I have to admit, I feel kind of odd doing this...sort of. I do have a level of experience on this.

Initially, you can design the best site in the world, but if no one visits it, it does nobody any good. It may be a diamond in the rough, but if that diamond can't be found, it can't be enjoyed.

Purpose

Why do you want a website? That would probably be the best question to ask yourself as you begin to design a website. Is it simply going to be for your school? your association? or more?

Making a site specifically for your school is probably the best choice and the easiest choice. It is a site where you can promote what you offer visitors. You can place a specific coupon for visitors to bring to your school to sign up on a special program. You can also place pictures of your school and your students in action for visitors as well as include testimonials from other school members. You should also place a special section for yourself and fellow assistant instructors. Write a biography for yourself and include a picture. This will allow visitors to walk in to your school and know who to look for.

If you are making a site for an association, it should consist of the above information, just include more information about other association schools and their websites as well as photos and articles about what you do.

If you are looking to do other stuff on the arts, you need to ask yourself what. It has probably already been done, and you can easily submit an article or series of articles to a site like the KenpoNet instead of creating a site to publish your articles. Use what's out there.

Design

Be exciting when you design your site, but not too exciting. I have gone to sites where it takes forever to download because of the amount of graphics and other programming languages incorporated into the site (and I visit these sites on a connection over fifty times faster than a fast dial up connection and they still take forever to download.) Do a favor and consider the customer. Visitors to your site will be from a wide range of backgrounds and probably not have too much experience on computers. Others may have a lot of experience with them. So be obvious in what words are used for links. Keep your pages relatively small and keep images decent sized as well. If you can't download it in fifteen to thirty seconds on a dial-up connection, don't put it on your site. (Exclusion to this is if it is an article or something that visitors expect to be large.)

There are sites with a start-up page thats 56Kb in size; and its just text and pictures and graphics. They could easily make it smaller and more visitor-friendly, but choose to give an overload.

In addition, make the site professional. Keep it clean and easy to navigate. Make it obvious if someone wants to go to an area. Another rule is the three-click rule. Generally, people will not click more than three times to find what they were looking for. From the KenpoNet start page, it is primarily set for a three-click maximum, but occasionally you will have to click four times to get to a given article. Keep the links simple and clean (meaning professional-image wise; I am not assuming anyone would have inappropriate links on their business website). And of course, I would recommend you put a link on your site to mine.

Getting it Seen

This is the challenge. It took me a long time to get the KenpoNet seen on the search engines. And unfortunately (and fortunately), search engines are how people look for things on the Internet. If you are doing a school site, aim its design towards people going to a search engine like www.yahoo.com or www.google.com, www.lycos.com, or www.msn.com and typing in "Kenpo; Indiana", or even more general "martial arts; Indiana", or "Karate, Indiana". (Pretend with me that visitors are looking for schools in your own state, here.)

Now, most people won't go through more than the first couple or three pages that a search engine provides because it begins to seem repetitive and gets a bit boring to those searching. Your goal, then, is to have your site pop up in the first three pages of a search engine. Somehow.

Methods for doing so can include physically submitting your site to whichever search engine you think people frequent. You can also submit your site to search engines using services like www.submit-it.com and others. I used the free option for a while before spending a small amount on their basic package. (Honestly, I have seen no drastic change in my number of visitors with the paid package.)

Another method to getting seen is using those sites that are on the first two or three pages of search results. As an example, the KenpoNet appears on the first page of a Google search for Kenpo. (And if you type in a state name, it often shows up there too in separate state pages from the StudioNet.)

You can easily submit your school to a site like the KenpoNet and place a listing in the StudioNet, it's free. The KenpoNet already gets hits and gets people searching through its studio directory every day. Why not take advantage of that and request your school to be listed on the site? It can't hurt any. And there are numerous other sites out there you can add your information to. Just do a search and begin clicking. It gets your name out there and gets people interested in clicking on your site. Many general martial arts sites have studio directories. Many other sites in general have an option to add a link.

You can also use advertising. Put the website on business cards. Put the website on address information. Swap banner ads with other local businesses. You can easily create a graphic that would easily be used on other sites. And in return, you can place their information on your site.

There are also webrings. The KenpoNet Webring was created for that purpose. People see a webring and click for the next site because of the similar content. And they go to yours or randomly go to another site in the ring.

Return Visitors

Now that you have the site seen, how do you get people to return? You need to maintain the site to keep people returning. In order to do this, there are numerous avenues you could take. Discussion Forums are an idea, but they are overused and honestly, few generate traffic unless they have tenure and a driving force. Many start but few survive. At least that is what I have noticed in my tenure of operating the KenpoNet Discussion Forum, which was one of the first out there on the internet; and I created it with a site that drew visitors already.

Another method to getting visitors to return is to update things and change things around. Personally I dislike returning to sites that do not have anything new to offer. I also dislike sites that provide links that lead nowhere. That is why I try to check the links on the site at least once every month or two and get rid of links that lead nowhere.

The Rest of the Story

As your site grows, you will begin to see where needs lie. On my site, people were always asking about a variety of tips for running their business. I created the Business Center in the Flame. In fact, I created the Flame because I was getting tired of finding articles and information and then going back to find that site gone. I created an archive.

As a summary, think about design when looking at your site. Keep it easy to navigate through. Look at content. If you are not looking to do a school site or an association site but something else, try to make sure that it hasn't been done before. Unless it has something new and exciting, traffic will not warrant the amount of time spent on it. And look to other sites to help get your site out. Use sites like the KenpoNet to get your site seen. Use general martial arts sites (links also on the KenpoNet) to make your site available to others. And use search engines to make your school found quickly and easily.