Poor Richard's Web Site Author
Reviewed by John Crossley FISTC LCGI [1999]
Web sites are essential to most companies these days, and even to most freelance
technical authors, so a book which shows you how to create your own web site
easily and quickly is likely to be very useful. The blurb on the front cover
says "plain Geek-free, common-sense advice on building a low cost web site"
and that makes the book appeal to me.
The book is in three distinct parts, which makes for easy navigation:
- Preparation
- Creation
- Promotion
Naturally, there is an American flavour to the book, but the Internet is
such an international affair that the national characteristics that Peter
describes are easily ignored. In his Introduction, Peter takes us back to
1732, to the time when Benjamin Franklin published the very first edition
of "Poor Richard's Almanac". That used the new and sophisticated communication
system (a printing press) to distribute the words of wisdom throughout the
English-speaking world. Now we can all do the same, but more effectively and
speedily, by using the Internet. The process does not have to be expensive
or difficult, despite what the advertisements tell you.
The first stage in the preparation is the rather obvious one of deciding
what the web site is intended to achieve. If you cannot come up with a positive
reason for creating a web site, then don't do it. Forget fashion, don't copy
your competitors, just write down your ideas of what the site should do for
you or your company. It is all too easy to say "make money" and to read about
others who are doing just that - or claim to be doing so. But that is not
enough, and you must be more specific.
If you just want to spread some information about your products, then a simple
site will be good enough, but if you intend to take orders from your web site
then you need a different design which will be much more complicated. Not
impossible - Peter tells you how to create such a site and quotes many companies
that have abandoned catalogues on paper in favour of catalogues on web pages.
It is then not such a big step to start selling to all comers, instead of
just to your local contacts. Instead of spending a lot of money on expensive
advertisements, companies are setting up their own web sites in such a way
that customers anywhere can place orders and pay for the goods by secure credit
card transactions.
The range of products mentioned runs from hot spicy sauces to motorcars,
and it is interesting to see Peter describe his own failure and then what
he did to identify and correct the fault. He had set up a web site to offer
his expertise as a technical writer, and he got no results at all. He reckoned
that was because companies could find writers locally, so he changed the offer
to something more specific - writing Windows Help files for software companies.
That got him a number of enquiries and some work, almost immediately, because
the special expertise was more difficult to find locally.
Seeing the mistakes that other people have made is often a good way of avoiding
making the same mistake yourself, and the book could pay off handsomely just
on that point alone.
In Chapter 2, there is a detailed description of the items that a small company
would need before setting up a Web site, and for many readers these items
will already exist.
There are a number of ways in which to set up your own web page, ranging
from the simple personal pages hosted on their big web sites by many Internet
Service Providers (ISPs), to the much more complicated idea of providing your
own web site. Peter remarks that you will have more control over your web
pages if you put them on your own web site, but he goes on to say that this
is the "open-your-wallet" method. There are examples of "cyber-malls" which
are the equivalent of the modern out-of-town shopping malls. However, examples
are given of the "here today and gone tomorrow" aspect of some of these activities.
There are several ways in which a company can set up what looks like their
own web site, and some of them look quite devious. Appendix A gives a long
checklist of the questions to be asked before you spend any money.
Although there are over 100 pages on what to call your web page and where
to put it, the explanations are delightfully easy to understand.
There are 70 pages on how to design your web page, and the purpose of the
page or site is again stressed. You can get someone else to design the page
for you, and Peter shows what you must specify and what you must avoid. If
you decide to do the work yourself, you will need to know something about
the HTML layout structure and there is enough here to help you to design a
simple page. There is also a lot of advice that will make life easier for
you and your web page readers.
Web pages should invite the reader to take some action - possibly by filling
in a form asking for more information. Or if you are brave and clever enough,
you can make it easy for the reader to place an order. Peter shows lists of
sites where you might be able to download HTML pages with forms which you
may be able to adapt for your purposes - you do not need to understand what
you are doing, because it can all be tested before being let loose on the
world at large.
It is good to be able to get people to place orders from your web page, but
Peter points out that you should always get a snailmail address as well as
an e-mail address. It is easy to get so engrossed in the fascination of e-mailing
that you forget to ask where to send the goods, and it is always useful to
have e-mail addresses for future mailings.
Descriptions are given of the many secure systems for taking credit card
payments on the web page order and Peter assures us that it is harder to steal
a credit card number on the web than it is in the real physical world.
When you set up a business to work on a web page, you should always get the
client's e-mail address, then you can send updates and other messages to a
lot of people quite easily. Peter shows how to send the messages to many people,
in just the same way that we do in the ISTC Independent Authors Special Interest
Group. Many people will read a personal e-mail message but not bother to read
your web page. The e-mail message is compelling, and the web page is not.
Unfortunately, this is the e-mail equivalent of the junk fax and mail. It
seems that some people leave their web browsers running for long periods,
even overnight, collecting the information from web pages and the links that
they contain. Not wise, Peter says, because the program may fail just after
you have gone home. Much better to leave the program working during your lunchtime,
or when you are sure to come back soon. And if you design a web page that
contains many links, test them all to make sure that they work. But you cannot
be sure they will work tomorrow!
That is not the end - once you have got your web pages designed and on offer
to the big wide world, you still have work to do - you have to tell people
that your pages exist and persuade them to have a look. You know about the
value of press releases and e-mail provides an ideal way of getting press
releases out to the right people. The releases will have to be well written,
of course, and Peter shows examples of good texts which show the benefits
that the magazine's readers may get by using the product or process. Appendix
B includes a good checklist.
There are just over 400 pages of useful information in this book, and I particularly
like the style, because of the examples that are given. In addition, there
are so many references to sources of information that this one book is almost
a library on the subject of web pages and sites.
I have just one criticism - the word "Poor" in the title is out of character
- there is nothing poor about this book.
Top Floor Publishing, Lakewood, CO 80226, USA. 1998. ISBN 0-9661032-8-9
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