Your web site should be an expanded version of an ad for a newspaper or a phone book ad with the details of your full brochures and it should be available to the whole world.

We will build your site for access to the world not just to a suburb of the world. Many sites have enhancements that are not friendly to the user. We see more and more sites that only work with MicroSoft Internet Explorer. AOL is a big audience and AOL is not built on the IE browser. We want your company visible to everyone. We will fully assist you in the process of building the site and make it understandable to you and your clients.

Our major concern is that your site will be compatible or friendly with all browsers. To avoid extra cost to you, we request that we do not build the site for each browser's needs. Also, we do not want to have your client go to another site to get a "plug-in" just to view your site or have comments, "this site best viewed with xxx-browser." The chances of the client coming back are minimal. What typically happens is the client is more mystified by the new gadget and forgets why they found your site. Our process allows all users access to your site without going through additional hoops.

At this time, we do not prefer "frames" as they do not work properly with all browsers and do not give you a very good position within the search engines. We believe that the content of your site can be shown equally as well without frames. We are compliant with very early browsers. It may be unbelievable but many users don't have a 2.4ghz Pentium IV with 2048mb RAM, sound and an T1 connection to the web. Still tody, over 80% of users have standard phone modems. For good Internet page speed, properly adjusted graphics and content are very important. Your site will also view properly without any graphics. For the user that has the graphics turned off, we identify every important graphic for that user. And now the option for PDA's and wireless devices like cell phones that can access the Internet is a big issue with site design. Another major concern is that your site views correctly with all monitor resolutions. This option is not considered by many developers. We test your site with many resolutions and numerous browsers.

DO IT RIGHT

We can build your web site with less expense to you if you will follow the guidelines below:

A web site should have the same characteristics as your "line-card" or your company brochure. Utilize this as your ground plan for your web site. Divide the pages of the brochure as different pages of your site. Examples:

• An index page of your site, similar to the index of a book.
• A page that tells about your company, special employees or history of company and products.
• A page that describes how to contact your department with voice or e-mail services.
• Pages that show product. This can be expanded to describe further details.
• An order form page to order product by e-mail.
• A guest book page to keep a record of visits to your site (future clients).
• A page with upcoming events, schedules etc.

You need to have a plan. Have the site printed and layed out in a folder with the pages that the index refers to. This gives us a head start with your ideas. If we think it won't work we will tell you but you know the most about your business. You must be able to explain your company/products to us with a simple layout. This makes the process quick and less expensive.

We request that you provide the text for your site on floppy disk or e-mailed to Starck Associates. This process provides you the opportunity to error check and develop the text to your approval before we add it to your site avoiding additional expense later. We request that this text be in Word, WordPerfect, WordPad, but preferably in DOS Text format. This can be done in notepad and translates the fastest and best. We request a "paper copy" of your layout that includes the bolded/italic/font changes.

If you provide the graphics on disk, they should be in TIFF, Hi-Res JPEG or EPS. TIFF's and JPEG's should be reduced in size to 600 pixels wide or 400 pixels long. We scan transparencies, line-art, originals photos etc. We will not use copyrighted data or graphics. To legally use a copyrighted graphic on the web requires 13 changes to the graphic.

We accept ZIP drive, QIC formatted tape, or PC and MAC disks.

Text should not have feature attributes such as bold, italic or multiple point sizes. This code does not pass correctly to the web site.

If you have no product or company profile brochure, we will create a graphics-set for you. We provide writing, photography and graphic services.

TO MAKE IT WORK

Make a "key word" list. This process will increase the hits to your site. Please look at our link to the key word process.

Now that you have the key word list, make a sentence or two that have no more than 200 characters with as many of the most important key words. Example: BrandX Shampoo, brunette, blonde, redhead found at cosmetic counters in all department stores or by catalogue in Denver Colorado and has xyz ingredients. That's about 160 characters. Provide this sentence or two with as close to 200 characters as possible and no more. Us as many of the key words as possible. This description of your site is used by some of the search engines to find your site.

WHAT WE DO WITH ALL THE ABOVE

We will take the graphics, text, your layout, key words and the description and build a bullet-proof site. If you want to have your site registered by "pay" search engines, we will forward the option to do so when your site is running. We do not feel that this is a valid option as they are not the most important search engines. You do have the option to have banner ads on the important search engines. We will discuss this with you as needed.