Business Class Websites

These days pretty much anyone can throw up any old website and stick it out there in cyberworld.

The number of free alternatives to having a ‘paid for’ website is astounding, and to be honest there are people who have built up good businesses using these free alternatives, but the problem is,

“They will never have ultimate control over their website – everything they have worked on could be taken from them overnight!”

All it would take would be to have some radical policy change or a Spam complaint or allegation made against you and “WHAM-O”, your entire business has been stripped out from beneath you.

WHY? Because you have built your business on someone else’s website – you were never calling the shots.

The best thing you can do for your business is to… Have your own domain name, hosted on your own web hosting plan and build your own website. But, you need to understand, that to build a good quality, profitable website is not something you can do in 5 minutes.

That’s the reason why these lessons have been purposefully broken up into weekly classes.

I don’t want you to get too bogged down and overwhelmed in the process you are about to undertake, so I recommend that you follow each step carefully and go over each week’s content a couple of times, making sure that you understand it fully before going on to the next step.

So Let’s Get Started…Please watch the video for an introduction to this lesson.

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There is a lot of planning, time and effort that needs to be devoted and spent if you are going to have a successful website that will continue to provide you with income for years to come.

In this first lesson we are literally starting at ground level.  It would be irresponsible of me to send you off to buy your domain name and hosting account without setting up the foundation for your site first, so this first lesson is about planning and mapping out the site.

What We want to do is create the specific sections of your site, these sections are the categories you will be putting your individual pieces of content in.

A good way to understand this concept is to see first hand how this process is actually being used.  Grab a pen and paper and take note of any ideas that you may have for various categories that would apply to your business and soon to be website.

I suggest you have four or five major categories and group your sub categories within these major categories.

If you were to divide your business into sections What would be the main aspects that make up your overall business?

One way of explaining what we want to do is if you imagine your website is like a book, each chapter in the book covers a different topic but each topic is still related to the main topic of the book, although each chapter (or category) is about a different subject they are all still related and are essential in making up the entire book.

Your website is very similar to this concept, you want to build your site around a specific topic ie; what you do in your business.

Basically you need to section off parts of your business so that each area of your business is covered in a different category of your site.

Later on in this lesson we will also look at some tools that will help you create a blue print or a road map for your business using free Mind Mapping tools.

But for now, Lets look at some excellent examples of how important it is to create specific categories and sub categories for you to place your content in.

One of the best sites that I know of for looking at how to structure your website is Ebay.com.

Please watch the video as I explain how you can use the ebay example to help build your sites blueprint.

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Below I have included some additional screenshots on how to use ebay as a guide to set up your site.

If you look at the Ebay home page you will see a section called ‘Shop your Favorite Categories’.

If you click on any one of these categories it will take you to another page where you will see a breakdown of that particular category, these are the “sub categories” of the main category.

This is what I mean when I talk about sub-sections of your business.

So if we look at using this model as a guide, we would assume that your website’s Domain name or URL will be encompassing what market your overall business or website is servicing, and each category within your website will be a sub-category of your business.

Another good example to look at is About.com.

On the right hand side of the home page you will see the sidebar that will give you three options, one will be ‘Browse our Channels’, the second, will be ‘Explore our Topics’ and the third will be, ‘See what’s Hot Now’.

Click on either ‘Browse our Channels’ or ‘Explore our Topics’ and you will see hundreds of different categories and channels to look through. All good examples of how to structure a website.

Once you click on a particular category or channel you will then see how that category or channel is broken up into specific sub-sections or sub categories of that category.

One more site that is also good for getting an idea on how to plan your website is called Dmoz.org.

Go to Dmoz and click on any of these categories to see the lists of sub-categories within that category.

With over 590,000 categories, could you imagine how many webpages that would be? what would this site be like if they just threw up their webpages in a haphazard and random way.

You would never find anything, so you would just leave without ever coming back.

Another great example of a well structured website is a site that everybody has heard of called Amazon.com.

Go to the Amazon website and look at how they have set up their categories. Again this site is massive.

The amount of content on these sites is just mind boggling, but if you were to look at the home page, you would feel pretty confident that you could go to the exact information that you were looking for without to much difficulty.

All because of a simple user friendly well structured system of managing the content within the site.

Hopefully by now you are starting to see the importance of structuring your website according to what categories you have within your business.

By going through this process you are building a rock solid foundation to work from and you’re also setting up and creating a user friendly website that your visitors will find easy to use and navigate around so they can find what it is that they need.

You want the visitors to your site to come back, so don’t make it difficult for them to find the relevant information that will help them solve their problem.

Building The Blueprint.

The next step in this initial set up stage is to set out your site so you can actually see the structure or the skeleton of how everything will all tie together.

I want to introduce you to some free tools that you can use online or if you prefer you can download and use on your computers hard drive.

I have tried both methods and I have found that by utilizing the free online services, I have the freedom and ability to work on any computer in any location as long as I can access the Internet.

The tools that you are about to see are Mind Mapping tools, these will help you create a visual picture of how your website will be structured.

This exercise will also help you to stay focused on your initial goals and will also reduce confusion down the track, it also keeps you from that feeling of becoming overwhelmed.

Using mind maps is a great way of keeping track of where you are at now and where you need to go.

The first mind mapping software that I want you to have a look at is mindmeister.com

Watch the video below on how to set up your free account.

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Here are some additional screen shots and software’s you could look at to help you out.

This is a free online Mind Mapping tool, and is the current tool that I am personally using.

Setting up an account is very easy, initially you just need to enter a valid email address.

You will then receive an email with a link asking you to click on it, by clicking on this link you are telling the mindmeister website you have supplied the correct email address and you give them permission to send you emails in the future.

Just click on the link sent to your email account and a new window will open up, you can then proceed with setting up your free account by filling out your User-name and log in details.

One of the things I like about Mindmeister is you can share your Mind Maps with your business partners or any individual that can give you some input and guidance with building your website.

They do have a paid service that allows you all kinds of other benefits, but to be honest I personally haven’t found the need to upgrade.

The free version has everything I need in order to build a good quality blueprint for any website that I want to create.

Another excellent Mind Mapping software that can be downloaded to your computer is a software call Free Mind,

Click here for the Free Mind website.

There are free tutorials on the web on how to use this Free Mind Mapping software but they can be a little hard to find at times and there can also be a bit of a learning curve involved in figuring out how to use all of the functions and tools that come with this software.

Free Mind was my preferred Mind Mapping tool until I started to use mindmiester.com.

Lastly but not least is another free Mind Mapping software called VYM.

The VYM stands for View Your Mind.

The View Your Mind software creates a much nicer looking Mind Map than Free Mind does, but from my experience with this product it does not have the functions and abilities that Free Mind or Mindmiester have.

But to be fair to this software, I haven’t used this in some time, so the latest version could be much better than the version I have originally used.

The VYM does come with a user guide which is helpful but it also can take a bit of getting used to.

You can read more about, and Download the VYM  mind Mapping Software from here. www.insilmaril.de/vym

Ok so now its time to start building your blueprint. Below is a short video on how I use www.mindmeister.com, A couple of important points that I really want to emphasies is you have four or five major or key categories and build your site around these categories.

Watch the video to see what I mean.

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So just to recap…

We have looked at how important it is to set up your site with a good structure and design, and the best way to keep everything in perspective is to map out all of your ideas using Mind Maps.

It’s good to remember we are not building a simple five to ten page website that would normally cost you a thousand dollars if you were to get a web developer to build, that sits out in the oblivion of cyberspace.

We are building a site that will become a business in it’s own right,

A profit generating machine that will be hard at work seven days a week 24 hours a day with no sick days or holiday pay, you won’t ever have to pay superannuation or long service leave to!

It is my intention to help you create a business in it’s own right generating income from any part of the word any time of the day or night.

So your Homework for this week is to figure out what you want to cover in your website and start creating your roadmap.

I suggest you take some time to think about your business, the market your business services, your clients and possible products that you could sell from your site.

Try to come up with about twenty categories and subcategories and start creating a mind map for your site.

Once we have set up our domain name and hosting account, and have our site online, we will then come back to our list of categories and start building our site.

In the next lesson we will be looking at some basic keyword research and how to choose your domain name.

Good luck.

Disclaimer.

By using the information in this document, you agree to do so entirely at your own risk.