Easy Steps to a Great Site

Tying Up Loose Ends

Even if your site's visitors will number in dozens rather than millions, they'll use many different browsers running on a wide range of systems. Some of your visitors will browse at breakneck speeds over a broadband connection on a 1-GHz or faster Pentium 4 running Windows XP; others will be stumbling along on a geriatric Windows 95 machine with a 33-kbps modem. Test your site on as many types of systems as possible, try it on every version of every browser that you can get your hands on, and use all kinds of access devices, from an office T1 connection to an old 33-kbps modem.

Where Is Everybody?

You can build the best site in the world, filled with information and services that your target audience will love, but you won't draw any visitors until you spend some time promoting your site.

The first way most people think of publicizing a Web site is by submitting it to search engines. Many site owners spend considerable time and effort making sure that their site ranks near the top when a prospective visitor enters specific search terms. But quantity isn't everything. In some cases, getting a couple dozen of the right people to your site can be more advantageous to you than getting thousands of the wrong people there.

Think about who you're trying to attract. For some local-interest or special-purpose sites, getting ranked in a search engine might not be the best way to go. When your site serves a small, dedicated community of visitors, a Web ring, which is a site that lists links to other sites on a specific subject, or a banner-exchange program, such as Microsoft BCentral's Banner Network, might be the best bet.

You submit your banner to the ring or exchange and agree to allow other banners to appear somewhere on your site on a rotating basis, just as your banner will rotate onto others. You gain free publicity, but you lose some control over your site's content because you won't know whose site banner will display when a visitor comes to your site. Yahoo's WebRing directory lists hundreds of Web rings in dozens of categories. You'll also find a list of banner exchanges on Yahoo.

It Ain't Over Till...

The site's up, your traffic is increasing, the postings are piling up in the message board, and all the e-mail comments about the site are glowing. But remember, your work isn't done: It's really just beginning. There will always be more content to add, new images to place, and revolutionary Web technologies to explore. No matter how carefully you plan, something will always surprise you.

But provided you maintain a strong sense of the site's goals and its target audience, Web services and free add-ons make it just as easy to run a great Web site as it is to run a good one.