E-BUSINESS STARTUP: The Fundamentals of Digital Entrepreneurship

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What is Entrepreneurship?

In political economics, Entrepreneurship is a process of identifying and starting a business venture, sourcing and organizing the required resources and taking both the risks and rewards associated with the venture.

"Entrepreneurship" may result in new organizations or revitalize mature organizations in response to a perceived business opportunity. A new business started by an entrepreneur is referred to as a Startup Company. In recent years, the term has been extended to include social and political forms of entrepreneurial activity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship

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What is Digipreneurship? Digipreneurship.com is a new business model coined in 2007 by Mr.

Jermyn Shannon El, a technology Futurist born in Jacksonville, Florida. He created the term to define a new way of teaching and learning about how to start and own an Internet-based “electronic business” as a Digital Entrepreneur. (search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_business)

Digipreneurship.com offers online resources and curriculum for students and educators. The web site operates as a mobile classroom to help fully integrate digital learning both inside and outside the classroom. Over the past seven years the curriculum has demonstrated significant impact on student achievement, professional development, and successful new Startup companies.

Digipreneurship is based on 4 Stages of Lifecycle Development

a. Interoperability

b. Collaboration

c. Competition (Co-Creation)

d. Innovation

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4 Stages of Digipreneurship?

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I.C.C.I.

The Real World vs. The Virtual World

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality

ALL ABOUT WEB SITE DESIGN Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_design

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Did You Know?All jobs aren’t created equal. In fact, some are simply better than the rest. U.S. News 100 Best Jobs of 2014 offer a mosaic of employment opportunity, good salary, manageable work-life balance and job security. Here are 10 of the most in-demand jobs right now with average base salaries (Salary.com) of more than $100000. For the first time, our No. 1 pick is a technology job.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs

http://www.therichest.com/business/salary/top-10-highest-paying-jobs-in-2013/

http://swz.salary.com/SALARYWIZARD/layoutscripts/swzl_selectjob.aspx?txtKeyword=web+testing&txtZipCode=

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Getting StartedOnce you have decided to establish a web site there are three (3) steps to before you can get online.

1 - Get a Domain Name - This is your personal/private address on the Web. Two example domain registrars are Godaddy.com and Register.com

2 - Find a Web Hosting Service- Here is where your website will reside.

(Wix.com) free vs. (Hostgator.com) Private Web Hosting

3 – Set up a Google GMAIL address

Now you are almost ready to Design, Build and Upload your web site. The process of web site creation. 8

Web Site Design

What is a web site?A web site is an address (location) on the World Wide Web that contains your web pages. Basically, a web site is your personal online communications connection to the rest of the world. WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM, .NET, etc

A web site is totally different from any other type of publishing, advertising or communications media.

A Web Site is never done

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The Design Process

Designing for the web requires the relevant content of a brochure or magazine, the colorful look of high-quality print, and the attention-grabbing impact of television advertising. Plus it should offer a valuable product and/or information, be updated frequently and stay current with changing technology.

Web development platforms like Google Sites (free) and Wordpress (free & paid) offer very user-friendly tools to design a quality online web presence.

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Five Step Process for Effective Web Site Creation

I. Analyze• Info / content• Target Audience• Top 10 Checklist

II. Organise• Navigation• Content • Page layout• Page design

III. Develop• Web page layout• Site layout • Web page construction• Graphics techniques

4. Implement• User Interaction• Final Checklist• FTP• Fine Tune

5. Maintain• Marketing• Search Engine

Optimisation (SEO)• Traffic analysis

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AnalyzeThe first question to ask yourself is do you really need a web site? To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:

Why do I want to create this web site? Promote your ideas, hobbies, or beliefs To advertise your company or product Make loads of money really fast Provide customer services and support To keep your customer base informed Give or sell book, music or information Create an 'Extended Business Card' for your

company Provide internal information and services for your

company

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Analyze Web Site ContentBefore you can start deciding what content the site is going to contain you need to determine

Who your target audience is.

What age group are your users?

What is there skill level with the Internet?

How can I communicate effectively?

You also need to determine the purpose of your site. What is the site for?

Once you have determined these factors you can start to plan the content your site will have. Remember who your target will be when deciding on content. 13

Analyze Target AudienceWho is my target audience?What type of visitors do I want my site to attract? What will be their age, sex and education? Will they search for my site because we share a hobby, like the same television shows or are they looking for specific information?

Audience analysis

Audience analysis is the starting point for any project. You need to figure out your audience's demographics:

how old they are

where they work

what they earn

where they live, anything that's appropriate

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Analyze Target Audience

Your content has to have a goal

The key thing to remember about audience analysis is the goal: to have a well-defined audience at the end of the process. The only good audience definition is a specific target definition. The better you can pigeon-hole or niche your audience, the more likely your site will succeed.

How can I communicate effectively?Now that I know who the audience will be, what is the best way to communicate with them?

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Analyze the Competition Web Site(s)This is a very important part in the creation of a new

web site, and usually very useful.

Spend time searching other internet sites (www.Google.com), particularly your competitors

See if you can get any ideas you can use and improve on, like the Title, description, etc…

Don't be mistaken that the flashiest coolest looking web site is the best.

Sites with lots of animation are not always the best, many times the take to long to load or do not work on other devices

You must also keep in mind that not everyone has a fast Internet Broadband connection.

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Organisation

Next to Web Site Analysis, Organisation is one of the critical tools to web site design. We've discussed who you feel your audience will be and what kind of information they will be looking for and what questions they will be asking. Now we need to help them find the information and the answers hopefully, by the shortest route possible.

It is a good idea that you maintain some sort of Blog/Journal for your web site. Don't confuse a site blog with a site outline. Your blog is a collection of your ideas, your thoughts and whatever you want to remember, jot down ideas when they pop into your head.

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Organizing Your Web SiteFor starters pick out a web site that impresses you and examine it. There are three main elements in the organization of a web site. They are:

1 - Structure: The form of your web site and its navigation

2 - Content: The substance of your web site

3 - Layout: The theme or method of presenting your web site. What is the color scheme and layout?

Write down anything that you believe makes this web site unique and any ideas that you might want to use

yourself.

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Structure: Tables, tables, tables!

Use tables to lay out your pages!

Make the table borders invisible

A 2x2 table works well

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Key Areas of a Web Page

Menu

Header

Content

Logo

Footer20

Dimensions in a 2x2 table

Logo

And

Menu

Header

Content

100-140wide

Up to 650 wide

Up to 760 wide*

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A 2 x 2 Layouttwo rows

two columns

(menu at top)

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The outer table

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The inner table

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The inner table

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Centered with three columns

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Know Your ContentWhat content (data, graphics, photos, etc.) will be included?

This is the ''big'' job...gathering all the content that you want to include on your web site. Are you going to use photos? What kind of graphics do you want? And what information or data are you putting online?

Make a Feature List of the items you think you will want to have on your website.

What information do I need?If you are designing a site for a client, you will need to know the answers to the preceding questions as well as what their vision is for this site. Do they have a logo they would like for you to use? Do they have specific colors in mind? Do they want to include phone and fax numbers on their pages? If this is your own business site, these are questions you should answer also.

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A checklist for type of Content you may wish to include on a web site:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Product and Company articles Ecommerce - Online purchasing of products,

ebooks, music, advertisement (Paypal, Google Music)

Facebook commenting integration to allow your followers to subscribe to your site and share their comments with their social network

Web site forum or help desk to generate conversation between your web site users

Web site Search feature always proves very useful Survey and contact forms or polls for your visitors to

answer particular questions (Jotform.com) Quizzes and sweep stakes on social media with

prizes to promote your products Free coupons or special promotional offers Current News and relevant, unique information Location maps with directions (Google Maps)

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1. Know your audience

2. Keep web pages short

3. Limit the amount of text

4. Avoid large images (pixels)

5. Use web safe colors (rgb vs cmyk)

6. Clearly identify all links

7. Check spelling

8. Use a Site Map or directory page

9. Update and check all links

10. Include contact information

Top 10 Web Site Design Tips

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Monitors and Dimensions

Monitor resolution affects how you should lay pages out

800x600 = 50% - 760 x 420 pixels in browser window

1024x768 = 35%

640x480 = 3%* - 595 x 360 pixels *Was 20% three years ago

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Page Width

Because monitors differ (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768), pages look different.

You can use a % width for a table, for example make it 80% of the page width

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Organisation - StructureNow we're going to look at the overall design of a web site and “How to Structure the Architecture of the Web Site". This is different from the individual pages within the site (i.e. content).

Site design includes the structure of your site, the different content sections and site navigation menus within those sections. It also encompasses the theme you choose, and a methodology of content development, categories, and tags.

As the diagram shows a web site is composed of three main areas:

1. The Home Page

2. The Main Sections

3. The Subsections 32

Web Page Layout

Technical definitions:

A web page is a single HTML document

A web site is a collection of related webpages

Designing a good web site requires more than just putting together a few pages

Layout of web pages is very important

Poor layout makes for -

Difficult navigation

Hard to locate information on page

Visually unappealing

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Splash/Home Page

The index.html file is called the “Splash Page”

It is the key page—the first page visitors usually see

Must be visually attractive, informative, and easy to navigate

Examples: www.bet.com www.yahoo.com www.projectyouthlink.com

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Organizing InformationDecide What Page Goes First And What Info Goes On Each Page

Home page

About page

Services page

Contact page

Be Concise

Limit Choices – Use a Hierarchical Structure

A hierarchy is a structured organization where some pages are at a higher level than others

Hierarchy results in a Site Map with multiple levels

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Organisation – Layout & Structure

Home page Do’s

Leave your Visitors with a great first impression

Keep the home page short and to the point

Should tell your visitors what your site is about

Should provide index, site map or table of contents

Home page Don’ts

Should not contain a lot of text

Don’t present your users with a huge list of links to every single page

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Sample Site Map

Interior orInternal

Pages

Willoughby's Website

Splash Pageindex.html

Pictures Gallerygallery.html

Name Pagename.html

Progress Pageprogress.html

Canada Tripcanada.html

Christmas Treetree.html

A site map is designed to show the connections between pages

A graphical site map uses lines to connect linked pages

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Organisation - StructureMain Sections

Determining and naming the main sections of your site is very important. Sections should contain material grouped according to visitor needs - in other words, these are sizeable chunks of related information. For example, if you are creating a site for a tourist visiting Florida, you would want to make it easy for the visitor to find the right information.

The main sections might include:

The main section is your site index on your homepage, it is the foundation to your navigation of the website.

Once you have divided your content into main sections, decide their order of importance

Travel Restaurants Pubs Accommodation

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Organisation - StructureSubsections

Not all main sections necessarily need to have subsections, but most will require a further breakdown of information. It really depends on the amount of content on your site. When designing a new web site, keep in mind that the content will increase as you update and add information to the site. Build in room to expand as you determine your main and sub sections.

Once you have established the home page, main sections and subsections of the web site, organise them into order of importance and note it. This is the basic layout of your web site.

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Design Theme

Choose a common layout for your website. The Splash Page will probably differ but interior pages should be the same

Use tables to control placement throughout

Use the same font throughout!

Use consistent graphics in the web site – do not use different fonts on one page and calligraphy on another

Use a consistent color scheme

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The Font Barrier Only fonts you can reliably use

are Times New Roman (Times) and Arial (Helvetica)

Text in site should be one of these choices

How to overcome this? Any font used in graphics is

loaded as a graphic, and does not rely upon the font being on the user’s computer

Make cool font images in Photoshop, Fonts.com, http://www.1001freefonts.com/fontfiles/main.htm

www.clipart.com http://free-clip-art.com/

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Testing Test your website as you go along.

If you’re in the computer lab and there’s an empty computer next to you, log into it and check out your web page from there

Make sure it works in Chrome, Internet Explorer, and FireFox as well as all mobile devices

Make sure all pictures are compressed to reduce page loading time

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THANK YOU FORPARTICIPATING!

ENJOY YOUR NEW CAREER AS A DIGIPRENEUR!

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