large databases of information,
(2) purposely hide URLs of content pages, (3) send visitors to other sites while
making it easy for them to come back. (Extra charge)
• Search Engine is useful on larger sites of 20+ pages to help visitors quickly
find what they're looking for. (Extra charge)

7. Basic Page Elements

These are the important items which appear on nearly every webpage on your site
(except the "home" page).

• Page titles which show at top of Web browser only

• Top-of-page graphic based on the design of the masthead graphic
• Page Title in larger type. Heading Font Style: ________________ (recommend
Arial Bold)
• Text. Body Font Style: ___________________ (recommend Times New Roman)
• Image Map by Image Map bar
• Standard company ID near bottom of page
• E-mail response link to the following e-mail address:
_________________________
• Copyright and trademark information in small print at the bottom of
every page. What registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks does
your company want to indicate here?

Do you have any trademarks or service marks? If so, please list them here and
indicate which are registered trademarks.

8. Photos, Graphics, Animations, Sound, and Video

Our contract includes a statement that you own the copyright to, or have permission
from the copyright owner to use any photos or graphics you send us.

• Clipart tends to look a bit tacky on websites. We recommend photos.

• Photos you supply either by sending the photos themselves for us to scan
and return, or by sending the digitized images on a diskette.
• Stock photos obtained from Photodisc (http://www.photodisc.com), Corel
(http://commerce.corel.com), or PictureQuest (http://www.picturequest.com/).
(You write down the photo number and inform us of your choices, and which
page each photo goes on. We can help you select the photos, but we would
need to bill you for our time at our hourly rate.)

For an extra charge, we can equip your webpages with:

 • Sound, either MIDI musical background or streaming Real Audio for music or
voice.
• Animated GIF images. High quality photo images are available from
PhotoDisc (http://www.photodisc.com) and other sources. We can also make
animations for an extra charge.
• Shockwave Animations
• Video clips

9. Response Forms
What is the purpose of your response form?

__ Guestbook for visitors to record comments

__ Request for information
__ Survey of customer preferences

Note: We do not set up sites that use the response form as an order form, since
these require secure servers, and secure order pick-up. For one or two products we
recommend using ShopSite Lite with a secure server. We charge extra to set up the
ordering system.

10. Web Hosting Service

We are not in the web hosting business. We recommend to our clients web hosting
services tailored to their specific needs. We've worked with dozens of hosting
services -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. We usually do not recommend hosting on
your local dial-up ISP, since they too often are not well-prepared to meet specialized
business site hosting needs. Their main business is usually dial-up access, and
hosting is only a sideline for them. Please let us recommend a Web host service for
you. We require cgi-bin access and FTP access, and strongly recommend telnet
access. Our no-extra-cost response form also requires a Unix system with Perl
language available.

Web Hosting Service _____________________________________

Phone: _____________________________

E-mail for support or help ______________________________

11. Registering and Advertising Your Website

Be sure to read my article, "Web Marketing Checklist: 27 Ways to Promote
Your Website" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm). Consider:

• Advertising your Website to Web search engines that index the Web
• Giving customers a good reason to come by offering them something
 • Finding industry-wide linking pages and negotiating reciprocal links to and
from their webpages.
• Purchasing Web advertising
• Becoming active in several of the thousands of Internet news groups and
mailing lists
• Developing a "signature" mini-ad attached to all your e-mail messages
• Making your website part of one or more of the many "malls."
• Including your e-mail and Web addresses on all your company's print
literature, stationery, and display advertising
• E-mail newsletters

Information about number of visitors to your website can usually be obtained

from your Internet Service Provider, from statistics generated daily by such programs
as WWWSTAT, GETSTATS, or Analog on the host computer. We do not include page
counters on our Standard Website Packages

We submit your information to Web search engines to "register" your website after
final payment is received. Before doing this we work with you to get 50 to 100
keywords and a carefully constructed 25-word sentence contain the most important
keywords.

12. Maintenance
Target Date____________________

Package prices include minor updating over the first six months of the contract. This
covers minor price changes, product changes, etc. It does not include major changes,
such as changing newsletter content (which essentially involves constructing a new
webpage), which is billed at our hourly rate.

Target Date for final payment to be made and your Web Site to be advertised:
_____________

On behalf of my organization I approve the above plan which I have developed with
Wilson Internet Services to construct a website, and I authorize Wilson Internet
Services to use this Website Planning Worksheet as the basis of the project.

Signature _____________________________________ Date _________________

These are the items that will make up the package you'll be sending to us:

• Website Planning Worksheet

• Website Design Contract
• Website Content Worksheet which will define for us the:
o Written content for your webpages (preferably on a diskette
formatted for Word for Windows [2.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, or 2000], Word
Perfect [5.1, 6.0+], or other word processor. We can translate from
most word processor formats with ease.)
 o Photos or graphics to be included. You may send graphics and
photos which we can scan into electronic form. Even better, send us a
diskette or ZIP disk with your graphics in any popular PC format, such
as GIF, JPEG, BMP, EPS, CDR, PCX, etc.). If these are in Mac format,
make sure each picture has a 3-digit extension, such as .jpg to indicate
the format in which it is given.
o Your company logo (if any), and tell us the PMS color.
• Samples of your printed materials -- brochures, letterheads, cards,
booklets, etc. -- so we can see how you present your company image.
• Check for at least 50% of the total.

Website Content Worksheet

You'll find it's a considerable amount of work to prepare your company's materials for
the Web pages we will construct for you. Think of us as your company's graphic
designers. You supply the raw materials and we assemble them onto graphically
pleasing, easy-to-read Web pages.

In our Standard Web Site Packages we include everything the average small business
needs for Web pages. But be sure to see the limits of what is included in our
packages; we charge extra for services required beyond our standard packages.

Text
• You must set up a separate Word processor file for each Web page. Use
this worksheet to indicate which file names correspond to which Web pages.
• We prefer Microsoft Word, though we can convert a wide variety of file
types.
• Please do not send us a draft of your text. Send us your final version. While
we expect to make minor changes here and there after the Web pages are
prepared, we charge extra to format and insert brand new text. Most word
processors allow you to count the approximate number of words. Web pages
which contain more than 1,200 words may be subject to additonal charges,
especially if they require a good deal of formatting.

Graphics
• The quality appearance of your Web site has a lot to do based on the photos
or graphics you choose for your Web pages. Clipart can be used, but tends to
make the pages look amateurish. Photos are probably best.
• You may send graphics to us in either digitized form or hard copy
photos which we will scan.
• Prepare captions for each photo. You may affix a PostIt Note to the photo
to indicate its caption and which Web page it goes on.
• If you need us to prepare specialized graphic elements in addition to our
custom site graphics package, please explain clearly, and perhaps include a
sketch. We charge for such items on an hourly basis.
 • You may select stock photos from your pages from PhotoDisc or Corel, and
give us the photograph number. We will purchase and download the
appropriate photo, place it on the Web page indicated, and bill you for the
photo cost. If you want us to find and select photos, we charge our hourly
rate.
• Our Standard Web Site Packages include an average of 1.3 photos or
graphics per page. Beyond that we charge an additional fee for placing
photos.

Please include this Web Page Content Worksheet with the materials you send to
Wilson Internet Services. Feel free to use your own form if that is more convenient.

Photos or
Approx
Content File Name Graphics
# of
Description for Text If none
words
state "None"
Home . . .
About the
. . .
Company
Order/Response
. . .
Form
Services/Product
. . .
s
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
FAQ . . .
Newsletter . . .
. . . .
. . . .