Dec 27 2008
Your Business Web Site
Does your business need a Web site? The answer to that is yes, yes, YES! Depending on your business, the site can be as simple as a one-page site with a summary of the service you provide and contact information. Most businesses provide a service that requires more information or offers merchandise for sale, and those will need to provide much more information and, possibly, a shopping cart to sell merchandise over the Internet.
As opposed to any other form of advertising, a Web site can be updated almost instantly. Once you have approved an ad in a publication, or a commercial for airing, it can be almost impossible to get changed quickly, if at all. Once a printed ad is “out there”, it can last indefinitely. The solution is to keep any such ads and commercials as short as possible, and within the ad refer people to your Web site for details.
Having an Internet presence consists of four main components: 1) a Domain Name and URL, 3) a Domain Name Registrar, 3) a Hosting Service, and, of course, 4) the Web Site. Although you can take care of all of this yourself, unless you are planning on hosting and designing Web sites, you should have someone else do this for you. After all, your business is “your business”, and the time you would spend on your Web site is time you are taking away from your business. A brief explanation of the four components follows.
Domain Name and URL: A domain name is something.com (or .org, or .net, or one of the other extensions now available). The URL or uniform resource locator for that domain name would be www.something.com. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) probably provides you with space for a site. This is satisfactory for a personal site, but is very unprofessional if used for a business site. The URL your ISP provides would probably be something like http://yourusername.ispname.com or www.ispname.com/~yourusername or something else complicated like that. If your business name is Joe’s Painting, you should try to register joespainting.com or joes-painting.com, or something similar. Of course, if someone else already has that domain name you will not be able to register it for yourself, but you should try to get one that is close to your business name. This will be professional looking and easy to remember.
Domain Name Registrar: This is the organization with which you register your domain name. There are many such services, and your Web-site designer should be able to help you select a domain name and get it registered. Your domain name is registered for a minimum of one year at a time, and should not cost you more than $10.00 to $20.00 per year.
Hosting Service: This is where your Web site will actually reside, and where the domain name registrar will direct all calls for your URL. Your Web-site designer should be able to help you with this service, too. Hosting services can be free, or may cost as little as $10.00 to $20.00 per month and go up from there. Be careful of free hosting services. You frequently have to permit them to run their own ads on your site. Hosting services can be from a bare bones account to one that provides a lot of helper applications. Be careful of a hosting service that requires long-term contracts. Decent services are available that run on a month-to-month basis.
Web Site Designer: This opens a whole range of possibilities. Someone in your own family may be an adequate designer, or someone else who does this kind of work may provide the service for a reasonable fee. Then, too, there are professionals who might change you an arm and a leg. My suggestion is to use someone who performs the work under the terms of a written contract, will do the work in a reasonable time, and does not charge an inordinate fee for the service. The contract should contain the same kind of details that I recommended in my post Written Agreement.
Personal Note: I am not soliciting any design business, but I do provide these services and give you these examples of the minimum kinds of fees you might be looking at. I design sites for as little as $35.00 per page, depending on the amount of work that might be required to design it. I also have an hourly fee for updating and maintaining the site, and bill for that on a monthly basis. I also, at no extra charges for my service, take care of domain name registration and setting up a hosting account. All of this is covered in my contract, and is agreed to between myself and my client before I do any work for the client.
TIP: Get a Web site for your business following the guidelines outlined above. Provide enough information to your audience to either detail your service or to get them interested enough to contact you. Keep other advertising to a minimum, and use it to direct clients or customers to your Web site.
This is great. Wish I’d had this spelled out so clearly years ago. But I am printing it out to show folks I work with. Thanks.