How to build a great website or web page.

Not on the web? You're dead or dying... just may not know it yet.

We get a few emails a year wanting to know how we built such a great website. Here's the basics, without getting picky, or to technical.
You need pictures and informative pages. Content rules. To be seen you'll need to make at least 500 pages.

Yeah, Yeah, don't freak. It just takes persistence.
Map the website before you start with a simple flow of what you want to say and what you want your company or organization communicate. THIS IS VERY,VERY IMPORTANT! Keep updating this map as you develop the pages. There needs to be a map to start. It can be ignored only after you get a few hundred pages built and the main core set up. We built our site several times in the late 90's because we had no clue where we were going with it. And we're still adapting our website as the web evolves. But we messed the structure up at first and had to rebuild it because we didn't map our ideas out.

Make your web pages honest and as non-commercial as you can while still displaying your product.

You have three seconds of stay or leave per visitor, do not waste it on flash, java, pop ups, large pictures or large worded, flowery text. KISS, keep it simple, stupid! Say it clear text, if you can't, then you need to figure out what you're doing or what your trying to do a little better.
If they do not find what they're after, or something that leads them to what they're after, in three seconds, they leave. Simple, clear pages of information rule!
Lists they leave, short descriptive lists with pictures might help you a lot, without killing you. If you're not technical, write a couple of paragraphs about each thought, product, or service you want to include on the website and build that into a portfolio with pictures that you can hand to a professional web developer.

Web page software.

When you start slamming pictures everywhere we've found OpenOffice to be a wonderful application. . Just like building a Word or Wordperfect document, but in html. Seamonkey also has a Composer that does a good job for simple pages. If you can run a computer and do a Facebook or work with simple image software like Gimp, you can build pages.
Pictures need alternate text and title that makes sense. Pictures without alternate text are a waste. Too many pictures also cause a lot of problems. More that one or two pictures, and you'll have to put them in a table format or they'll float all over the place. With Seamonkey you usually can do more than a few pictures at one time. Right click on the image after you've inserted it and you can float it right or left and add alternate text.
Pictures need to be compressed. Picture size needs to be less than 100 k per picture. Again huge picture sizes hurt, you can make pictures that are up to 800X800 pixels and compress them down to 100or so kilobytes.
Pages need a description and title for each page. Each thought on each page needs a header. Best if you can build pages with several ways of expressing one thought  per web page.
You'll need pages and pages of INFORMATION, not sales pitch, nor tripe, information. Build one page for every idea/thought you have or want to refer to. Ten pages, HA! Hundred pages might be found, five hundred pages and you'll get into the top 30 listings on Google. Each page reflects about one customer per year for a fair website, 10 per year for a good website. Each one THOUSAND visitors is about one customer. We get about 5-10,000 uniques per day. (That translates into maybe 100,000 visitors a day as you are unique only once, or until you clear your cookies.) Thirty visitors per day and you've wasted your time, a thousand a day and you'll start noticing it no matter what the subject is.
Build relevant links (connections between pictures and pages, or page connections) within your site. Say you're building a kitchen website, put the pans in one directory, pictures of pans in a picture directory under the pans, make one page for each pan going back to to the pan directory, pan directory. Pan directory needs a small thumbnail for each page and a sentence about each pan. pictures (including thumbnail) need to be named for each pan, as specific as possible, with no spaces in name, use _ between words.
No links out to other sites unless it's a friend or a GREAT site. Do not email me asking for links to a crumby site you built on a Friday afternoon, or paid some hack to build on a Friday afternoon. Good sites take a lot of time and energy and will attract links.

Be involved! Your website is how the world sees your company. Each web page needs to have your personality.

If you're planning on putting a site up, you, the CEO, president or owner have, HAVE to write much, or all of the basic stuff, and map or coordinate the site. A good web designer will badger the hell out of you for content, he/she cannot flavor the site the way you want it, nor knows your business as you do. The more you avoid providing content, the less the site reflects your standards, your customers, or where you want the business to go. A bad website can be worse than no website, as most people see your website as your exposed soul, not your business card. A bad website reflects on YOU the owner or CEO. Put up a suggestion or complaint page and read it at least the first few months before delegating to a lesser, but still import person. That person is controlling your future. Ignoring input is deadly. Think out it this way, maybe 500 people a day drive by your store, would you make sales if the windows were broken, the building obviously not repaired and an sign with the wrong name on it.
Take a notebook with you, write a page a day, revise it until comfortable with it, then set down and write the pages or feed them to your web designer, with pictures.
Check your website for broken links as you build it with Xenu, Klinkstatus or whatever link checker you feel comfortable with. Broken links pique people and they leave or get lost.
I've had to cold boot my computer before on some sites that had 200 meg. PDF files. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed, nor returned. Simple, information pages written in good html or CSS are best. No bells, no whistles, no bull, no direct sales, indirect sales are ok.

Check your website and what you think are your competitors with Alexa.
If in windows (also works in Wine) also check content with
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/keyex.htm do not fill the page with targeted keywords, fill the page with information about the subject, keywords come from that subject naturally. Use keyword extractor to build your titles and headings, they should reflect your subject. If keyword extractor comes back with mostly words not related to your subject, you'll need to rewrite the page to more target your subject. Information about the subject if more important than ANYTHING else. One page per subject. You cannot reach stardom on the web by asking for links, paying for inclusion, or spending one hour building a website. A good website is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you cannot do that quickly and easily. You can pay overture or Google for ad words once you get something for the public to see and use. Paying for inclusion of a moronic site is really, really stupid, but I've hit many an ad word and gone to a site with nothing there. Cost them fifty cents or so for me to see their stupid mistakes. Spend time making your site full of information and pictures about your subject or product. Expect it to pay you back after a year or so, not a day or so. A year to build, a year to pay back, then it just sets there and makes money or contacts with just a little work.

Make a simple menu or side bar to direct people about your site.  Have someone other than you try to find something on your site.  Do not tell them it's your site and ask them what they think of the site.