Web Pages 101

Just in case everyone needs a refresher, whenever you are building a website there are some key pages you should include from the time of your launch, and which you should constantly check for accuracy and link workability.

The first is your ‘About Us’ page. This is where you can really sell your site, brag about your accomplishments, present your references and convince others why your site is the best on the market. You can include a short history of how your site came into being, and highlight the owner(s). Link out to relevant areas from your about me page.

A ‘Contact Us’ page. This should be separate from your About page, and should be professional, clear and friendly. Include your full mailing address, phone and fax numbers (toll free if you have them) and you email contact, chat if available and personal assurance that all contacts will be promptly attended to. This is extremely important and can make a world of difference when trying to land a client or head of any problems. Make sure you are available for certain hours each week so you can be reached.

Everyone should have a copyright notice on their site. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean you have given up your rights to your own original content. You can and should check the web frequently for other people trying to make a profit off of your hard work and hound them until you get results if you find offenders. Some foreign sites will occasionally be uncooperative, but in most cases you can deal with ‘scarpers’ with a simple DMCA notice.

A privacy policy and security page is a must if you ever collect any information about your visitors. A separate page for this is the best thing, and you can usually find a good boilerplate for simple sites. It is a good idea to promise you will never sell any information collected, and you should definitely keep that promise!

You should have a custom 404 message in case one of your links breaks. You can usually manage to salvage your visitor with an appropriately regretful message accompanied by an alternate suggestion of an option they can try. This can often result in managing to keep the visitor browsing onsite instead of leaving convinced your site is ill managed.

Last but certainly not least are sitemaps. You want one for your site itself, with a clear progression of pages categorized for easier navigation, and a separate on (or offshoot) for articles and so on. If you make your site transparent and easily navigable, you will have a much better approval rating among consumers.

Make sure you have a home page as well. As startling as it may seem, many get caught up in creating landing pages that are specific for different things and forget to have a master home page. This should be the destination for many basic links, and should provide a stable platform for exploring your site.

Happy Site-Building!

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