What to include on a website?

[makebelieve]

Im going to be setting up a website next week. I was wondering what to include?

Its a mobile nail technician website...
So far I've thought

Treatment & price list
Special offers
Gallery
Treatment Guidelines
Contact Me

Anyone add anything else?

 

[DelDel]

maybe a little about yourself, your training, where you work/how far you will travel

 

[makebelieve]

maybe a little about yourself, your training, where you work/how far you will travel

Ah yeh, duhh an obvious one! thank you

 

[Ruth Mills]

Generally...

(1) Home/welcome page
(2) About Me/About Us page (if more info than fits on home page)
(3) One or more treatment menu/price list pages which may or may not contain aftercare info, etc, although aftercare info could also go on another page if preferred.
(4) Products - if you want to give more info about the product ranges you use - any retail products you offer, etc...
(5) Special offers, assuming that you run special offers.
(6) News/Blog - if you want to keep your clients updated with beauty tips, new products, etc.
(7) Gallery - for showcasing your work.
(8) Testimonials - if you want to show testimonials from your clients.
(9) Links - if you want to swap links with other sites to get higher up on Google.
(10) Contact page, possibly with a contact form.

Things like the home page and treatment menus will be fairly mandatory, normally it's a good idea to have a contact form; the other pages would be optional based on personal preference.

 

[makebelieve]

Generally...

(1) Home/welcome page
(2) About Me/About Us page (if more info than fits on home page)
(3) One or more treatment menu/price list pages which may or may not contain aftercare info, etc, although aftercare info could also go on another page if preferred.
(4) Products - if you want to give more info about the product ranges you use - any retail products you offer, etc...
(5) Special offers, assuming that you run special offers.
(6) News/Blog - if you want to keep your clients updated with beauty tips, new products, etc.
(7) Gallery - for showcasing your work.
(8) Testimonials - if you want to show testimonials from your clients.
(9) Links - if you want to swap links with other sites to get higher up on Google.
(10) Contact page, possibly with a contact form.

Things like the home page and treatment menus will be fairly mandatory, normally it's a good idea to have a contact form; the other pages would be optional based on personal preference.

Ooohh thank you! Is there any colour schemes I should avoid?

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ooohh thank you! Is there any colour schemes I should avoid?

I wouldn't really like to pass judgement - someone might like a colour scheme that somebody else absolutely hates!

But, whatever colour scheme you choose, it's important that the text is easy to read - make sure there is enough contrast between the text colour and the background behind it - normally it's a good idea to avoid putting text on top of "busy" backgrounds too as this can be really hard to read...

 

[makebelieve]

I wouldn't really like to pass judgement - someone might like a colour scheme that somebody else absolutely hates!

But, whatever colour scheme you choose, it's important that the text is easy to read - make sure there is enough contrast between the text colour and the background behind it - normally it's a good idea to avoid putting text on top of "busy" backgrounds too as this can be really hard to read...

Ok

Is there a good font to use? Thank you for the help!!:hug:

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ok

Is there a good font to use? Thank you for the help!!:hug:

You'd be best going for "web-friendly" fonts, and its also good practice to create a "font stack" with your preferred font first, and then second and third choice fonts etc, in case a particular person's computer doesn't have your first choice of font.

e.g. "Century Gothic" is a nice "sans-serif" font, so if you wanted to use Century Gothic, then your font stack might look like this:

font-family: "Century Gothic", "Trebuchet MS", "Verdana", "Arial", "Helvetica", sans-serif;

So, your first choice is Century Gothic, but if they haven't got that, use Trebuchet MS, if they haven't got that, then use Verdana, etc... the "sans-serif" entry at the end is telling the browser just to use whatever generic sans-serif font is specified for that particular system if none of the other fonts you have specified are installed.

Likewise, for a serif font, you might have something like...

font-family: "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook", "Times New Roman", "Times", serif;

 

[makebelieve]

You'd be best going for "web-friendly" fonts, and its also good practice to create a "font stack" with your preferred font first, and then second and third choice fonts etc, in case a particular person's computer doesn't have your first choice of font.

e.g. "Century Gothic" is a nice "sans-serif" font, so if you wanted to use Century Gothic, then your font stack might look like this:

font-family: "Century Gothic", "Trebuchet MS", "Verdana", "Arial", "Helvetica", sans-serif;

So, your first choice is Century Gothic, but if they haven't got that, use Trebuchet MS, if they haven't got that, then use Verdana, etc... the "sans-serif" entry at the end is telling the browser just to use whatever generic sans-serif font is specified for that particular system if none of the other fonts you have specified are installed.

Likewise, for a serif font, you might have something like...

font-family: "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook", "Times New Roman", "Times", serif;

Oh fantastic thank you! I was going to go with either Verdana or Georgia. My Dad is going to help me out build one up. But thoose tips have been very helpful!

Thanks!

 

[Ruth Mills]

Oh fantastic thank you! I was going to go with either Verdana or Georgia. My Dad is going to help me out build one up. But thoose tips have been very helpful!

Thanks!

Verdana and Georgia are both nice fonts.

You can set the font either in a separate CSS stylesheet file (which is normally the best way to do it), e.g. if you wanted every single bit of text in your website to have the same font, then you could add the following to your CSS:

body
{
font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

If you wanted your main headings in a separate font to everything else (e.g. Georgia instead of Tahoma), then you could add the following CSS for h1 headings, for example:

h1
{
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}

Or you can just use the "style" attribute for individual elements on a given web page, e.g. if you wanted to have one particular paragraph with a different font, you could do something like:

<p style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif;">blah blah blah</p>

for example...

 

[smooth]

Ruth you certainly know your stuff! It's a good idea to let the user know who you are and the quality of your work, at the end of the day you need to entice them to you so that they make a booking. When you get it finished why not post it up for feedback before you make the site live?

 

[Claire83]

I agree, putting it up for a critique is a good way for people to spot flaws (I'm sure there won't be any!) and you get to see what other people think who are in the same business as you.

Pictures are always good, and not just for a gallery. I think a website with pictures to break up text is a lot more interesting.

Plus don't forget to purchase stock photos if you use any.

Look forward to seeing the final result.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Pictures are always good, and not just for a gallery. I think a website with pictures to break up text is a lot more interesting.

Plus don't forget to purchase stock photos if you use any.

Well said, Claire! Using stock photos without purchasing them means playing a game of Russian Roulette as to if and when you will be sued, especially if the stock photos in question happen to be owned by Getty Images or Corbis Images!

Be careful with product logos and promotional images too. CND, Minx and Dashing Diva require you to add a copyright message to your website if using any of their logos and images on your site, for example. If in doubt, ask permission - it's a lot easier (and less embarrassing) than being caught out later down the line!

 

[makebelieve]

Ohh thanks, I'll be using the NSI logo at the bottom. Who can I ask permission from? Sorry totatll new to this!

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ohh thanks, I'll be using the NSI logo at the bottom. Who can I ask permission from? Sorry totatll new to this!

You'd probably be best asking the distributor that you buy your NSI products from in the first instance, hope that helps.

 

[smooth]

Everything is subject to copyright so if you use images provided by the manufacturer they are authorising your use of their property.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Everything is subject to copyright so if you use images provided by the manufacturer they are authorising your use of their property.

You've got to be so careful too! I did a "like for like" re-working of someone's website earlier this year (she had an old "Mr Site" website), re-using the images verbatim off her old "Mr Site" site... and then Nouveau Lashes got in touch with her asking to take one of their images down, even though she was trained with them and used their products.

So it's always better to double check if in doubt.

 

[smooth]

Never heard of Mr Site! As we all aagree though, if you have permission, which with me is getting the images direct from the manufacturer, you will be fine. I had a password e-mailed to me so that I could "grab" the images, they have me on file as having this password so they can't say anything to me for using their images.

They have recently updated their marketing images though, so if you use the old images you are in breech of copyright.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Never heard of Mr Site! As we all aagree though, if you have permission, which with me is getting the images direct from the manufacturer, you will be fine. I had a password e-mailed to me so that I could "grab" the images, they have me on file as having this password so they can't say anything to me for using their images.

They have recently updated their marketing images though, so if you use the old images you are in breech of copyright.

Mr Site is one of those website generator things... it's probably the worst one I've seen for churning out HTML syntax errors (e.g. it's in the habit of creating its list entry tags with a capital <LI> and closing them with a lower case </li> - or vice versa - I forget which way round it was - but it caused the W3C HTML validator to throw an almighty wobbly when it tried to read it)...