1. Help!  I'm confused.  I hardly know ANYTHING about the Web!  I don't even know the difference between a web page, a web site, and a homepage.
The terminology can be confusing when you first start exploring the Web. Right now you are looking at a single web page, part of a larger web site.  If you click on a link, you will go to another web page.  A single page is everything you can see (or scroll down to) without going anywhere else.  A website is simply a collection of web pages. 

Your homepage is the "front door" of your web site.   The homepage of this site (which happens to be this page) is handwovenwebs.com . Sometimes (though rarely) a homepage is all there is to a site.

By the way, most of our clients are new to the web.  We are skilled at helping you get comfortable in what is, to many of you, a whole new arena.  And we promise not to roll our eyes at any of your questions!

2.  What about a domain name?  
Do I really need one?

In the very early days of the Web, people could get by with a name like mindspring.com/bobsusedcars. Now your business or organization would not be taken seriously unless you have your own domain name - bobsusedcars.com.  (A domain name, by the way, is like "handwovenwebs.com" or "ebay.com" or "amazon.com".)

And domain names, once $70 for two years, are now as inexpensive as $15/year.

Your website address (also called a URL) is so much easier to remember when it is shorter.  An added bonus:  we can set it up so that email sent to info@yoursite.com goes to you at your regular email mailbox.  That way, even if you change service providers (say you move from AOL to earthlink) your email will remain the same.  Sort of like people sending mail to you at Bob's House if you live at 111 N. Main Street, or you move to 12 E. Chestnut---people just send mail to Bob's House and it will catch up with you.  .

TIP:  "www" is no longer necessary or even desirable in the name of your website.  For example, we are "handwovenwebs.com". We don't refer to ourselves as "www.handwovenwebs.com".  That will get you there too, but it is SUCH a mouthful ("double-u double-u double-u dot"), and takes up so much space in print!  And by the way, you don't need to say "http://".  And this thing - / - is called a slash.  "Forward" slash is not necessary as all slashes on the Web are forward slashes.  So now you will never again have to say aitch tee tee pee colon forward slash forward slash double-u double-u double-u dot mysite dot com because "mysite dot com" will do the trick!

Alas, there are always exceptions!  If you cannot get to a site without www, try the www.  Every once in a while, it IS actually necessary.  Go figure!

You say your brother-in-law has volunteered to do your website?  And you are thrilled, because after all, he is "into computers"?

Some of our best customers originally had their brother-in-law design their website! (We LOVE brothers-in-law, because they make our work look so good! And we enjoy re-designing sites as much as we enjoy creating them from scratch.)  

The thing is, being "into computers" no more qualifies you to design a good website than being "into movies" qualifies you to direct Meryl Streep in her next Academy-award winning movie!  

Creating an excellent website is about DESIGN.  
A professional web designer knows how to lay out elements on a page so they are engaging and easy to follow; how to select color that supports your goal and is easy to read; how to design navigation so people can get from one place to another -- and back! 

Creating an excellent website is about THE WRITTEN WORD. 
At Handwoven Webs, we are masters of weaving words and pictures to convey meaning clearly and powerfully.  And we love attention to detail.  In fact, we double-dog dare you to find any tpyos on this site!  By the way, if you find any boo-boos on this site, please tell us - we want to know.  We promise to be grateful, not insulted. [And yes, we did tpyos on purpose - just to see if you are paying attention!]

For those of you out there who love the written word as much as we do, have you ever read Joseph M. Williams' Style - Toward Clarity and Grace?  That is one of our favorite books on writing.  Come to think of it,  our websites tend to exemplify clarity and grace!

Creating an excellent website is about HUMAN information processing, just as much as it is about COMPUTER information processing! 
Did you know that the reason our phone numbers have seven digits is because that is about all the human brain can easily handle? (Ours, by the way, is 689-8989!  Notice how we made it an especially easy one for you to remember?)

This seven item memory thing carries over into web design in the area of menus:  it is best, if possible, to keep the menu at or around seven items!  (See about us to see how it is we know these things . . . )

TOP TEN REASONS TO HAVE A WEBSITE

Fame!  Fortune!  Vast riches!   All your dreams come true! Yes?  Well no, not exactly.  Sure, it is possible to make good money from your website, but that is really only one of many reasons to get a website.  

1.  TIME   If you run your own business, you know it is more than a nine-to-five effort.  At the same time, more and more of us are seeking balanced lives - time to be, not just to do. A website can extend the hours of your business to twenty four hours a day, seven days a week by offering your clients information any time, day or night, while you are off hiking, playing with the kids, or contemplating your navel.  And clients can communicate with you - via forms and email - asking questions, stating their desires, placing an order . . . while you are taking a bath or reading a good book.

2.  SPACE   Instead of limiting yourself to clients in your own town, expand your vision -- as wide as it will go!  While some businesses have definite geographic restrictions, many can serve clients equally well across the street or across the ocean.  

BONUS:  Your tiny storefront or even your garage office can have as much visibility as someone else's suite of offices in the high-rent district!

3.  THE ENVIRONMENT   Do you really expect everyone to store (in a place where they can find it again) all the information they need to deal with you? Your catalog, your flyer, your order forms, your calendar of events?  (Now where did I put that brochure on growing the rarest of orchids from that little company in Arizona . . . what was its name??)  All your clients have to do is find you - ONCE - bookmark you, and they have you and your updated information always at their fingertips!  Help minimize paper trash and clutter:  get a website!

4.  SOCIAL ACTION   The Internet offers us the opportunity to interact in a way that is unprecedented in all of history.  Perhaps the closest thing would be back when we lived in very small communities and gathered around the well and exchanged information and ideas.  Now we have a way to communicate and to collaborate easily and effectively through cyberspace. 

5. HIGH TOUCH   Not only do we not live in villages centered around a well anymore, but we don't even stay put in the towns and cities we start off in, so friends and family are likely to be scattered to the four winds.  The web offers a way for families to share special occasions like weddings, graduations, special birthdays and anniversaries, and family reunions.  Handwoven Webs can create a site for a wedding that can start with invitations, directions to the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, where people are registered, a private discussion group for organizing things,  and then then actual photos can be put online along with vows, guest best wishes, etc.  It is a wonderful way for those who attended to remember the event as well as for Great-Aunt Minnie in Chicago who couldn't come.  And when Great-Aunt Minnie turned eighty and all 8 children and all twenty-seven grandchildren gathered 'round, they made a humongous site for the party, the family tree, pictures of everyone at key stages in their lives, and so forth.  (By the way, these sites can be password protected so they can only be seen by "invited guests"!)

6.  ADVERTISING   Small businesses know that paid advertising can be quite expensive.  Research shows that it tends to take regular insertion of a print ad to be effective.  You can make your advertising dollars go much farther if you include your website address in your paid advertising.  And don't forget to put it on your business cards, brochures, receipts, flyers, newsletters, a sign at your checkout, etc.  

7.  1000 WORDS   A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words.  If what you have to say is highly visual, the web is the way to do it.  Color photographs on the web cost no more than black and white text.  

8.  TIMELINESS    Does your information change on a regular basis?  Do you have a calendar you want to keep updated?  It is easy to update a website! 

9.  INTERACTIVITY   Do you want to serve as a gathering point for the exchange of information?  Do you want to gather information from your clients?  A website can make it happen.

10.  YAGOTTALOTTASAY  Do you have scads and scads of information you'd like to make available?  Stories and essays and whole  books maybe?  A gazillion products? Databases full of information?  Ya gotta getta website!

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