Thinking about a Website?

Establishing your presence on the world wide web can be daunting, but this should help you clear up any questions you have about your future in cyber space.

Establishing a presence on the web can be overwhelming, even intimidating. However, as we approach the millennium, more and more people are learning to surf the web. The World Wide Web opens up a whole new avenue to promote your product. In coming years, websites will be the norm. If you’re looking to promote your product, increase accessibility and provide an avenue for your for your potential clients to reach you, the web is the answer.

Where do you go from here? Keep in mind...good websites tell a story. You want your site to be a cyber tour of your company, ranch or farm. What they see online...is what they will remember you for. Find a website designer who knows your product and can help you promote it in the best light. Our experience in the agricultural industry means we know how to crop your photos and what actually is appealing to your target audience.

Okay you’re ready to build your site...how do you make it reality? You will need a name or address for your site, called a domain. This is what people type in and you advertise to reach your site. We recommend you register your own private domain name-www.yourname.com. It's easier to remember and shows you're serious about your business. We can help you select and obtain your domain name. If you don’t want to go this route, we will host your site for free as a subdomain off our site. Your name would be www.westwynde.com/your name. Once you decide on your domain, you're ready to build your your site. However, once it’s built, it needs to be stored on a server. The server is the place your site lives. When people type in your domain name, they are actually accessing its place on a server. Since these servers aren’t cheap... you can bet they charge to store your site! Our server has very reasonable fees and we highly recommend letting us register your domain and store it on our preferred server, or we’ll work with one you prefer.

Now that our site is on the web, what do we do? Once your site is up, it’s a good idea to keep it current. Work with us to provide up-to-date information for your site. Site updates usually go fast and we don’t charge until we have an hour’s worth done. Updates can be done via email and will go pretty fast. Once your page is built, your only further costs should be for keeping your domain name registered, site storage and site updates. We can also do site face-lifts after a year or so to update the look of the site to match with your current advertising scheme.

Build it and they will come! Not true in the case of websites unless you advertise your site in your ads and everyday promotions. We will register your site with the main search engines and do everything in our arsenal to make sure your site is search-engine friendly. However, it’s a game, and your ultimate goal is to be listed on the first page of one search engine. And, just because you’re there one day...doesn’t mean you’ll be there the next. It takes updating your site to keep it current, resubmitting to search engines often and building a popular site with good content to make it register well. We will reregister your site once it's built and recommend doing so frequently, however, no more than once a month. We also recommend you add as many links as relevant to your site in hope of increasing its popularity with some search engines.