Web Services, Internet Services, web design, site planning, upgrades at Johns Creative Services

Probably the most important tool we have today is the internet. It has changed the way we access information so dramatically, we now expect a professional company to have a well designed, informative website. When it comes down to choosing between companies, your website may be the deciding factor. If you don't have one, you're missing out entirely!

Tell us your Goals - See TIP > Plan your Project
First we listen while you explain what your vision is, what you want to accomplish and how you are looking to achieve those goals. Is it for business, or personal? If it's for business, will there be products / services for sale? Do you have a slogan that you use on business cards, letterheads, etc?

How do you want your site to Look? - See Templates > View Samples
Then we ask if you have a "look" in mind. What colors would you like for text and background. How would you like the navigation to be structured? Do you want all the links to be on the top, or on the left, or on the left and the right? Is there a web site that we can visit that might help explain the "look" you have in mind? Are there any custom images to be created, or do you already have some prepared? We have some Sample Templates that help describe the way links are set up.

Preparing your Content - See TIP > Preparing your Content & Look
Hopefully, you will have some materials ready that include main topics like:
who you are, what you offer, why people should be interested, how you are different than your competition, where to get products, contact you, ect.

These are going to be your main links / pages . . . They will all be connected to your Homepage, and will form the basis of your sites' Navigation. You can put your content together using a simple text editor like Notepad, or Word. You can also use a word processing program such as Word 97, Word 2000, or WordPerfect, or any others you may have.

You can even create your content using an email program such as Outlook Express or Yahoos' compose. By using the "formatted text" version you can create a letter that would contain all the content for a page.

Sending us your Content
We are assuming you have a computer, are online, and probably have an email account. That's the easiest way to send us your text, graphics, etc.
Just mail your material to john@7in1web.com

You can Save Money if you want to do a little bit of the work yourself. If you do have a website or web pages, just let us know your URL (http://www. . .address). If you have existing material from a text editor / word processor, etc. please email your material in the following fashion: just cut and paste it into your email, then format it the way you want, and include a copy of the original document, and any graphics, as a file attachment. Here are the directions how:

You can save time and money by properly submitting and organizing your content. This will help us to better understand how you want your material to look. Remember: If you have existing material, just cut and paste it into your email, then format it the way you want, and include a copy of the original file as an attachment, and include any graphics for that page as attachments too!

PS: If you dont have access to a computer, GIVE US A CALL - we can still help. You can send us your material by fax, or regular mail. We can even prepare your content for you over the phone. It may be costly with the long distance charges, but you don't need a computer to have a website!

Once we have your materials, we can quickly see what the main pages will be, and how to set up your links, sublinks, etc. We will also try to find or create some sort of special ingredient, and include it on each main page. It could be a small Logo and a short phrase like "We make the Best Widgets", or a Sales slogan. . . that keeps appearing on each main page. This effectively BRANDS YOUR SITE.

Your Homepage
Now we create your Homepage with the look you wanted, and easy navigation to all of your main links / pages. Each main topic may need sublinks / pages to quickly navigate within that topic, and the sublinks might not be needed on your homepage. In case anybody gets lost, we want them to hit the "home" link (found on each page) to easily find their way back! Because this is your most important page, it usually takes more time and effort to create.

Your Homepage might include a paragraph that pulls all of your main pages together, and includes things like: a welcome / introduction, who your company is, what your company does, what services or products that it offers or specializes in, why people should take notice, and a good "one liner" or brief selling point. It's designed to open the door to your world, and make people want to come in! Does your homepage do that? maybe you should upgrade today!

Templates Save Money on Future Updates
After designing your homepage, we can use it as a model for all of your other pages. This keeps the "look" of each one consistent, and makes your other pages easier to create. You want each page to have that "look", for now.

But what if you want to change that "look" someday in the future? Let's say you want to change the color of the text and background, or add a graphic, or a different navigation bar to each page. . . sure it can be done, but if there are 50 pages in your site it could take a while, and that costs money.

What if you only had to change ONE page, and all the others would change automatically. . .Wouldn't that be nice? Well believe it or not, it's possibe!

can turn your Homepage into a Template that makes any future upgrades a snap! Any pages using that template would be changed automatically whenever the master Template is changed. Your site is then tested, and when it looks right, the new pages are uploaded.

Voila, an entirely new look to your whole website, for as little as $50. Now that's affordable. Templates can add tremendous updating power to your site, but they do cost more to create than regular pages. After your Homepage is designed we can quote you a price to convert it into Template form. You can decide at that time if you want to use this service or not.

Page Ingredients
All of your pages should have a purpose and a reason why they are needed. But your main pages / links should be more than just functional, they should be special, and make people want to come back!

We try to find that special ingredient, and include it in each main page. It could be a small Logo and a short phrase like "Electric, Moving Art", or a Sales slogan. . . that keeps appearing on each main page. This effectively BRANDS YOUR SITE.

Each page we make for your site will be created with the following in mind:

message:	your short phrase or company slogan what sets you apart from your competition why people should be interested in you, your company, etc where they can easily find your products, services, support clearly conveying your message to your target audience
design:	functional navigation that is easy to figure out a consistency to any Effects that are used in links implementing your logos/ images/ custom backgrounds a uniformed "look" modeled from Homepage or Template another "look" may be needed for data, product pages, etc.

Meta-tags, FX, Optimization - To each page we also do the following:

meta-tags:	These are created to help search engines index /find your pages
	a Title for that page that is search engine specific a Description for that page using keywords and phrases Keywords and search phrases that best describe the page there are many other meta tags for distribution, content, encoding, copyright, and search engine instructions Here's an Advanced Meta-Tag Generator that you can use for FREE
special FX:	There are lots of things that can be added to spice up a site. Some common ones are Links that change color when a mouse goes over them or clicks on them (like the links in the left column of this page). This can also be done with images and are call "rollovers". see some examples There are lots of things that can be done with Java, Javascript and DHTML - but they should all be used sparingly. Lots of things can be done with annimation too. If you know something that you like, we can add it to your Template or Site.
optimizing:	By decreasing the amount of colors in .gif graphics, you can reduce the file size substantially. This makes images load faster, and is necessary in animations. This can also be done with .jpg images, by changing the amount of compression. HTML coding can also be reduced by combining font tags, or creating Style Sheets or XML. The object is to get each page to be as uncluttered as possible, optimized for faster loading. We use CSS Style Sheets whenever necessary. As an example, we use a Style Sheet on this page called "main" to reduce <font> tags and speed up loading, because there is so much text.

If you've been thinking about enhancing your image, or your company . . . . then START by upgrading your website, or you might get left behind. The "cutting edge" companies are constantly changing their sites, to keep up with the times. In doing so, they are affordably enhancing their image, and thus generating more sales. - So look at an upgrade as an investment.

Your own search engine
If your site has a lot of products, links, information, names, addresses, etc. - you may want to have a seach engine to help people navigate quickly. There are several options we can choose from, depending on your site, needs, etc. One choice is on our site. Go ahead and try it out at 7in1Web.com - just type some keywords or phrases in at the Site Search!

You can also let people search the world wide web, without ever leaving your website! This is important, and will increase your websites' "stickyness". Hey, it's hard enough to get people there, you don't want them leaving just to do a search! Many popular search engines offer cut & paste script. If you want an overdose of search engines, visit my PowerSearch Page!

Web counters
If you would like to know how many visits your site is getting, a web counter is a nice way to help monitor traffic. You can do some quick math and see how many visits you got last week, or last month, etc.

There are lots of sites that will offer you a free web counter, but the counter will have the name of their website on it. This is a form of "branding", and increases their sites advertising through each site they are installed.

For a professional image, spend a few dollars and have your own counter. We have several to choose from, and they can start at any number you choose.

Email Forms Handling
If you would like to have people contact you from your website, you will need:

Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is, as long as you don't mind the results coming to you as an email attachment, with all the questions and answers written out in one long string!

This may be fine for some, but not if you want to be able to print the results of the form as an invoice, or save the results to a database, etc. In that case you will need professional form handling. You can get that by:

can create professional email forms that are easily processed, with separate lines for each result.

e-Commerce
If your plans include selling products online, you have several options:

Will you be selling a single product, or do you have various lines and offer multiple products? If you are offering many different items that people can buy in one visit, you will need a shopping cart. This allows people to make more than one selection, adding each to their shopping cart. When they are ready to pay, all of their selections are added up and they pay the amount totaled.

You must also add shipping costs, sales tax for orders originating in your state and other various states and countries. Don't forget to insure your product for delivery against damages, etc. and offer a favorable return policy.

can help you choose and implement the right stategy for your particular e-commerce needs.
Find out more - contact us today

Securing Your Domain Name (your identity on the internet)
If you want a professional internet image, you need to have a name that sticks, and is easily identifiable with your product, service, organization, etc. The cost has always been $70 for 2years, but now people can register for 1 year for Only $20 /year at 2serveU.net - Register Now and get 1 month Free Web Hosting! They even offer $15 Domain Transfers.

Reliable Web Hosting
Your website needs to be housed on a reliable server with auxilary power in case of an outage, have firewall protection for security, ample webspace, fast connection, 24/ 7 tech support, and your own web control panel. Our hosting company is called 2serveU Hosting, and we let you Try before you Buy!

We offer more features than other Hosting plans costing up to 5 Times as much. Here's some of what our $4.95 Starter Plan includes:

DNS transfer / Setup
Your website will be given its' own unique Domain Name, which is pointed to the web server that will "host" your site. The addresses needed to "point" your domain are known as DNS info (Domain Name System) or Nameserver settings. These changes must be done where your Domain Name was purchased.

Maintaining your Website
After your site is completed, you will stilll need a way to make changes to keep your site up to date. We appreciate your business and hope that you to stay on as another one of our happy customers! Because of this, we offer our valued clients special rates for all of their maintenance and web updating needs. Just let us know your changes (email, phone, fax, snailmail), and we will promptly upload the changes to your site!

Future Updates using Templates
If we created templates for your site, we planned to have flexibility over the way your "look and feel" may be altered someday. Let's say you want to change the background color from White with BLACK text to Black with YELLOW text....

Most Web Designers won't tell you about Templates, because it enables quick, easy updates, and they want you to think that hours and hours were spent. We would rather let you know some of the secrets of the trade.

Maintaining your Own Site
Once we are done with your website, you might not need us any more. This may be the case for a lot of people, and that is fine. You have access to all of your account information on the server, so you just change the password, and that will lock us out. If you need our services in the future, please call.

Search Engine Submission
If you want people to be able to find your website, you need to let search engines know your address (URL). This should be done after your meta-tags have been added and your page. You want to drive traffic to you site, and being properly listed with major search engines is a must.

Submission Services: There are places that offer to register you for a fee, and make claims like 500,000 search engines, and #1 Rankings . . . but this is all false. I've even tried out one of the most popular sites myself, and 3 months later the page I registered wasn't listed on 1 seach engine, let alone the 300 they claimed! They even double charged my credit card.

Submission Software: There are programs available that can aid you in submitting your site, and some programs are even quite good. . . but they all have problems . . . half of the search engines don't work, have moved, closed down, changed their submit codes and scripting, or refuse to accept "spam" submissions from that program. The updates that are available for many popular programs don't seem to improve the results.

Online Submission Scripts: Most of these are a joke because they haven't been updated for years. Most of these sites just want to lure you in to sell you their Paid Submission Service, and if the free one doesn't work, chances are their paid service isn't much better.

The Problem: All search engines' submission policies are not the same! To make things worse, they can change at any time! How is that going to be handled by a piece of software, or an easy submission form that hasn't been updated for quite some time? Some search engines also require you to pick the proper category, and then the right subcategories.

Manual Submission: manually submitting to search engines is the only way you can be sure of the current and proper submission guidlines for each search engine. If you're willing to take the time, I've listed direct links to over 140 search engines, and you should read the next section.

Doing your Own URL Submitting
You can spend a lot of time trying to register to all the best Search Engines, Indexes, Directories, Portals, Award Sites, and FFA Links . . . but the most important ones account for about. 80% of all the internet's traffic.

Accessing your web Statistics
Our servers have a bevy of tools available to anyone with internet access. All you do is type in your username and enter in the proper password and you can view all of the traffic statistics for your site, such as:

Gateway Pages
If you want to drive more traffic to your site, gateway pages are very effective! Since the majority of people find websites by using search engines, special tricks are often applied to create higher "rankings". The most acceptable of these are call Gateway Pages (also known as doorways, or Doorway Pages)

Gateway pages are designed to be "search specific", and only use a few well thought of keywords and phrases. These are then repeated in different ways to create the Title of the page, its' Description, and Keywords. These should also be liberally found and used as often as possible in the content of the page.

The purpose of the gateway page is to achieve a HIGHER RANKING when a search engine is used, but only when someone types in those "search specific" keywords or phrases. This page is only supposed to draw people from search engines, and then act as a Gateway, or doorway to your site.

The art of creating successful Gateways is the ability to imagine what phrases and keywords a person would type into a search engine to find your website. Make a list of them, because you will want a separate gateway page for each. Then take those words and phrases and create the proper combination of meta-tags. PS.- Be fairly redundant with their use in the content of each page.

can create Gateway Pages that dramatically increase your search engine Rankings. Each Gateway Page acts like a "finely tuned homepage" that only draws specific customers. That's why they are so powerful. How many "finely tuned homepages" do you want? They're affordable!